ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

St. Francis of Assisi (1181 – 1226)

One of the surprising things about Francs of Assisi is that almost everyone has heard of him. They may not know that he was born about 1181, had been a rich playboy in Assisi, began a long and difficult conversion while a prisoner of war in Perugia, that his pursuit of the Gospel led to the Franciscan Order.  They may not know his anguish, though they often know his joy. They know that he was on the side of the poor and the marginalised, a lover of God and all creation, that he was – and still is – everybody’s friend and support. They probably do not know that he received the stigmata, nor what that means – but in the truest sense, do any of us? They have certainly grasped the essentials.                       Francis’ aim was to become as like Christ as possible. God had made him “to the image of his beloved Son according to the body, and to his likeness according to the spirit.” He was haunted by the thought that the Word became flesh. This was why he pursued the Lady Poverty through a ruthless self-stripping, seeking a total inner and (at the moment of death, outer) nakedness as he truth of himself before God.                                                                                  We cannot tell whether we see Francis as his contemporaries did. Many thought him quite mad, while others he led to profound conversion. The early Franciscan movement was filled with charismatic and eccentric characters (qualities which have endured in the Order). Francis welcomed everyone who came as  a brother sent by God, and in no time at all there were 500 of them and he had an Order full of problems.                                      In many stories we see him struggling to live a simple Gospel life while thinking about Rules and organization – not his forte. Many had joined without knowing him personally, and did not agree with him or each other. The result was conflict, argument and pain. Francis lived, as near as he could, according to God’s value system, filled with the generous folly of the Cross. Some of the others were tempted to think in terms of clerics, privilege, and a career in the Church. Francis never forgot the One who had nowhere t lay his head.                                                                         We are drawn to Francis by his intimacy with Christ, his gentleness with the vulnerable, his rapport with animals and what his biographer calls his “restoration to original innocence.” We would like to tame wolves, like that of Gubbio which terrorised the town, and those within ourselves as well. When we read the early stories, we are deceived into think it was all fun (and at first it probably was). We are disarmed with his ready dismay at himself – the stories are legion but think of the time he sent the young, aristocratic Rufino to preach naked in the cathedral of Assisi, and of Francis’ quick repentance, going naked into the town to join him. Behind walked his faithful, understanding friend, secretary, confessor and confidant, Bro. Leo, carrying two habits in readiness.                                                                                             So what was young Clare, Rufino’s cousin, thinking when she fled at night to join Francis and his band? No wonder her family were appalled. She compounded this by selling her dowry-land, and some of her sister’s, giving the proceeds to the poor, promising obedience to this unauthorized, unordained ragamuffin and then working (like Francis) as a servant in the nearby Benedictine monastery – all scandalous but irrevocable steps in thirteenth-century Europe. She was the first to share his vision fully, and in the long years after his death she remained a touchstone of authenticity for the early brethren, so that Leo and the others remained close to her and the first Poor Clares, and were present at her deathbed in 1253. How young they were when it all began! For them, Francis was not the fool but the wise man who had sold all he possessed and not only gained the field but the treasure in it.                                                                                                               We cannot begin to plumb the depths of Francis’ depression and despair at the conflict within his Order. We find them embarrassing, unsuited to our image of this joyous saint. Nor do we understand that experience on La Verna from which, two years before his death, he emerged with Christ’s own wounds in his hands, feet and side. Asking to share Christ’s love and Christ’s pain, he entered into deep and terrible darkness. Eventually, this broke into the joy of his Canticle of All Creation. Be praised, my Lord, for our Brother Sun, our sister Moon, Stars, Water, Brother Wind and all creation. It was the first salvo of Italian poetry and the culminating exultation of a life burnt up with love for God. We cannot understand how such glory, pain and greatness could exist in such a little, poor man, one so low that nobody is lower, so simple that we understand his every word.

-         Sr Frances Teresa,

Poor Clare, Arundel, West Sussex.

(The Tablet, 5 February 2000, pg. 165)