10/05/2026
Yesterday was the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi. Both Urban Missionaries and our patron, St. Charles de Foucauld, are in his spiritual debt. St. Charles has even been called "another St. Francis". Like Francis, we wander city streets and can only sigh with him, "Love is not loved." God is so forgotten, though God has not forgotten us. St. Francis was called the "poverello", or 'little poor man', while St. Charles always tried to take the lowest place. Charles famously said that Jesus went so far down in His humility for us that nobody could take the 'lowest place' from Him. For our part, we have gone into homeless camps more than a thousand times, as well as walking amongst prostitutes, and in doing so we have gone to the lowest places and seen the saddest things. Francis was famous for embracing lepers, the greatest outcasts of his time, and we try to do the same, hoping only for friendship. Finally, Francis and Charles were both great lovers of God, and that's what we aspire to be as well.
St. Charles owed his priestly vocation to a Poor Clare mother superior whom he worked under as sacristan and laborer while he lived on the monastery grounds in a tool shed at Nazareth. He always resisted the priestly call, feeling unworthy like St. Francis, but the Poor Clares (part of the Franciscan family) prevailed.
The reliquary shown includes St. Francis in the middle left, while featuring two Franciscan saints at the top (Sts. John Joseph of the Cross and Pascal Baylon). St. John was also a saint of the "lowest place", preferring the most menial tasks and an ascetic life (both Francis and Charles were profound ascetics), while St. Pascal was known as a great adorer of the Eucharist, and is the patron saint of Eucharistic congresses. Reliquaries like the one shown were typically made by cloistered nuns, and this one hails from Italy.
