Today is the feast of the great St. Joseph Benedict Labre. He is very different from yesterday's saint, in that he never accomplished anything a social worker -- or anybody -- could put on his resumé, but he was a great saint nonetheless. He it was who traveled Europe for 12 years, pilgrimaging from shrine to shrine til he expired on the steps of Santa Maria dei Monti church near the Colosseum. Benedict Labre was called "shiftless," "crazy," but above all "eccentric." Which ought to give us all hope. I can identify with him much more than Father Damien (much as I love him) in that I never built a church, never built a hospital, never even built a coffin, and I've never really had a job.
Poor Benedict tried joining the Carthusians, but after a brief stint there, he knew it wasn't for him. He tried joining the Trappists, but they wouldn't have him. For awhile he went back home and tried to live a "normal" life, but he got restless and set out for the first of his endless series of pilgrimages. Why did he go? Was it to beg God to let the Trappists finally accept him? Was it to grant him more strength and health (so that they would accept him)? Was it to know God's will? Was it to expiate his sins? He never said, other than: "It was His Providence that directed me to undertake this journey." It was one of his biographer's opinion -- and the one before him, Agnes de la Gorce -- who believed: "Labre is the great patron for all who are trying to find out what they are meant to do, for he spent his life trying to find that out for himself. It may be that only in the peace of the very end did he realize that he really had found it."
He was the oldest of 15 children smart but kind of unworldly, even as a youngster given to sobriety and introspection. He was untroubled by ambition, but he felt a strong calling from God. Continually frustrated in what he thought was perfect for him -- and what surely must be willed by God -- he still never gave up. "With God's help you can do anything, anything at all; you can even stand in the fire and not get burnt, like the 3 young men in the Babylonian furnace."
Poor Benedict! He suffered much from hunger and cold. He didn't care about his appearance. His clothes got shabby; his hair got shaggy. He suffered from lack of showers or baths; toward the end of his life he was positively verminous. But his beauty and sanctity shone through to those who could see. André Bley found him -- though he didn't know who it was -- in a crowd of beggars in Rome and chose him to model for Jesus for a painting. He refused twice, but on the third time had to accept for love of charity. You can see his suffering serenity in the picture, "The Call of Peter."
Benedict was directly implementive in the conversion story of John Thayer, an American traveler in Rome -- a Congregational minister, no less -- who was disgusted by Benedict's appearance and contemptuous of the overwhelming devotion to "il santo" by the whole populace at his death in 1789. Still, something moved him, and when he saw -- firsthand -- the miraculous cures wrought at the saint's intercession, he not only converted but became a priest . . . the first New England native to become one!
And finally, Benedict himself was witness to a miracle of the multiplication of loaves. On Maundy Thursday in Moulins, he was moved to gather 12 other beggars and bring them to his upper room, a shabby attic some Franciscans had found for him. He gave each a bowl and placed in each some few peas and a crust of bread. The beggars were derisive, but suddenly fell silent, because as he prayed, the bowls filled to the brim. One of them exclaimed, "It's a miracle." But Benedict smiled and said he had a generous patron who gave him everything he wanted.
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