Peter Crisci was born in Italy sometime in the 13th Century to wealthy parents. He spent the first 30 years of his life chasing every kind of sin and vice, and then his parents died and he inherited all their money. But when considering his parents’ death, Peter was struck with an incredible emptiness that resulted in his miraculous conversion. He sold everything he had and gave all his money to the poor, then he tried unsuccessfully to sell himself into slavery so he would have more money to give away. Peter turned into an urban hermit for the next 50 years. He wore sackcloth, lived in the bell tower of the cathedral, and slept on its steps. He would pray while staring directly into the sun and made barefoot pilgrimages to Rome and Assisi.
CHALLENGE
Townspeople thought that St. Peter Crisci was a madman, calling him a “holy idiot” and a “fool for Christ”, but he was just extreme in his penance. Catholics have a lot of things that people ridicule: relics, Purgatory, the Rosary, and the veneration of saints to name a few. Are you a so-called “fool for Christ”? Today, be boldly open about some “crazy” aspect of your Catholic faith.
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