The Sanctum Dispatch — Special Send
The Fast That Ended with Christ's Mark on Francis
It steps off Saturday — forty days to Michaelmas. The cohort marches together.
Brother,
In August of 1224, Francis of Assisi — frail, in a patched habit — climbed Mount La Verna in Tuscany and disappeared into the trees. He had come to keep a fast — forty days set aside for St. Michael the Archangel, from the Assumption of Our Lady to Michaelmas. His health was breaking. His eyes were failing him. He had every excuse the world would honor to eat, to rest, to come down the mountain. He stayed. And the traditional account handed down by his earliest biographers holds that during that fast — near the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross — Francis received the wounds of Christ in his own flesh. The wounds did not come to a man at full strength. They came to a man who had emptied his hands so grace could fill them.
That fast has a name: St. Michael's Lent. The Church requires it of no one — it is a traditional devotion, kept freely for centuries by men who wanted more than the minimum.
This year, we keep it together. The cohort steps off Saturday, August 15 — the Solemnity of the Assumption — and marches forty days to Michaelmas, September 29.
The Campaign, one of the eight tools inside the Brotherhood Pass, walks it with you day by day: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving — all three arms of penance the Church names (CCC 1434), not white-knuckled food rules alone. Sundays and solemnities lift automatically, because that is how a Lent works. A missed day gets honesty, not shame — the just man falls seven times and rises again (Proverbs 24:16). And the whole campaign runs on grace, not willpower: the fast clears the ground; repentance and the confessional do the building.
The Pass is the armory: $8.99 a month. Eight formation tools. One tier. Cancel anytime.
Enlist for St. Michael's Lent:
https://1765sanctumco.com/brotherhood-pass/
Not ready to enlist? The Field Guide and this Dispatch remain free — and always will. No paywall ever stands between a man and conversion.
But August 15 does not wait. The mountain is there. Climb it with us.
Altar. Arms. Allegiance.
— The Sanctum Dispatch
P.S. — Are you marching on the 15th? Hit reply and tell me. I read every reply, personally.
For God. For country. For the fight.
In Christ and Our Lady,
Will
Founder, 1765 Sanctum Co.