800 Years of St. Francis · Day 2 of 31 · Friday, October 2, 2026
In his last days, Francis asked to be carried down from the bishop’s palace in Assisi to the Portiuncula, the tiny chapel on the plain where his brotherhood began. Tradition says that partway down he asked the brothers to stop and turn him around. Nearly blind, he faced the city he had once scandalized and blessed it.
I have walked those roads with pilgrims. Some were walking them for the first time, and others were, as I once wrote, “repeat offenders.” What strikes me every time is how small Assisi really is. Everything that mattered happened within a few miles: the square, the chapel, the road where he met the leper, the hut where he wrote the Canticle. A whole life of holiness fits inside a long afternoon’s walk.
Our lives are like that too. The places that shaped us are rarely far away. Often, they are the ones we drive past without looking. Before he went home, Francis turned around. He didn’t curse the town, and he didn’t simply leave it. He blessed it.
Notice today: Which place in your life, perhaps a difficult one, would you turn around to bless?
It is in the sacred spaces within that the real work begins, one Assisi inch at a time.
At San Damiano: Blessing of the Animals, tomorrow, Saturday, October 3, 1:00 – 2:30 pm. Bring your dog, your cat, or your goldfish. Details
Day 2 of 31 · 800 Years of St. Francis: A Daily October Companion · spiritualbreak.com
Reflection © 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS.
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