My life walking with Saint Francis of Assisi is not a short pilgrimage. It is not a season, nor a chapter. It is, in truth, a long road—stretching now across sixty-six years—quietly unfolding, step by step, often without my even realizing that I was already on it.

The journey did not begin with a grand calling, nor with a moment of thunder or vision. It began simply, almost humbly, as many true vocations do: in childhood.

I was a Wolf Cub.

In those early days within the Catholic Scouts of Canada, I was introduced to a figure who would remain with me for the rest of my life. Not as an abstract saint in stained glass, but as a living story—warm, vivid, and unforgettable. Saint Francis of Assisi was presented to us as the patron of Cub Scouts, a friend to the small, the young, and the searching.

And then there was the story.

For Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, read in here