The rule of St. Benedict for daily life, learning to listen to God with a discerning heart.

I'm Chris McGregor.

Fidelity in the Ordinary, Episode 45.

We now turn to St. Francis of Rome, a wife, mother, widow, and Benedict

Anamblite. St. Francis didn't live apart from responsibility. She lived in the middle of it,

married young into a noble Roman household. She served her family, endured illness,

suffered the loss of children, cared for the poor,

and later gathered women into an obloid community

linked to the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Noahva.

That matters because her holiness didn't grow

in quieter circumstances.

It grew in a life that was often interrupted, demanding, and heavy.

Yet her prayer wasn't pushed aside by those realities.

It was carried within them.

St. Francis became a witness that Benedictine Fidelity can take root not only in cloister,

but also in household life, grief, service, and the long duties love requires.

What she shows is not a lesser path. It is a very searching one. She teaches that God isn't found

only in the moments we set apart for him.

He is also found in the duties we'd rather escape, in the people entrusted to us, and in the work

love asks us to do. From St. Francis of Rome, a married woman must leave god at the altar to find him in her domestic cares st francis understood

something essential fidelity is improved by stepping away from ordinary life but but by remaining present to it. She didn't

romanticize her responsibilities, and she didn't treat them as obstacles to holiness. She received

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