The spirituality of the “Piccola Famiglia dell’Esodo” (Little Family of the Exodus) is born from and rooted in the Word of God. It is inspired by the concrete experience of humble, but great Gospel witness, Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, the saint who prayed “in the likeness of the road” (A. Louf). We think some biographical notes of this Saint are the best premise to the few pages that will follow. Indeed, we believe this may enlighten some of the choices made by the Community in the beginning of its still young path, to which it intends to keep faithful.

Benedetto Giuseppe Labre was born at Amettes (France) on 26th May 1748 and died in Rome on 16th April 1783. He felt strongest desire for consecration in silence and hiding. This lead him to seek reception into Trapps and Carthusian monasteries, that did not accept him.

The very desire to enter the Trapp lead him to Italy, where he discovered, in pains and poverty that killed him still young, his true vocation: the road. Endless walk it means, self-deprivation, silent testimony in prayer, search for God One and Trine. His life teaches that prayer is to give oneself up, in greater and greater poverty, in stronger and stronger love. In him one experiences (again we quote Louf, a deep knower of the Saint) “a depth of poverty and inner giving-up which every external poverty is only a weak recall of”.

This God’s witness wandered therefore from Sanctuary to Sanctuary, from nation to nation: Lyon, Loreto, Rome, Bari, Naples, Compostela, Chambery, then again Loreto and Rome, where he fell onto the road dying. At his very last moments, a devout took him and laid him down in his own bed.