800 Years of St. Francis · Day 8 of 31 · Thursday, October 8, 2026
Sometime around 1205, a young man who no longer knew what to do with his life wandered into a small, crumbling chapel below Assisi called San Damiano. Above the altar hung a painted Byzantine crucifix. Francis knelt, and he heard Christ speak from it: “Francis, go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruin.”
I have spent the last few years at a retreat center that carries that chapel’s name, on a hillside in California about six thousand miles from Assisi. People arrive here carrying all sorts of things: grief, exhaustion, a marriage under strain, a career that has quietly stopped fitting. Very few of them would say they came because something was falling into ruin. But many of them, by the end of their stay, find the words.
What strikes me about the San Damiano moment is how ordinary the setting was. It was not a cathedral or a mountaintop, just a neglected building that everyone else had stopped noticing. The call came from the place nobody was looking; but Francis.
Notice today: What in your life, or around you, is quietly asking to be repaired?
The call usually comes from the place nobody else is looking.
At San Damiano: The retreat center that carries the chapel’s name welcomes visitors for a day of quiet or a personal retreat of a few nights. sandamiano.org/personal-retreats
Day 8 of 31 · 800 Years of St. Francis: A Daily October Companion · spiritualbreak.com
Reflection © 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS.
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