Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi, Italian San Francesco d’Assisi, baptizedGiovanni, renamedFrancesco, in full Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone, (born 1181/82, in Assisi, duchy of Spoleto [Italy] - died October 3, 1226, in Assisi; canonized July 16, 1228; feast day October 4), founder of the Franciscan orders of the Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), the women’s Order of St. Clare (the Poor Clares) and the lay Third Order. He was also a leader of the movement of evangelical poverty in the early 13th century. His evangelical zeal, consecration to poverty, charity and personal charisma drew thousands of followers. Francis’s devotion to the human Jesus and his desire to follow Jesus’ example reflected and reinforced important developments in medieval spirituality. The Poverello (“Poor Little Man”) is one of the most venerated religious figures in Roman Catholic history, and he and St. Catherine of Siena are the patron saint of Italy. In 1979 Saint John Paul II recognized him as the patron saint of ecology.
A Saint is unequal to a Saint
A Saint is unequal to a Saint. Many saints used to be loud, and today they are not heard of. Francis has been fascinating for eight centuries. Pilgrims still travel to Assisi. I have not met a person who was not captivated by the places of Francis. Narrow streets of a medieval town; Portiuncula - a small chapel around which the first brothers lived; a crucifix from which Jesus cried out: "Francis, rebuild my house"; thornless roses; hair of St. Clare, cut by Francis himself; the habit or rather the sackcloth in which he walked; the church of San Damiano, where Clare and the first sisters lived. The confrontation of ideas with reality usually bring disappointment. It is different in Assisi. Everything is as it should be there.
I remember two movies about the Saint. One film, a bit hippie, shows Francis in bright blue colors as a madman of God, full of life, joy, cheerfulness and enthusiasm. The second movie is quite different. Dark, gloomy, depicting the medieval poverty. Francis is shown there as a man full of inner struggle, dilemma, and suffering. Which picture is closer to the truth? I think that both show only a part of the truth and only when put together give a fuller picture, although still far from the truth.
There were opposites in Francis' life: radicalism and gentleness; poetry and prose of life; deep joy and equally deep suffering; love for the world and its rejection; fascination with Christmas and the stigmas of the Crucified, obedience to the Church and its criticism. His holiness is thoroughly evangelical, it shimmers with many colors. And that's probably why each epoch brings out something different from his life. In the last century, Francis was proclaimed the patron saint of ecologists because of his love of creation. Will the twenty-first century also find something for itself?
My suggestion would follow that path. Francis rebelled against his parents. Not because they were merchants, they were rich. It was a rebellion against their mercantile mentality, which reduces everything and everyone (even their own children!) to the category of profit and loss. He was not looking for poverty. He was looking for wealth that money could not buy. He found that truth is much more present below than above, in the absence of, than in the fullness. He made a career by going consistently down the road. There, at the bottom, he found himself and God. We need such careers very, very much today.
Francis of Assisi did not want to found a congregation, he only wanted to follow Christ. Totally, uncompromisingly, with the fervor of an evangelical fundamentalist. This flame does not go out. Today, not only Latin Catholics gather under the Franciscan banner. Inspiration by St. Francis is alive among groups of Anglicans, Protestants, lay people not connected with any confession. At the United Nation Organization operates a Franciscan International Group with the status of a consultative Non-Government Organization; works in line with Franciscan values. They have respect for human dignity, care for the rights of the poor, fair management of resources, protection of the natural environment, and peaceful coexistence of nations. Of course, Francis himself did not use such a language. Would he find his place in our time when the question of poverty is primarily a political rather than a theological affair? Giving the poor his elegant mantle, he did so in the name of Jesus' teachings, not as part of a class struggle or neoliberal dispute with alter globalists. But he would probably be proud that after eight hundred years the community in his name has 18,000 people. men and women and cover the whole world. Without the story of Francis, it is difficult to talk about the Latin Church, the spiritual history of the West, not only religious but also artistic. In the common understanding Francis of Assisi is very close to the ideal of a Christian. People venerate Francis for his simplicity, for loving God's world as it is, even with suffering, evil and death.
The crucifix fascinated him to the end. And that also meant a fascination with suffering and death. Francis wanted to follow Christ not only in poverty but also in his passion. His obsession somehow humanized mass religiosity, because it showed the similarity of Christ's experiences on the cross to the sufferings of people.
In the last years of his life, Francis, sick and blind, is above all a mystic and a visionary. The apogee comes in 1224. After a 40-day fast, Francis in La Verna (Alverna) in the Apennines received the stigmata. There werefive non-healing wounds on his body, where the wounds of Christ hanging on the cross were. For believers, it is almost a sure sign of Francis' holiness. He died before fifty, in 1226, and was canonized just two years later.
He did not renounce radicalism but remained loyal to the Church and the papacy. The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope fits the story. It is consistent with the role of St. Francis as the restorer of Latin Christianity within Catholic orthodoxy. The Church absorbed and tamed the movement of Francis of Assisi but did not completely remove the tension between the idea of poverty in the service of God and the splendor of the papal court, episcopal palaces and our houses. This tension has now been brought to the Vatican by Pope Francis himself. From the beginning of his pontificate, like the saint of Assisi, the pope is not in open war with the rich Church, but he wants that the poor Church will remain our love and our message.
“We turn to you, Francis, and we ask you: Teach us to be “instruments of peace”, of that peace which has its source in God, the peace which Jesus has brought us. (…) We turn to you, Francis, and we ask you: Obtain for us God’s gift of harmony, peace and respect for creation!” (Pope Francis, Homily, Assis, October 04, 2013)
Until Tomorrow
fr. george