FRANCIS OF ASSISI

The Saint for all seasons.  Feast day: 4^th.October

The son of Pietro di Bernadone, a wealthy cloth merchant of Assisi, and his wife, Pica, Francis became junior partner in the family business. His youth was marked by high living and a desire for social status. In 1202, in a war between Assisi, in a war between and neighbouring Perugia, Francis was taken prisoner. Released after a year’s confinement, he returned home, but began questioning his former values. He found himself increasingly drawn to a life of penance marked by intense periods of prayer, pilgrimages and almsgiving. Confirmed in these new directions by an encounter with a leper, he began to spend much of his time working among these social outcasts. All this provoked a conflict with his father, which finally reached a high point in 1206. Responding to a divine call to rebuild the ruined chapel of San Damiano, Francis sold some valuable cloth from the family store to raise money for the project. Brought to trial by his father, he renounced his patrimony in a dramatic scene before the bishop of Assisi. Living as a penitent hermit, Francis spent several years caring for lepers and repairing small chapels in the neighbourhood.

Francis of Assisi discovered in poverty a joyous communion with all creatures. Francis’ mystical intuition saw in the precariousness of our existence the loving self-gift of the Creator to which he and his companions responded with joy, wonder, praise and gratitude. They had no possessions and were expected to live lightly on the earth with no desire to dominate or to transform nature. In his “Canticle of the Creatures” about “Brother Sun, Wind and Fire, sister Moon and Stars, and sister Earth our mother who feeds us…”, his loving relationship with earth, wind and water resembles more closely the sentiments of India, China and the North American Indian tradition than the usual European approach to the natural world. The vast ocean or a rain forest or a desert points to the ultimate at the heart of the world which continuously calls us to a deeper communion with the earth and with God. All this makes for an eco-sensitivity within a holistic vision and integrated way of life. The call to love God and neighbor included, in Francis’ mind, all creation a in way that healed the split between God, man and nature. Francis of Assisi, the saint for all seasons, is especially relevant today and so is a felicitous choice as the patron of ecologists.

In the midst of his revelry in the glory and pageantry of earth and sky, of the beasts ad birds and flowers, he was suddenly told that he was going blind and that the remedy might well be worse than the disease – to cauterise his eyes with a red hot iron. The tortures of martyrdom which he envied in the saints and sought vainly in Syria could have been no worse. When they brought the brand close to his face, he rose urbanely and spoke as to a friendly presence: “Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful.  Pray you be courteous to me.” As simple as it was bizarre! The simple never take themselves too seriously, are light on their feet and sit easily to their possessions. G.K. Chesterton said, “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” Simple is the eye that sees the divine presence in creation and discerns the body of the Lord in the little and weak members of society  -  which is exactly what Francis did when he kissed the hand of the leper. By kissing the hand of a leper he embraced what he hated most, thereby gaining healing for his spirit. “Simple” is such an easy word to use that is has almost become debased currency. Yet it need not mean a sort of holy moron. Rather, it should mean someone who, possibly after great struggle, arrives at a candid unselfconscious security in faith. And this faith cannot fail to communicate itself to others to their enrichment. Like a fragrant charm, simple faith is caught, not taught.

As he once flung himself into battle he flung himself into penance, devouring fasting as a gourmet devours food, and plunging after poverty as prospectors dig madly after gold. And it is precisely the positive and life-giving qualities of this pursuit that is a challenge to the modern self-destructive rush for pleasure. Like Francis, the man of God can delight in created things without being slave to an obsessive compulsion to possess them. He can relish a beautiful painting or a fine house, can enjoy looking at a splendid landscape without feeling that his pleasure is frustrated unless he own them. Even if circumstances prevent his enjoyment of such things, he is secure that his essential human worth and dignity are in no way diminished, that there is no place for vexation and envy and that his life is still worth living. It is to accept with genuine tranquility that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, or sometimes does not give at all. This is to hang free towards the things of this world, sitting lightly to possessions, delighting in them when they are available, but losing neither peace of mind nor self-esteem when they are not. This is true poverty of spirit, the ultimate freedom. It was precisely because of his asceticism that “in beautiful things he (Francis) saw Beauty itself and through his vestiges imprinted in creation he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable. With a feeling of unprecedented devotion he savoured in each and every creature – as in so many rivulets – that Goodness which is their fountain-source. And he perceived a heavenly harmony in the consonance of powers and activities God has given them, and like the prophet David, sweetly exhorted them to praise the Lord” (St. Bonaventure, Life of St. Francis).

Penance took their toll, so did the wounds of the Passion of Christ that he received during an ecstasy on Mt. LaVerna.  As death drew near, he bid his dearest and oldest friends adieu. At his request they lifted him off his own rude bed and laid him on the bare ground. He touched base, clad only in his hair shirt, his unseeing eyes seeing only more deeply their object and origin and the root of his joy. He died at the Portiuncula on October 3, 1226, aged 45 years. His body today lies sweetly composed in a steel-banded stone casket far above the ground at the Portiuncula in the great church of San Damiano in Assisi, but not before many battles were fought between principalities for custody of his remains. It is ironic that the man who composed the beautiful prayer, “Lord, make me a channel of your peace”, could have been the occasion of wars and bloodshed, albeit sundry and brief.