Benedict Joseph Labre was a layman who, after being turned away by monasteries, walked to the shrines of Europe as a poor pilgrim. Living homeless in Rome, he gave his life to prayer and Eucharistic adoration.
Life
Benedict Joseph Labre was born in 1748 in a village in northern France, the eldest of many children. From his youth he longed for a strict religious life and knocked at the doors of several monasteries, including the Trappists and Carthusians. He stayed briefly in some of them, but for reasons such as health he never became a monk.
He came to understand that God was calling him to a life of pilgrimage, and in ragged clothes he walked to shrines in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and elsewhere. In his last years he stayed in Rome, living on the streets and spending long hours in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the churches.
He died in Rome in 1783 at the age of thirty-five and was canonized in 1881.
Spirituality
The spirituality of St. Benedict Joseph Labre is radical poverty and a simplicity that relies on God alone. Through rejection and failure he discovered his own unique calling. Walking with nothing, he shared even the little he received with those poorer still, and found deep peace before the Eucharist.
Reflection
St. Benedict Joseph Labre reminds us that there are people of God even among those living on the streets. Why not reflect today on how I look at the poor people I pass by?