We didn’t know we were preserving a culture—we were just living it
When My Heart Was Ready, but My Body Was Still Catching Up
Sometimes we finally reach the place we have prayed to see, only to discover that arriving and being fully present are not the same thing.
Of all the places on our pilgrimage itinerary, Assisi may have been the one I anticipated most.
I have long felt a special devotion to St. Francis of Assisi. His simplicity, tenderness toward creation, concern for the poor, and willingness to surrender the life expected of him for the life God called him to live have always moved me.
Francis also reminds me of my grandfather, Papa T’fra.
Papa loved animals and carried the same kind of gentle appreciation for life that I associate with St. Francis. Over time, the two became connected in my heart. Going to Assisi felt as though it should have been one of the clearest, most meaningful, and most emotional days of the pilgrimage.
Instead, it is the day I remember least.
That truth still makes me sad.
After the canceled flights, the unexpected night in Dallas, the international crossing, the time change, and the long bus ride from Rome, my body was still trying to catch up with my spirit.
I had traveled across an ocean to walk where Francis lived, prayed, struggled, and began a religious movement that would influence the world.
But I was exhausted.
When I look through my photographs, I can see where I stood. I see the churches, stone walls, artwork, and people who surrounded me. Yet many of the memories feel as though I am looking at them through fog.
For a while, I felt disappointed in myself.
Then I began to wonder whether this too was part of the pilgrimage.
Perhaps Assisi’s first lesson for me was humility: accepting that I could not force myself to experience a holy place perfectly simply because I had wanted it so badly.
Something Great Built Around Something Small
Our journey into the world of St. Francis began at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels, which stands on the plain below the hill town of Assisi.
The basilica is enormous, but the spiritual heart of it is remarkably small: the Porziuncola.
The name means “little portion.”
This tiny chapel is closely connected to the beginnings of Franciscan life. Francis and his early companions gathered and prayed there, and the site became the heart of the community that eventually grew into the Order of Friars Minor. The grand basilica was later constructed around the chapel to preserve it.
Even through my exhaustion, that contrast stayed with me.
A vast basilica built around a tiny chapel.
Grandeur sheltering simplicity.
The world created something monumental around a man who had chosen humility, poverty, and very little for himself.
Photography was not permitted inside, so I do not have an image to awaken the memory. What remains is an impression of the little chapel standing quietly within all that magnificence, holding the story of a beginning.
I thought about Francis praying there; not Francis as a statue, icon, or beloved saint surrounded by animals and birds, but Francis the man.
A person trying to understand what God wanted from him.
A person who did not begin with a fully formed mission or any idea of what his choices would eventually create.
He began with a small place, a restless heart, and a willingness to keep listening.
Perhaps that is what makes the Porziuncola so powerful. It reminds us that purpose does not always announce itself through something large.
Sometimes it begins with the small portion we have been given and our willingness to care for it faithfully.
The Rose Garden and the Quiet Places
Near the Porziuncola are places associated with Francis’s private prayer and spiritual struggles, including the rose garden and the Chapel of the Roses.
Tradition connects the garden with Francis’s struggle against temptation. The roses are known for growing without thorns, while the nearby chapel preserves the intimacy and prayerfulness associated with his life.
I remember this area more clearly.
The Chapel of the Roses was peaceful and simply beautiful.
Some spaces impress us because of their size and decoration. Others settle something inside us because they ask nothing from us. They do not demand to be interpreted, photographed, or fully understood. They simply invite us to become quiet.
That is how I remember the chapel.
Even in my fatigue, some part of me recognized the peace there.
Perhaps that was the grace of it. I did not need to produce a profound spiritual reaction. I did not need to remember every detail. I only needed to stand within the quiet for a little while.
Francis was not shaped only by grand moments. His life was formed in small chapels, lonely places, uncomfortable questions, and repeated acts of surrender.
That feels much closer to how most of us actually grow.
Faith Written Across the Walls
The Basilica of St. Francis is built on two principal levels, with the saint’s tomb located below in the crypt. Construction began shortly after his death, and the basilica became both his burial place and one of the great spiritual and artistic monuments of medieval Christianity.
Its upper and lower churches contain extensive frescoes depicting the story of Francis’s life and faith.
I wish I could say that every image remains vivid in my memory.
It does not.
I know we saw possessions connected to Francis. I know the frescoes surrounded us with the story of his life. I know we celebrated Mass inside the basilica.
But when I reach for those memories, they return only in fragments:
Stone. Color. Movement. The awareness that I was walking through a place built to preserve the witness of a man I had admired for years.
I have had to accept that the photographs remember more than I do.
Still, perhaps the meaning was working beneath the surface, beyond what I could consciously retain.
Francis’s spirituality was never about collecting or possessing experiences. It was about surrendering the need to possess anything at all.
Maybe I do not need to remember every detail of Assisi perfectly for Assisi to have left something within me.
St. Clare and the Company We Keep
We also visited the Basilica of St. Clare (Basilica di Santa Chiara), where the remains of Clare of Assisi are preserved and also the home of the original San Damiano Cross, which St. Francis was praying in front of when he received the direction from God telling him to “go and repair My house.”
Clare was not simply someone who admired Francis from a distance. She was his friend, spiritual companion, and a founder in her own right. Inspired by the Gospel life Francis embraced, she established the community that became known as the Poor Clares and fought to preserve their commitment to radical poverty.
Thinking about the friendship between Francis and Clare touched me.
We often imagine saints as isolated figures, each standing alone in a beam of holy light. Yet many holy lives were shaped through relationships.
Francis had Clare.
Later in the pilgrimage, I would stand near the tombs of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, a brother and sister whose spiritual friendship shaped both their lives.
Again and again, I noticed the same pattern.
Saints knew other saints.
They prayed together, challenged one another, offered encouragement, and helped each other remain faithful.
It reinforced something I have heard throughout my life: we are influenced by the company we keep.
“You are what you associate with” can sound like a warning. In Assisi, it began to feel more like an invitation.
Choose people who call you toward your better self.
Choose people whose faith strengthens yours.
Choose companions who can recognize who God is asking you to become, even before you completely understand it yourself.
Francis and Clare did not lose their individuality through their friendship. They helped each other become more fully who they were called to be.
SN: In visiting her resting place, I remember seeing her mortal remains and feeling a sense of peace in the space. I was a little surprised, and honestly a little disappointed in myself, that my first thought was how strange it felt not to be unsettled while standing in the same room as the earthly remains of Saint Clare. Perhaps I had expected something darker or more uncomfortable. Instead, the room felt peaceful, sacred, and far more intimate than I was prepared for. A beautiful and unexpected experience.
The Young Face That Broke Through the Fog
The moment I remember most clearly from Assisi did not involve a medieval fresco, ancient relic, or grand basilica.
It involved the face of a boy.
At the Sanctuary of the Renunciation rests the body of St. Carlo Acutis, who had asked to be buried in Assisi because of his devotion to St. Francis.
Carlo died from leukemia in 2006 at only fifteen years old. He became known throughout the Catholic world for combining the ordinary life of a modern teenager with a deep devotion to the Eucharist. He also used technology to document Eucharistic miracles.
When I saw him, he looked like a young boy sleeping.
That is what reached me.
Not the formal language of sainthood. Not the unusual experience of standing before the body of someone recognized by the Church.
It was his hair.
Beautiful, thick hair.
It reminded me immediately of Drew.
Suddenly, Carlo was no longer simply an inspiring young Catholic whose story I had heard.
He was somebody’s child.
Somebody’s brother.
A boy who had laughed, eaten dinner with his family, used a computer, worried the people who loved him, and left an unbearable emptiness behind when he died.
Looking at him, I thought about how deeply I love Drew. Then I thought about the pain Carlo’s parents, siblings, relatives, and friends must have experienced.
We often tell the stories of saints through the meaning their lives hold for the Church. We speak of miracles, devotion, sacrifice, holiness, and witness.
But somebody still had to lose them.
Somebody had to leave the hospital without that child.
Somebody had to walk past his room afterward.
Somebody had to decide, again and again, to share his story with strangers.
Standing there, I wondered what it costs a family to give a child’s memory to the world.
What does it feel like to know that thousands of people pray beside your son’s tomb? What does it mean to hear strangers call him a saint while you still remember the sound of his voice at home?
There must be pride and gratitude.
There must also be grief.
Those things are not enemies.
A person can believe deeply in eternal life and still ache for the physical presence of someone they love. A family can understand that their child belongs to God and still long to hold him again.
That moment taught me something I had not expected to learn in Assisi:
Sainthood does not erase humanity.
It reveals just how sacred an ordinary human life can become.
The Devotion Required to Share Someone You Love
The longer I stood with those feelings, the more I thought about Carlo’s family.
There must be extraordinary devotion involved in sharing someone you love with the world after death—to allow strangers to look upon the face that once belonged to your private family life and hear them describe what your son, brother, or friend means to their faith.
His story now travels far beyond the home that first held him.
I do not know exactly what Carlo’s family feels, and I would never presume to speak for them.
But as an aunt looking at a boy whose hair reminded me of Drew, I felt the smallest shadow of what such a loss might mean.
That is the memory that survived my exhaustion.
Love made it through the fog.
When the Memory Is Not What You Hoped
I still wish I remembered more of Assisi.
I wish the basilicas were vivid. I wish I could reconstruct the Mass, frescoes, streets, and prayers with complete clarity.
Part of me still feels guilty that the place I had anticipated so deeply became the least distinct part of the pilgrimage.
But perhaps faith is not measured by the sharpness of our memories.
I was there—tired, imperfect, and trying to receive whatever I could.
I stood in places where Francis prayed. I entered the little chapel at the heart of the Franciscan movement. I felt the peace surrounding Clare. I saw a modern saint who looked enough like a child I love to break my heart open.
Maybe I did not fail to experience Assisi.
Maybe Assisi reached me through the one doorway I was still awake enough to open.
🇮🇹 Creole Chaos Count
😴 Hours of sleep still needed: Far more than the itinerary allowed
📸 Photographs now carrying many of the memories: Most of them
⛪ Sacred places visited: More than my tired mind could absorb
🌹 Quiet chapels that reached me anyway: At least one
🤍 Saints who reminded me of family: Francis, Clare, and especially Carlo
😭 Unexpected emotional moments: One young face was enough
🙏 Grace received: Through what I remembered—and what I had to release
🌿 What I’ll Carry Home
Assisi taught me that sacred experiences do not always reach us in the way we expect.
Sometimes we prepare our hearts, cross an ocean, and arrive too exhausted to take everything in. We may forget important details, miss the perfect photograph, or fail to feel the emotion we imagined we would feel.
That does not mean the journey was wasted.
Grace does not depend upon our perfect attention.
Sometimes it finds one image, one quiet room, or one human connection and uses that small opening to reach us.
For me, it was the sight of Carlo’s hair and the sudden thought of Drew.
Through that one tender connection, Assisi reminded me that holiness is not separate from love. It grows from love—love for God, love for family, love for our companions, and the courage to allow that love to extend beyond ourselves.
❤️ From Me to You
Perhaps you have had an experience you were certain would change you, only to leave wondering whether you were too tired, distracted, or overwhelmed to receive it properly.
Be gentle with yourself.
Not every sacred moment arrives with perfect clarity. Some experiences settle quietly beneath the surface and reveal their meaning later.
Sometimes the photograph remembers for us.
Sometimes the heart does.
And sometimes, long after the moment has passed, we realize grace was present even when we were too tired to recognize it.
One of the gifts of pilgrimage is discovering how much more there is to learn after we come home. I have shared Assisi here as I experienced it: imperfectly, emotionally, and through the haze of exhaustion. But the places and people woven through this day hold stories far larger than the pieces I was able to carry with me.
If something in this chapter stirred your curiosity, I hope you will follow it.
Learn more about the Porziuncola and the beginnings of the Franciscan movement. Explore the history and art of the Basilica of St. Francis. Spend some time getting to know St. Clare, the San Damiano Cross, and the friendship that helped shape both Clare and Francis. And if the young face of St. Carlo Acutis touched you the way it touched me, learn more about the ordinary teenager whose extraordinary faith continues to reach people around the world.
Perhaps that is another kind of pilgrimage: allowing one story to lead us toward another, one question toward deeper understanding, and one moment of curiosity toward a faith and history we did not know before.
Continue exploring:
Sometimes the journey does not end when we leave a place.
Sometimes that is simply where the learning begins.
✈️ Coming Next
Creole Chaos & Grace — Part Four:
Wandering Assisi
