St. Felix Cantalice, a Capuchin friar was so intimately united to God, that even in the world, when he went for alms, nothing could distract him.
Newsroom (05/21/2023 17:15, Gaudium Press) My God, I love little Felix, so pious since his early childhood, that from then on he was given the name of saint. I love this little shepherd, carving a cross in the bark of a tree and praying in front of it for hours on end.
He first recited with fervor the Sunday Prayer, the Angel’s Greeting, the Symbol of the Apostles, the Gloria Patri, and other well-known prayers. But soon, God granted him the grace of contemplation, and all his thoughts became prayers.
A hard-working young man, he meditated while working: everything he saw, everything he heard aroused his pious affections. But nothing touched him more tenderly than the memory of the sufferings of Jesus Christ. To his deep humility, he added an unchangeable joy, gentleness and charity towards others. When someone insulted him, he was in the habit of answering: “May God make you a saint”. Such was young Felix. My God, could I be like this little shepherd boy!
Saint Felix enters the Capuchin Order
However, this little worker believed that he was not doing enough. He went to a Capuchin friary in 1540 and asked to be received as a converted brother. The superior gave him the habit and showed him a crucifix, then explained to him what the Savior had suffered, telling him how a religious should imitate this divine model by a life of renunciation and humiliation.
Felix, moved to tears, felt animated by a burning desire to imprint on himself the traces of the sufferings of Jesus Christ, by mortification, the old man with all his desires.
During the novitiate, he already seemed to have grasped the spirit of his order, which was a spirit of poverty, penance and humility. He often threw himself at the feet of the master of novices, to ask him to double his mortifications, and to treat him with greater rigor than the others, who seemed more docile than he and more devoted to virtue. By this deep contempt for himself, he soon reached an eminent perfection.
All creatures serve to elevate us to God
Felix was so intimately united to God, that even in the world, when he went for alms, nothing could distract him. One day a brother asked him how he could remain in such perfect recollection, and he received the following answer: “All creatures serve to elevate us to God, when we look at them through this prism. Let us take the word of a saint, and put it saintly into practice.
If the sight of creatures takes us away from God, it is because we have not yet looked at them through the good prism, with the eyes of faith, but with the eyes of the flesh. Let us purify our intentions and affections well, and let us accustom ourselves, like the saints, to see all things in God, and God in all things.
Compiled by Teresa Joseph
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