A Common Calling To Care

St. Louis King of France with a Page, El Greco

 Two men quite unlike each other, both saints, and both revered for similar reasons: Their concrete love for the poor. In the mid-13th century, Saint Louis (1214–1270) embraced the way of Saint Francis of Assisi and cared for the poor even as King Louis IX of France. It is said that Louis had over 100 guests from among the poor to eat with him daily. He also established hospitals and houses of healing for lepers and the sick. Saint Joseph Calasanz (1557–1648) in the mid-16th century saw that the need to educate poor children was so important that he gave up a career in church law and politics. You can’t read of these lives without thinking of how simple true Christianity is: To care for the poor, the hungry, the forgotten.

The Last Communion of St Joseph Calasanz, by Goya (1819)