Saint Benedict Joseph Labre

When Benedict was in his thirteenth year, his parents entrusted his education to his uncle and godfather François-Joseph Labre, parish priest of Erin. It was at the home of this holy priest that he first united himself with his Savior. He had neglected nothing to prepare a clean and well-adorned dwelling for this divine guest; and when he had received Him, nothing here below could give an idea of the delights with which he was flooded. He received the spirit of truth in Confirmation on the same day; from then on he was completely transformed, becoming a new creature animated by the very life of Jesus Christ. Now that he had tasted the flavor of the heavenly manna, it seemed he had lost all other taste, even for the foods most essential for the nourishment of the body. From then on, he began to deprive himself frequently and in secret of a portion of the meals given to him, and he distributed them, without being noticed, through a window to a poor person to whom he had assigned this meeting. He would have trampled underfoot the most exquisite fruits in his uncle's garden rather than touch those that were most capable of tempting him; he would have felt it a scruple to pick even one, even had they fallen from the tree themselves. Another effect of communion was the increase of his habitual recollection: he no longer felt pleasure in anything but conversing with God, alone with Him, and he chose for this the most secluded places. Hence came his predilection for a remote study in the rectory, where one was sure to find him when duty did not call him elsewhere; if he was not found there, one had to go to the church, where he was seen in adoration before the Most Blessed Sacrament. He would have spent entire days and almost nights in this heavenly conversation of his soul with his Savior, demonstrating by his example that there is neither bitterness nor boredom in it.

If he only received communion every month, it was because his soul, hungry for this heavenly bread, was held back by the scruples of an excessively timid conscience. One also observed in him a redoubling of zeal for the glory of God and for the salvation of his neighbor. When he was a witness to some grave offense against the divine majesty, his sorrow went as far as consternation. He seized every opportunity to teach Christian doctrine or to give some pious instruction to children younger than himself. He instructed himself in the Latin language, not only out of obedience, but also because it was the language of the Holy Scripture and the offices of the Church. All the time he could save, he devoted to pious reading: his uncle's library barely sufficed for his activity. This is how he used the holidays granted to him, or else he devoted them to some good works, such as visiting poor sick people or pious ecclesiastics in the vicinity with whom he could confer about religion.

One day of a patronal feast, his uncle, not seeing him with the young people of his age with whom he had sent him, said to those around him: "I bet my nephew has gone into some corner to read or to pray."

Mr. Dupuich, the pious young man's director, had the curiosity to verify the fact. He looked for him everywhere: finally, he found him in a barn, prostrate before a crucifix he had hung on the wall. Benedict was so absorbed in his prayer that he heard nothing; and, surprised as much as edified, Mr. Dupuich walked away, not wishing to disturb him in such a holy recreation. He was thus preluding the way of life he led until his death, which can be summarized in two words: pray, suffer. He did not lose an opportunity to suffer, with less sorrow than a miser loses the opportunity to enrich himself. In the most rigorous cold, he never approached the fire, despite the most pressing invitations. It was necessary to urge him to make him take the essential food; then he always chose what was most common and coarsest, leaving the best pieces to others; if he had them at his disposal, it was to give them to the servants.

At the age of fifteen, his attraction for reading the Lives of the Saints and books dealing with the spiritual life became so strong that his studies of the Latin language, which, moreover, he already knew quite well, began to suffer. A single design occupied him entirely: to know the will of God for him and the surest means to sanctify himself and save his soul. His uncle, seeing him slacken in his studies, thought he should insist on their importance for the priesthood and forbade Benedict from entering his library, leaving him only the books he deemed necessary. But how to resist the attraction of grace? God wanted to make of his servant something other than a learned ecclesiastic. Scarcely did he open Cicero or Quintus Curtius than a great weight oppressed his heart: if, on the contrary, he opened a book of piety, his soul was lifted up and carried to God.

The Holy Scriptures, above all, spoke to his heart, as did the sermons of Father Lejeune. He had them in his hands daily, he studied them with love, he knew them almost by heart. Two discourses shook him mainly: those on the pains of hell and the small number of the elect; he had this maxim continually before the eyes of his soul: "What does it profit a man to gain the world if he loses his soul!" God first revealed to him His general will for him; He called him to an absolute renunciation, reserving for Himself the task of making known his special wishes after having prepared him through the path of trials. Benedict believed that Providence was calling him into the enclosure of some monastery: only one, that of La Trappe, newly reformed, seemed capable of satisfying his hunger for mortifications. But his parents resisted this design at first: they objected that he could just as well serve God and work out his salvation in the eccl la Trappe Austere monastic order that the saint attempted to join several times. esiastical state as in the cloister, and even that he would do more good by working for the sanctification of others than by living for himself alone by burying himself in a desert. In vain the holy young man represented to them that no consideration could exempt him from obeying the voice that was calling him: he pleaded his cause, prayed, and begged in vain; he could gain nothing. While waiting until he was of an age to dispose of his own person, for he was only seventeen, he made, as much as he could, a trial of the penitent life for which he sighed, a kind of apprenticeship for La Trappe. More than once he was caught sleeping on the floor, even in the most rigorous season. He no longer limited himself to giving a few pieces of bread to the poor: when he could escape notice, his entire meal passed into the hands of some needy person.

He obtained his uncle's permission to observe the fasts of precept. He no longer appeared outside except to go to the church; his more frequent communions, his angelic manners, his humble docility, his rare modesty, and his perpetual recollection caused him to be called the young Saint and already attracted a sort of public veneration. An epidemic ravaging the country in 1766, Benedict devoted himself to the service of the sick, along with his uncle, whom he saw fall a martyr to charity. He then understood, better than ever, how fragile human life is, and he strengthened himself in the design of renouncing everything to acquire eternal goods. He was advised to renounce La Trappe, which frightened his parents, for a Charterhouse where life would be sufficiently austere. Always flexible to the voice of his superiors, Benedict followed this advice. His father and mother, although this sacrifice cost them as much as that of Abraham to Isaac, gave their consent. He first went to knock at the Charterhouse of Val-Sainte-Aldegonde, in the diocese of Saint-Omer, which could not receive him because of the great losses it had just suffered, which diminished its resources. He then left on foot for that of Neuville, in the diocese of Boulogne; there, the Reverend Father Prior, believing him destined for the choir and the priesthood, told him to finish his studies and learn a little dialectic and the principles of plainchant before presenting himself. He returned after four months: he was examined, his knowledge was found to be almost sufficient, and they especially took into account the intensity of his desire, and he was admitted to the number of postulants.

In the first moments, the pious anchorite believed himself at the height of his wishes; he was finally going to live in the hollow of the rock and taste the delights of a life hidden in Jesus Christ. But this rapid joy was soon succeeded by one of those interior tribulations which are like the arduous and steep mountain passes through which souls called to the most sublime contemplation must pass. On the other hand, he believed the life of the Carthusians too sweet for a sinner like him: God, who had other views for him, did not send down into his soul that sympathetic grace which forms the bond between a religious Order and those whom it calls. He was therefore obliged to leave the Charterhouse; but scarcely back under the paternal roof, he left it again, despite the prayers and tears of his parents; he left in the heart of winter, without luggage, without any concern for means of transport, through unknown lands, through torrential rains; he walked sixty leagues to go and present himself at the Trappe of Mortagne, in Normandy. They refused to receive him before the age of twenty-four; he therefore had to bow his head and return to his village, where he arrived with his clothes in rags and his feet torn. Having returned to the Carthusians on August 12, 1769, at the age of twenty-one, solely to obey his bishop whom he had consulted on this subject, he left for the same reasons as the first time. He returned to the Trappe of Mortagne, and, finding it closed to him again until he should be twenty-four, he set out for that of Septfonds. He was admitted there and donned the novice's habit on November 11.

It was probably while traveling to Septfonds that he went to kneel in Autun on the ground consecrated by the blood of Saint Symphorian. In 1861, the tradition of the pilgrimage that the blessed Labre made to Autun still lived in the memory of some old people. He was the last illustrious pilgrim who visited a tomb so famous for more than fifteen centuries.

What a happy surprise it was for him to see that the austerity at Septfonds was no less than at La Trappe! From the beginning, he appeared to be a consummate religious. But he still had to pass a third time through the crucible of interior tribulations. He accused himself of faults that existed only in the fears of a too-timorous conscience; he thought he had no contrition because he was not, like some penitent saints, favored with a sensible contrition that led to weeping, groaning, and sobbing. In less than six months, these desolations of heart, joined to austerities and fasts, had made him thin and exhausted. A burning fever set in, and the doctors, when consulted, judged him too weak to sustain the rigor of the Rule. But they did not want him to leave before he was recovered; he was therefore transported to the external infirmary, where he edified everyone. It was, said one Brother, an uninterrupted conversation with God, favored by the most absolute silence of the sick man. The one in charge of caring for him often invited his confreres to come and visit him, saying: "Young Labre is a Saint, let us go see him." During his convalescence, he had no greater urgency than to employ himself in the care of the other sick, of whom his charity made him the most devoted servant. He took leave of the good Fathers on July 2, 1770; but what will he do? where will he go? He addressed these questions to Our Lord, who first put into his mind the thought of heading toward the most famous sanctuaries, such as those of Loreto and Rome, with the intention of better knowing his vocation. He left France and took the road to Loreto, through Piedmont, constantly asking the Lord for help and light to know and accomplish His divine will. God finally revealed to him, by a very clear illumination of the intellect, joined to a sensible inspiration in the heart, that "this divine will was that he should walk in the footsteps of Saint Alexis, by abandoning forever his homeland, comforts, conveniences, and all that is flattering in the world, to lead a new kind of life, the poorest, the most painful, and the most penitent; and this not in a desert, not in a cloister, but in the midst of the world, by devoutly visiting as a pilgrim the most renowned sanctuaries."

The holy Pilgrim began with Our Lady of Loreto on November 6, 1770; his second station was the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi, where he had himself enrolled in the archconfraternity known as the Holy Cord. Upon his arrival in Rome, he was dee Rome Birthplace of Maximian. ply touched to see the images of his good Mother at crossroads and in the streets; in all the houses, most families reserved for her a place of honor with a lamp lit before it. He would stop before those that were most venerated, expressing his affections through pious gestures, and, after having looked at them a thousand times, he would return again and look at them with new fervor. He did not know how to return the joy he felt from this public and universal cult rendered to Mary.

He was soon aware of all the ceremonies that took place in the churches of Rome, of all the devotions practiced there, and he missed none of them. When he learned of the Holy Stairs, he often went to climb them on his knees, slowly and meditating at each step on the humiliations of the Savior who had trodden them when He was dragged to the praetorium. Toward the end of May 1771, he left for the city of Fabriano, near which the tomb of Saint Romuald is venerated. He felt such devotion for Saint James the Greater that he spent an entire day in his church, always on his knees, without changing his place or position, attentive to all the masses that followed one another in the morning. During the hours when the church remained deserted, he held his arms in the form of a cross, his eyes fixed on the tabernacle or on the statue of the Saint. When he saw the sacristan closing the doors, he begged him to allow him to spend the night in the church. When he went out, many pointed him out and called him a Saint. The admiration increased when he was seen giving to the poor the little alms he received. A widow, seeing him pass by in pouring rain, invited him to come in to take shelter. He accepted, greeted her according to his custom with these words: "Praised be Jesus and Mary!" And, by his face, so affable and pious, he inspired great confidence in this woman: she opened her heart to him and told him of her sorrows. She found such consolation in the words of the holy Pilgrim that she wanted to procure the same happiness for a young person who, for more than nine years, had been bedridden, suffering greatly from a scirrhus of the stomach. Benedict spoke to the sick woman of the happiness of being crucified with Jesus Christ, and told her, among other things, that from her bed she would pass into paradise. It seemed to the patient that she was hearing Jesus Christ Himself; judging herself unworthy of being visited by Jesus Christ in person, she had the idea that it was a Saint from heaven sent by God to console her; and it was not without reason: for the servant of God, taking advantage of a moment when he was alone with her, spoke to her of a secret of conscience relative to some interior illusion she had had and which she had not yet revealed to her director. She later confessed that, without a supernatural light, he could not have penetrated her interior as he had done.

Contrary to his habit, the servant of God accepted the dinner that his dear sick woman and her two sisters offered him, thinking no doubt of the example of the divine Model, who did not refuse to take part in feasts when He saw a favorable opportunity to serve the guests some spiritual food. But he barely touched what was served to him, and to the urgings made to him, he replied: "I need little; the rest is only good for preparing a greater feast for the worms." He continued to speak of the things of God and of salvation; but he seasoned his spiritual discourses with so much naturalness and grace that the three sisters and the widow were moved to tears and forgot to eat to be more attentive to his pious reflections. He exclaimed several times: "My God, what is your goodness in having given these foods the virtue of sustaining our bodies?"

the young invalid asked him how we must love God and what are the signs of this love; he replied: "To love God properly, one must have three hearts in one. The first must be all fire toward God and make us think continually of God, speak habitually of God, act constantly for God, and above all bear with patience the evil that it pleases Him to send us throughout the duration of our life. The second must be all flesh toward our neighbor and lead us to help him in his temporal needs through alms, and even more in his spiritual needs through instruction, counsel, example, and prayer; it must above all be tender toward sinners, and more particularly toward enemies, and ask the Lord to enlighten them to bring them to penance; it must also be full of pious compassion for the souls in purgatory, so that Jesus and Mary may deign to introduce them to the place of rest. The third must be all bronze toward oneself and make one abhor all kinds of sensuality, resist without respite the love of self, abjure one's own will, chastise the body through fasting and abstinence, and tame all the inclinations of corrupt nature: for the more you hate and the more you mistreat your flesh, the greater will be your reward in the other life."

Before leaving this family, Benedict wanted to leave a mark of his gratitude for the welcome he had received: he asked for a sheet of paper, wrote in Latin a prayer addressed to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and, in handing it to his hostesses, he assured them that if they recited it with faith, they would see their house and the neighboring houses preserved from lightning, fire, and earthquakes. This is what happened several times, among others during the earthquake of 1781.

Benedict was forced to escape the esteem that was growing for him throughout the city. Inspired no doubt by a prophetic spirit, he added, while thanking the sacristan for the kindnesses shown to him, that God would deign to pay His debt Himself to the church and the hospice. Some time later, they unexpectedly received a sum of one hundred Roman scudi, bequeathed by the will of a German lady, unknown to Fabriano, whose heir was unaware of the existence of Saint James Church and its hospice.

Benedict never stopped since then when passing through a city where "they had made much of him as if he were something good." His various pilgrimages in the kingdom of Naples foreshadowed that he would be an ornament of the Church. His great examples of virtue made such an impression on the inhabitants that even today, after about eighty years, the memory of it is alive in the minds of some old people. Arriving in front of a prison, from where the detainees implored the pity of passersby through the bars of their dungeons, he stopped, and, seeing these unfortunates, he felt great compassion for them. Suddenly he knelt, took off his hat, placed it on the ground before him, laid on its brim the crucifix he detached from his chest, prayed for a moment while looking at it fixedly, then intoned the Litanies of the Virgin of Loreto with a heavenly voice that moved the listeners to the depths of their souls; immediately money fell from all sides into the pilgrim's hat, he collected these offerings, kissed them, deeply moved as if to thank the public, stood up, and went to distribute them to the poor prisoners; he repeated this act of charity every day in front of the churches.

An inhabitant of the city of Bari, who had the happiness of having him accept hospitality in his house, asked him, before letting him leave, to give him at least some advice as a souvenir: at the same instant the hammer of the clock announced that a fraction of human life had elapsed: "Well!" replied the servant of God, "each time you hear this bell, remember that you are not master of the next hour, and think at the same time of the Passion that Our Lord willed to suffer to put us in possession of eternity." The person to whom he left this pious maxim, although in the flower of his age and of very robust health, did not delay in passing to eternal rest after a short illness.

To go to Spain, he passed through Moulins, in Bourbonnais, where he stayed for a few months. A pious Christian having offered him shelter, because it was the height of winter, he refused to accept a bed, absolutely wanting to sleep only in the attic, on a little straw. During the long winter evenings, he read to the family; other people from the neighborhood did not delay in increasing his audience, attracted, as they said, by the curiosity of seeing a Saint. After the reading, he retired to his garret to continue reading and meditating; he spent the greater part of his nights in this pious exercise. He was also heard flagellating himself harshly, and a whip of ropes armed with spikes was found in his straw. During Lent, he sometimes spent two or three days without eating.

If the holy Viaticum was being carried to the sick, he never failed to accompany it. He was seen receiving communion frequently at the first mass; this holy custom was for him an occasion of humiliation. The sacristan priest, seeing him approach the holy Table so often, judged that it was unseemly for a layman, so young and so poorly dressed, to receive so familiarly the God of all majesty, and, seized by a false zeal, he drove him from the communion table. Benedict bore this affront with patience and humility: he kept silent and withdrew; the following days, he presented himself again at the holy Table, ready to receive a new insult, and he bore it with the same self-abnegation, until the parish priest, informed of the fact, repressed the indiscreet zeal of the sacristan priest. He had to suffer many other persecutions that it would be too long to recount, and which only increased his reputation for holiness. Several miracles were attributed to him, among others that bread and peas had multiplied in his hands while he was distributing them to the poor on Holy Thursday, and that a sick person was cured by his prayers. If we follow him into a thousand sanctuaries of Alsace, Lorraine, Switzerland, and Germany, we will collect the most wonderful legends. We will only speak of the virtues of which he gave an example everywhere.

Never did the poverty and renunciation of the most rigid religious orders approach what the servant of God practiced of his own free will during the last fifteen years of his life. Indeed, religious of the strictest observance have at least a small cell for a dwelling, some board or mat for a bed, and a habit renewed in its time for clothing; their table is supplied with coarse food, it is true, but sufficiently abundant and without any care on their part; they find there some cup kept clean for drinking, be it of wood or clay; but Benedict deprived himself of all this and lived in a general destitution that has something incredible about it. His clothes were nothing but true rags, which were just enough to cover the nakedness of his body, but which could in no way defend him from the inclemency of the seasons. His footwear was most often reduced to slippers or shoes riddled on all sides as if to let in water and mud. His head was no better covered. He sometimes stripped himself even more, to better imitate the Son of God, who did not fear to strip himself of divine majesty: many saw him go barefoot along the roads or through the streets. During the greater part of his life as a pilgrim, not only did he have no home, but he did not even habitually wish to set foot under the same roof; did he not have to conform literally to the example of the one who said: "Foxes have dens and birds have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head?"

During his first stays in Rome, he began by usually sheltering near the Quirinal, in a hole in a wall, a lodging more suitable for an animal than for a man. He later changed out of deference to the advice of an ecclesiastic and lodged under the open and ruined vaults of the Colosseum, like the solitary sparrow in the rubble, or the swallow in the ruins. He often changed his lodging to avoid anything that might have resembled possession. In his long journey Colysée Roman ruins where the saint resided for several years. s, the earth served as his bed; he took a hedge or a wall for shelter. What shall we say of his poverty in living? He took only the food necessary not to die. As for the quality, his food of choice was usually the vilest he could find, scraps, even things crushed underfoot and thrown out of windows into the street or onto the manure heap: yellowed cabbage leaves, bitter orange peels, withered herb peelings, spoiled and rotten fruit. With few exceptions, his stomach knew neither meat nor dishes of any kind; he never drank except after this singular meal; his drink while traveling was water from ditches, and in the city that of public fountains, with no cup other than his lips, applied immediately to the orifice of the pipes; which was the reason why, after his death, one saw several of these fountains besieged by a pious crowd, because they were regarded as sanctified by this great servant of God.

Christians full of faith, without being held back by the repulsion that his exterior must have inspired, coveted the advantage of having him at their table: he defended himself as much as he could, on the grounds that his status as a poor man did not allow for such a distinction. This status of a poor man was for him a motive to present himself at daily distributions, less to profit from the soup given there than to make an act of the profession he had voluntarily embraced. He was accustomed to placing himself last and waiting for others to be served; from this, it happened that he often received nothing, or at least the worst; he returned just as content as if he had obtained the best share. Moreover, he easily let himself be deprived of what he had received, when the distributors, charmed by his excessive reserve, made him pass before others and gave him a large portion. It was with the same indifference that he welcomed offers of alms. Often he did not answer people who called him to give him something, because he did not notice, being entirely absorbed in God. Once, at Saint-Sixte and Saint-Dominique, he was in meditation; a priest approached him and put an alms in his hand. Far from being distracted by this charitable act, he did not even notice it. Sometimes benefactors forced him to receive what he did not want; he took it so as not to sadden them or out of respect for their character; but as soon as they had disappeared, he gave it to others. However, it was not enough for him to despise all property, even the most legitimate and necessary; he had a sort of horror of it. One can say that, contrary to other men, he was the sworn enemy of money and did not want to receive the smallest piece of this metal, which seemed to burn his hand. Many times, by mistake, some coin of this kind was put in his hand, as we have said: as soon as he noticed it, he ran after the person to return it to them. This is how he understood the maxim: "Whoever among you does not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple." Is it necessary, after that, to speak of his mortification? Can one imagine a harder and more mortified life? On vigils and other fast days, he did not appear at the doors of convents; he had proposed on those days to imitate the example of the first faithful, by eating only once a day, and one can say that he often surpassed them, for it happened more than once that he took for his only meal, towards the end of the day, only a little bread dipped in the water of the public fountain. Wednesdays and Saturdays were often, and Fridays almost always, days of absolute fasting for him.

To travel through a multitude of diverse regions, of famous cities, without opening one's eyes, or at least without looking at anything, seems almost impossible. Yet this is what the servant of God, by a miracle of grace, practiced in the most absolute manner in all his pilgrimages. Never did he voluntarily lend an ear to any vain and curious discourse, or one devoid of edification; never did he grant the sense of hearing the pleasure of listening to any song or any sound of an instrument. Never did he know the scents that flatter the sense of smell; but, on the contrary, if it happened that he was molested by unpleasant odors, he did nothing to move away or to free himself from them; that was his sensuality. It is impossible to impose greater restraint on one's tongue than he did. He had come to never speak first to anyone, except by pure necessity or by motive of charity, and to answer most often only by a nod of the head. He fulfilled to the letter the advice of the Holy Spirit: "Make doors and locks for your mouth." In the midst of the tumult of the world, his silence was perpetual, his conversation with God was perpetual. Entire months passed without him uttering a word; so that he would deserve the qualification of silentiary as well as the Saint known by that name.

As for the sense of touch spread throughout the body, it was for him the great means of penance at every moment. "He carried in his members the mortification of Jesus Christ at all times and in all places," and lived only to crucify his flesh with all its concupiscences; he knew how to make for himself instruments of maceration, which did not have the disadvantage of exposing him to esteem, and procured for him the advantage of an uninterrupted penance. Cold, heat, humidity, winds, all of nature in a word, all the inconveniences, all the circumstances of life, provided him with the means to immolate his flesh to the Lord, like Jephthah, his only daughter, uniting this sacrifice to that of his Savior. He had, moreover, on his flesh, like a living hairshirt that tore him incessantly, like Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Chancellor of England, of whom the historian says: "After he had undergone the death of martyrdom, his hairshirt was found so full of pedicular insects that this martyrdom was judged to be, in the midst of the luxury and softness of a court, much more unbearable than the last." Not only did he not seek to free himself from these inconvenient guests, but he had absolutely wanted this torment, so afflictive and so humiliating; only, out of a spirit of charity, he took every precaution to spare others the disgust he might cause them in this. He lived separated from the poor themselves and never approached them. Moreover, the odor of his holiness and the splendor of his soul often made the disgust that his sight should have inspired disappear, and his skin, when his body was washed after his death, far from offering any stain, any trace of scratching, appeared as clean as that of a newborn child. The guardian of the hospice attested that he did not see any trace in the bed he occupied, and the same thing was noted in the bed where he died; what am I saying? His rags, full of this vermin, became a treasure that thousands of people fought over!

Amidst the thorns of this mortification, the beautiful flower of continence and modesty blossomed in all its splendor. Benedict fled, with the same shudder one feels at the sight of a serpent, everything that could inflict the slightest harm upon it. "If a woman were to touch me," he would say, "I would immediately tear off the skin she had touched." He kept the door of his senses constantly closed, through which the infernal serpent could have penetrated the garden of his soul: he walked the streets as if he were in church. His countenance was ecstatic, and he never turned his head or let his eyes wander. He avoided the conversation of women with as much care as their approach or sight; he conversed with none, unless driven by a positive necessity.

The slightest obscene or licentious word that struck his ears was a thunderclap that made him shiver and tremble. One of his confessors, pressing him with questions to know why he so strictly forbade himself the use of wine, forced him to answer, with a sigh, that he wished, through this deprivation, to blunt the sting of the flesh and place a bridle on his body to prevent it from kicking. A response well in accordance with the sentence of Scripture: "Wine and women make the wise apostatize"; and yet, who would believe it? This man, so penitent, so circumspect, so delicate of conscience, had to struggle against the most violent assaults, like Jerome, Anthony, or Peter of Alcantara, to defend a virtue that was so dear to him. Scarcely had he begun to taste sleep when he was assailed by the most violent temptations. He was often obliged to roll on the ground with courage, like his patron of old, imploring divine help, invoking the Immaculate Virgin, making numerous signs of the cross upon himself, striking his breast, and imagining the cross of the Savior: he did not cease to fight until he had won a complete victory. His confessors have assured that, throughout the course of his life, they did not discover the slightest failing or the slightest stain; thus, many people referred to him only as an earthly angel, a Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. This is how, with the help of grace, Benedict had become so master of the appetite of the soul called concupiscible, because it leads us to desire and seek the sensible good, that there arose within him, so to speak, no more deliberate movement. As for the other appetite, which also composes the sensitive part of the soul, I mean the irascible, which leads us to flee sensible evil and defend ourselves against it, it was truly dead in him. One of his confessors said that by dint of exercise, he had acquired such an empire over irascibility that he had, in his opinion, become meekness and affability itself, and he did not hesitate to compare and equate him in this respect to Saint Bonaventure and Saint Francis de Sales: nothing being capable of altering the holy peace of his soul, nor the serenity of his face.

One evening, while leaving Notre-Dame des Monts, he bumped into a young man in the dark who, to take revenge, dealt him a blow with a stick, then a slap. Benedict, as was his custom, received both without asking the reason. Walking another time on the Via del Corso with a rapid pace, he was loaded with insults and mockery by some passersby. Instead of hurrying, he slowed his pace to enjoy longer the happiness of being insulted. And to move to the higher part of the soul, his will was the slave of obedience. He was, as Saint Peter advises, subject to every creature for the love of God, imitating Him who made Himself obedient unto death. It was through obedience that he sometimes used the bed that was prepared for him, that he approached the fire in winter at least for a few moments, that he drank a few sips of wine, that he received alms he did not need for that very day, that he accepted a few rare invitations to take a real meal and taste the dishes served to him. We believe we have cited here the acts of submission that cost him the most. He had such low thoughts of himself that it is impossible, according to Father Marconi, his confessor, to imagine who could have a lower one of himself, and he compares his humility to a sea so deep that there is no probe capable of measuring its bottom. He continually addressed to God the supplication of Saint Au gustine: "Lo abbé Marconi Confessor and biographer of the saint in Rome. rd, let me know You and know myself, You to love You, myself to despise myself." One of his greatest virtues was without contradiction the care he took to hide from all eyes his virtues and what passed between God and him. He applied himself no less to hiding his condition and origin, desiring to pass for the vilest and last of men. That is why he avoided his compatriots as he learned the Italian language better and usually chose his confessors from among the priests of that nation. But, despite his efforts, he was often betrayed by the delicacy of his features, by the grace of his physiognomy, by the urbanity of his language, and by I know not what nobility of manners that had its source in the politeness of his education, and even more in the perfect balance of his soul, always mistress of its movements. Although, from his youth, he read the Holy Scripture in Latin, and more than one of his admirers was convinced that God had given him a particular understanding of it, so much did he cite its texts appropriately, so much did he apply them with accuracy and precision, yet he made it a constant duty to attend the elementary explanation of Christian doctrine like an ignorant person. He followed the catechism that was given in the Colosseum for the lowest class and the most abandoned children. The virtue of Jesus Christ has a perfume that is difficult to contain; something always escapes from it: hence it happened that Benedict was often exposed to hearing his praise and receiving marks of consideration. He was easily troubled by it; it was a true sorrow for him to see himself the object of any respect: a word of praise made him shudder, a testimony of honor overwhelmed him to the depths of his soul.

Being penetrated by this oracle that God finds stains even in the pure spirits that surround His throne, and seeing himself so inferior to the angels of heaven, he always found imperfections in himself, and he accused them at the tribunal of penance with the same contrition as if they had been enormous faults. It is therefore not surprising that his confessors were unanimous in assuring that he minutely observed the precepts of God and the Church; that he never committed a fault, even venial, by deliberate purpose; that he did not even seem subject to the voluntary aberrations of desire and thought; so that his confessions did not offer sufficient matter for absolution.

There is no need to say with what attention and fervor the Blessed one performed all his daily prayers. He recited them, whatever their number, slowly, calmly, articulating each syllable and weighing the meaning of each word. Many people called him the Man of Prayer.

The way he recited the divine office made it a true meditation: after reading a psalm or a lesson, he would put down the book to give way to the thoughts and feelings that the Holy Spirit aroused in him, keeping his eyes directed toward heaven or toward the image of the Virgin at Notre-Dame des Monts. As for mental prayer, he soon reached that degree superior to all method, which is called contemplation. His spirit was immediately as if followed by the spirit of God, and his heart was inflamed with holy affections. A pious widow had judged him well when she recounted that, seeing his gaze fixed toward heaven, an index of the interior gaze, she said: "Oh! happy mortal, who knows what you see?" and imagined that God took pleasure in making him taste the delights of perfect love. From there grew in him each day the aversion for everything that is not God, to the point of regarding, with Saint Paul, all the greatness and enjoyments of the world as vile and miserable mud, worthy at most of being trampled underfoot. The length of his prayers was such that one can say without exaggeration that he spent the greater part of his last fifteen years in contemplation. Often one did not dare to interrupt him by the noise of doors or by passing too close to him in churches: many came there on purpose to be animated by his example and excited to meditation; for, it was said, one has never seen anyone pray in this way, and, to have an idea of it, one must have seen him: the angels do not stand otherwise before the throne of God! How many felt their hearts soften while watching him and tears escape involuntarily from their eyes! How many recommended themselves interiorly to his intercession, as one does to that of the blessed who already enjoy the vision of all things in God! which is indeed the highest degree of esteem one can have for a man still a traveler on earth. This is, however, what a holy eighty-year-old priest did. A future bishop would place himself as close as possible to the poor man, without being noticed, and experienced from this simple proximity such an emotion that his prayer became more fervent.

To announce himself ostensibly to the face of the world as a servant of Mary, Benedict adopted the custom of wearing the rosary suspended from his neck and did not part with it until his death. On the roads, in the streets, at church, on pilgrimage, by night as by day, one could recognize him by this emblem. It was his decoration of choice, the one he displayed with pleasure and to which he attached more value than any great lord of the earth ever attached to the insignia of his orders. The confidence with which his heart overflowed toward this good mother sometimes escaped in the midst of his prayers: he repeated in a half-voice this invocation: My Mother! O Mary! My Mother! with an accent so expressive and so pronounced that obviously he made an effort not to make it a great cry. His devotion to the holy Eucharist places him among the most famous adorers of the Blessed Sacrament: Saint Rose of Lima, Saint Louis Bertrand, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, etc. He experienced such joy in the presence of Jesus Christ that it transpired outwardly in a way that had something more than human, and one admired on his lips a smile that held more of the angel than of man. This is what made several say that he saw Jesus with the eyes of the body.

One of his confessors having forced him to tell him what made the most impression on him in the life of the Savior, he replied that it was the abjection to which this divine Master had descended in the last hours of his life. This memory, awakened by the questions of the confessor, caused him a movement of pain so bitter that the latter compares it to that of the tenderest mother, who would see an innocent and cherished son massacred before her eyes with barbarity, and it was little short of his heart failing him while answering; he wept over his Beloved, his Friend, and truly suffered with Him; he would not have suffered more if he had been nailed to the cross himself. He never failed each morning to place himself in the wounds of the Savior, imagining those of his limbs as the holes in the stone and that of the side as the cave of the rock where the dove retreats.

When Benedict thus had his soul united to God, a celestial light reflected from God upon it, and often from it upon the body, by a special grace that was granted to many Saints: his face shone with a supernatural radiance, and his body, carried away by the impulse of the soul, rising without however entirely losing contact with the earth, took a position that could not be explained in a natural way.

There are no facts sufficiently well-attested to affirm that the servant of God possessed the gift of miracles during his life, although it pleased God to ostensibly grant his prayers. In the event that a benefit granted had something miraculous about it, it is probable that Benedict had no knowledge of it: his humility would have suffered too much; but he had, especially towards the end of his life, the gift of reading into the depths of consciences. Thus, many people avoided him, for fear that he might see some stain in their soul. One day he found himself in the path of a debauched young man, whom he did not know; he took his time to approach him, and, with the tone of the greatest gentleness, said to him: 'My son, you are in the disgrace of our God, go make a good confession, because your death is near.' The young man began to laugh at this advice, and mocked the one who gave it; but the unfortunate man died shortly after, and died impenitent. Another warning of the same kind had better success for a man of a certain age; Benedict, having accosted him, said to him: 'My brother, cast away the thought you have, it is a temptation of the devil.' At this unexpected exhortation, the culprit remained stunned and confused, and he cast from his heart the criminal project he was harboring to abandon his spouse. Benedict was also the object of a favor that God seems to have reserved for our times, in order to better confound incredulity by this most inexplicable of all miracles. He was often seen in several different places, at exactly the same hour.

Thus, while he was locked in the hospice for the poor, where he slept during the last years of his life, and from which one could not be absent, he was seen and observed by several witnesses, in adoration in his ordinary and ecstatic posture, at different hours of the night, and until after midnight, before the Blessed Sacrament exposed for perpetual adoration. While he was locked in the same hospice, he was seen on Christmas night, in 1782, attending, in the church of Notre-Dame des Monts, Matins, the midnight mass, and all the rest of the ceremony, until the kissing of the feet of the holy Infant Jesus. Admitted into the intimacy of the eternal King, it was very difficult for him not to have a share in some of His secrets, such as the knowledge of the future. He knew in advance his approaching death, the place of his burial, the tributes that would be rendered to him after his death, the religious who were to work on it: he knew the misfortunes that were to descend upon France, in '93, and made a host of other predictions that would be too long to report, and which were justified by the event.

However, a profound sorrow devoured Labre's heart, and was to hasten his end. This lover of God, so insensitive to his own sufferings, felt all the insults that the 18th century vomited against his divine Friend. Never had men appeared more relentless against God. Every day the mass of impious books, blasphemies, and apostasies kept growing. The horizon of this wretched century was becoming so charged with impiety that the divine wrath, challenged for sixty years, was finally about to break out in a terrifying storm. Labre, through his austerities and prayers, held back the arm of God as much as he could; but this avenging arm was becoming heavier and heavier, and Labre's strength was waning. Every blow that struck God also struck him. He experienced the hideous torture of seeing his Father, his Friend, his Spouse mistreated, trampled underfoot; and by whom? By his brothers, by ungrateful brothers, whom he nevertheless loved because they were, like him, children of the same Father, and because he saw them all streaming with the blood that their salvation had cost. He would have liked to avenge this divine Victim, but the executioners also occupied a large place in his heart, and he knew only how to pray for them instead of cursing them. In these torments, his heart was breaking. How many times did he not confess this to Mr. Marconi? "My Father," he would say, "this pain is killing me."

This precious death was not revealed only to our Saint. A religious woman of holy life knew "that a flower was about to be plucked from the garden of D. Paul Mancini." She meant the hospice where the Blessed one spent his nights. On the other hand, the child of the Sari couple, who were expecting the servant of God at Loreto for his annual pilgrimage, repeated to them more than once: "Do not wait for him, Benedict is dead; Benedict has gone to paradise, my heart tells me so."

On Good Friday, he went to confession for the last time: "Hardly had he knelt down when he began to weep," said his confessor; "two streams of tears fell from his eyes peacefully and without sighs or sobs. As usual, I found no matter for absolution. I saw, moreover, that since his last confession, not the slightest temptation had disturbed his interior, which was all at peace, serene and tranquil. This showed me that he had reached the noon of the beautiful light. Such a star no longer belongs to the earth: it is in heaven, it is in eternal glory that it must shine." Indeed, on Holy Wednesday, April 16, 1783, Benedict made, as usual, a long and fervent prayer, when in the morning, around eight o'clock, he was struck by a mortal fainting spell. He was seen lying, as if deprived of sense and strength, on the exterior steps of Our Lady of the Mountains, his favorite church. People rushed to help him, and they gave him a glass of water, for he had asked for it. He took it in his hand, offered it devoutly to the Lord, with ardent sighs, his eyes raised to heaven; then, having drunk, he again raised his dying eyelids and his two hands, giving thanks as if he had received the greatest relief. This edifying trait made the witness who recounted it shed tears. His weakness was so great that he could not be lifted; several people charitably offered him their house to receive him; he thanked them all with humility. François Zaccarelli, a butcher in the Monti, opposite the Corsican soldiers ' barracks, a short François Zaccarelli Roman butcher who hosted the saint for his final moments. distance from the church, came forward. He was a good man, fond of the servant of God. He said to him: "Benedict, you are ill, you must be cared for; do you want to come to the house?" The dying man opened his eyes, fixed them on François, and replied: "To your house? Yes, I am willing to go there." He was immediately transported there and laid fully clothed on a bed, being told to let himself be cared for out of obedience. They tried to revive him by having him take something; but he soon lost consciousness; and in the evening, while the Litanies were being recited near him, at the words: *Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis*, his face took on the whiteness of milk, and he ceased to breathe. These were the only two signs by which one noticed that he had just fallen asleep in the Lord. At the age of thirty-five years and twenty-one days, as we have just said, his soul flew into the bosom of God, toward Mary, his good Mother, at the moment when they were invoking for him her holy Name, which he had had continually on his lips during his life; and, by a no less happy coincidence, the bells of Saint Mary Major seemed also to invoke this holy Name between heaven and earth, by giving the signal for the *Salve Regina*, ordered by the Holy Father to implore the powerful Mother of God in the needs of the Church. Father Ange closed the mouth and eyes of him who would have been worthy to receive this service from the hand of an angel. It was then that in the street, the children, pushed by a superior force, made it heard: "The Saint is dead! The Saint is dead!" They began again the next morning in the same street and on the square of Our Lady of the Mountains. To the cries of the children, the voices and actions of the entire people in Rome were not slow to join. Everyone said with the confessor of the deceased: "Happy penance, which, without a doubt, carried him in a flight to eternal glory!" At the news that a poor man of holy life had died, some added: "Without a doubt, it is the poor man of the Forty Hours!" (a name given to him because he was seen prostrate, with the face of a cherub, before the Blessed Sacrament exposed for the Forty Hours). Others: "Saint Alexis is dead! The holy poor man is dead!" Everyone ran toward Zaccarelli's dwelling to see the new Saint: toward the middle of the day, the crowd increased to such a point that it was necessary to place soldiers at the outer door and at that of the room to contain the crowd, where bourgeois, military, nobles, religious, and priests were mingled. All of Rome, pushed by a movement from above, came to kneel in this room which had become a sanctuary. This earthly envelope, which the soul of the Blessed one had treated like an old torn sack, God willed that it be already honored, while waiting for it to change on the day of the resurrection into a garment of glory. People had rosaries touched to it, they kissed the feet and hands with respect, they could not get enough of seeing this glorious corpse, which was not cold, and those limbs which retained their elasticity. Several testified that they had wanted to recite the *De profundis*, and that, by an insurmountable repugnance, they had either replaced it or ended it with the *Gloria Patri*, instead of the *Requiem*. The veneration and the crowd redoubled when the holy Poor man was exposed in the church of Our Lady of the Mountains. Despite the vigilance to prevent pious thefts, it was not possible to prevent them all, and, to remedy inevitable irreverences, it was necessary not only to transport the Blessed Sacrament to the oratory of the neighboring college, but to defer the solemn exposition of the Forty Hours, which took place this time in the church of Saint-Quirice. Thus, all of Rome was witness to the fulfillment of the prediction that Benedict had made eight months earlier, with tears in his eyes and sobbing, to his confessor: "that people would hasten to vie with one another to venerate him; that they would render him extraordinary honors; that the Most Holy Sacrament would be removed from the church and that in its place a multitude of people would come to venerate him himself."

His funeral was a kind of triumph, not only because of the earthly pomp with which the Poor man was surrounded, but also by a reflection of the glory that his soul enjoyed in heaven, and which God wanted to make shine upon his coffin; I mean that the miracles had begun. Thus, on the way through the church, which continued to be filled with people, a paralyzed man touched the coffin and was completely healed. The crowd began to shout: Grace! Miracle! And it was to the sound of these acclamations that the precious remains were placed in a separate tomb, at the church of Our Lady of the Mountains. An authentic act was placed in the coffin containing this magnificent eulogy:

"Benedict-Joseph gave in all places striking examples of Christian virtues; he shone by the evangelical poverty practiced in the last perfection, living miserably on spontaneously offered alms, of which he kept a small part for himself, giving the rest to the poor. He edified, by his profound humility, his very high contempt for the world and for himself; by the rigors of penance, his continual prayer; he gave the edifying example of the daily stay in the churches of the city, from sunrise to sunset. Distinguished in the exercise of all other virtues, lovable and dear to all, despite his disgusting rags, he forgot himself and applied himself solely to pleasing God." The same slab on which he had so often knelt during his life covered his tomb.

Devotion to this new Saint, his relics, and his images soon spread throughout the entire Church. Pius VI began the first legal acts tending toward his beatification; Pius VII continued them, Gregory XVI completed them, and Pius IX procl Pie IX Pope who canonized Josaphat in 1867. aimed the glorious result in 1860.

Monsignor Parisis, Bishop of Arras, brought back from Rome that same year a portion of the Blessed's head, which he placed in his cathedral. Splendid festivities were celebrated on July 15, 16, and 17, on the occasion of the beatification and the reception of this distinguished relic.

Some of his relics are kept at the Sacred Heart and the Ursulines of Amiens, as well as at the church of Le Forêt, where a solemn translation took place on May 15, 1864. In Lihons, in the diocese of Amiens, the house where he received hospitality when he went to visit the relics of the priory is shown. Between Monchy-l'Agache and Douvieux, a cross bears the name of Benoît Labre because, according to tradition, this holy personage remained there for a long time in prayer while he was on a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Liesse and the church of Saint-Quentin.

Taken from his life, written by the Rev. Fr. Desonyers, missionary of the Society of the Precious Blood.