The sunny valley of Rieti in Italy was the birthplace of St. Felix, the first saint of the Capuchin Order. As a boy he fended cattle and often spent hours before a crude cross he had cut in a tree. Though he never went to school, he very early learned the art of meditating, especially on the Passion.
After working as a farm laborer for a wealthy landowner for seventeen years, he felt himself called to a hermit’s life, but an accident determined a different course. He was plowing with a team of young and unruly oxen, when something startled them so that they ran Felix down, trampled on him, and dragged the sharp plowshare over him.
He rose unharmed, however, and in gratitude for what he regarded as a miracle, he applied for admission at the Capuchin friary of Citta Ducale. As a novice he stood out among the others for his love of poverty, humiliations, and crosses, so that everyone, like the children of his native Cantalice, called him II Santo—”The Saint.”
Four years after his profession he was sent to Rome, where for forty years he performed the arduous task of questor, going from street to street and door to door, begging food for his community. For every gift, as well as for every rebuff and jibe, he had a hearty Deo gratias.’—-”Thanks be to God!”
After a while the children greeted him everywhere as “Brother Deo Gratias.” Whenever he and that great lover of children, St. Philip Neri, met in the street, they would embrace affectionately and as a greeting wish each other sufferings for Christ’s sake. Felix delighted in giving alms to the poor, visiting and tending the sick, and assisting the dying in the city’s hospitals. Despite his fatiguing work he practiced almost incredible austerities.
He loved to serve Mass, but at times was so transported that he missed the responses. He had a most childlike love for Mary, before whose altar he passed many hours at night. On one occasion, to his great joy, Mary laid the Child Jesus in his arms to be fondled and caressed. It was Mary, too, who appeared to him with a host of angels when he was dying and beckoned him to follow her.