Hail, Wisdom Queen, may the Lord protect thee,
With thy sister, pure and holy Simplicity.
Holy Lady Poverty, may the Lord protect thee,
With thy sister, holy Humility.
Lady, Holy Charity, may the Lord protect thee,
With thy Sister, holy Obedience.
O most holy Virtues, may the Lord protect thee all,
from Whom you come and proceed.
Writing of Francis is difficult.
One can write volumes (and many have!) about this loving mystic, whose
only treasure was Christ Himself. This is not a scholarly work, nor a biography
of Francis - many a work exists to fulfill that purpose. However, the spirit
of this tender "troubadour", whose romantic, passionate soul
was wrapped in a chivalry that led to his speaking of even virtues as Lords
and Ladies, captures the essence of charity and joy. It is my honour to
introduce you to this noble spirit, and to hope that this may whet your
appetite, not only for knowledge of "Il Poverello", but for the
legacy of love that he left to us all.
I once remember hearing Francis described as a man who "walked at right angles to the world." This is an apt description. Francis lived in an age, much like our own, where the "world" of wealth and power blinded many (and many among the hierarchy!) to the treasures of divine love. While medieval man was very conscious of God and of eternity, a trait sadly lacking today, this hardly meant that he was any more inclined to virtue than were those of any other time. Simple in approach, and frequently illiterate, those in the Middle Ages had little guidance from many of the clergy. As Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" exquisitely expresses, those who were, for example, selling indulgences were trading on their "flock's" fear of hell, not encouraging them to love and virtue.(Hardly profitable, that!)
Saints are said to be products of
their age, but this concept is misunderstood. Virtue has never been in
fashion. The truly great lovers, in the spiritual scheme, fulfilled neglected
needs of their ages. Francis's own love was boundless, but he also was
perfectly suited to appeal to the longing for the Creator that remains
within the heart of all - and which is never stimulated by fear, but only
by joy. Francis, the poet, the mystic, the "herald of the king",
indeed was well suited to his age, yet his approach would never lose its
popularity.
Though medieval man had a rich knowledge of the (supposed) daily lives and histories of Christ and his family, the Church hierarchy was far more interested in wiping out the rampant heresies that were propagated at the time. Among Founders of religious Orders, Francis was unique in his emphasis on the humanity of Christ, and on how incidents in His life showed the perfection of virtue. The Christmas creche and the Stations of the Cross (a meditation on the events of the Master's crucifixion) are among the devotions which Francis would popularize. Yet his preaching went far beyond formal devotion. He would speak with tenderness of the humility of Christ, the "Sweet Babe of Bethlehem" who could hide His divine glory in a life of simple poverty.
Francis, of course, hardly started out with any intentions of founding a religious Order. Giovanni (Francesco) Bernadone, the "rich kid" son of a silk merchant, was later to bemoan the excesses of his youth. It is unlikely that Francis ever bordered on debauchery, nor do we ever learn what were the great sins for which he remained ever repentant. (Considering his lifelong struggles with chastity, one may speculate, but all that is chronicled is a love for a good time that was hardly unusual for any young man of any age.) With his love for chivalric concepts, and the ever-present idealism that would not bring the realities of the battlefied to the mind of the future pacifist, Francis had dreams of knighthood in youth, but his trial of the life was short-lived. If indeed Divine Providence brings good from all of our experiences, as Francis certainly would have maintained, we can be grateful for that period of Francis's life - for, perhaps, it was during his brief time as a prisoner of war that awareness of something beyond himself became strong in what previously (in his own view) was a mind too occupied with pleasures.
Though Francis fully enjoyed the wealth he knew in youth, he later was to use the term "wretched son of Pietro Bernadone!" as self-reproach when he failed in the poverty that was this knight's Lady. Francis's poverty was to embrace not only the physical but the spiritual, and he, with the vision that only the greatest of lovers has, regretted any time when God's ways had not been his sole priority. But perhaps he was a bit too hard on his father! When Francis, in the early days of his "conversion", began to distribute Pietro's stock of priceless silk to beggars, it's a fair assumption that Pietro assumed his son was becoming insane. If Pietro was to lock Francis in the cellar, it well may be that he was protecting his son from a public reputation as crazy - and one forgives Pietro for undoubtedly considering his own reputation as well.
I mention this because Francis was to remain a radical. There were no half measures for our troubadour! Just as he embraced the wealth and good times wholeheartedly, he would develop a devotion to things heavenly with a single-minded passion.
In relating the details of his
conversion, Francis always was to note the time when he, a fastidious and
pampered youth, overcame a natural revulsion and embraced a leper to whom
he gave alms. Years would pass between that incident and his life as a
friar, but it was a moment of transformation nonetheless. All of his life,
Francis was to have a special love for the outcast or the despised. In
fact, he was to welcome many a vagabond into the Franciscan fold in later
years.
Francis equated the self-knowledge that is humility with true poverty. His love for all of creation is well-known, and, if he considered himself a worm, it does not indicate that he was unaware of the dignity of humanity. (Indeed, believing that all creatures glorified God by being what they were, Francis undoubtedly recognised the dignity of worms in themselves!) Rather, he saw what specks of creation we are in comparison to Divine Perfection. The knowledge that God Himself had embraced a human nature is all the more awesome in this light.
Poverty, especially for such
a mystic as was Francis, involves a total detachment wherein alone one
may find total freedom of the will. In making us free, God gave us the
ability to choose and to love - and that choice is hampered by our fallen
nature. Francis, who hadn't the slightest knowledge of his own heroic virtue,
believed that it was a simple (though never easy) matter to love fully.
One detached from anything except God would be able to love unreservedly.
Francis's words about "perfect joy" are most telling. Francis was to know great trials in his later life, when those with a greater love for power and education were to usurp much of his authority. One who follows a crucified man will not be spared misunderstanding and betrayal, as Francis knew well.
He described a situation to another friar, where they would repeatedly knock at the door of their own friary and be flatly denied entrance, indeed would be scorned. Were this to happen, and they did not become troubled, this, Francis said, would be perfect joy.
The tender and expansive Francis, it must be noted, did not speak of the rejection by beloved brothers as joy - and knew well that it was not. The joy is in a dedication to God that is so complete as to prevent even one as emotional as our Francis from being troubled in his spirit.
Joy is at the heart of one
who, though totally blind at the time, could write the marvellous Canticle
of the Creatures with vivid imagery and poetic intensity. Joy came
from living the gospels, as the brief Rule of the Order, composed largely
of quotations from the gospels that Francis so loved, embodied. Joy was
the perfect freedom of detachment.
Above all, joy was God Himself. The Roman Catholic belief that Christ is totally present in the Holy Eucharist, was taught but not actually stressed in Francis's day. The faithful received Holy Communion rarely, and only on great feasts. Adoration of the Host Himself was unusual in the medieval period. Yet Francis was to encourage and extol both, and to have a reverence for the priesthood that no details of clergy's falling short of holiness could affect. Francis was a pioneer in emphasising the great graces of the sacraments - not through scholarly treatises, but through encouraging those around him.
Francis's detachment is well expressed his prayer inspired by the
Lord's own:
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
That we may love Thee with our whole heart by always thinking of thee,
with our whole soul by always desiring Thee,
with our whole mind by directing all our intentions to Thee and by seeking
Thy glory in all things,
and with our whole strength by spending all our energies and affections
in the service of Thy love and nothing else.
and may we love our neighbours as ourselves,
by drawing them all, with our whole strength, to Thy love
by rejoicing in the good fortunes of others as well as our own
and by sympathising with the misfortunes of others
and by giving offense to no one.
Francis was hardly exempt from human weakness! Though his personal ways, which tended to great excess and bodily deprivation to the point of ruining his health, were not practises he intended to impose on the others, his radical nature made his ideal of poverty beyond the capacity of many of his friars. Nor was Francis a man of good judgment. Not discerning, and considering himself a worm, he would believe the word of any "repentant" vagabond - and, if there were 5,000 friars at the time of Francis's death, we must not assume that all were exemplary in their observance. It is likely that many of Francis's physical ailments and hysterical tendencies were caused or aggravated by the bodily abuse he gave to himself. No doubt, today, many an author would term him mentally ill to some degree.
But that is the key for us to recognise. The degree of one's love or devotion is not cancelled by one's weaknesses. In some aspects (charity and commitment not among them), Francis is not to be imitated. Yet, to quote a Dominican, the gift comes according to the manner of the recipient - and Francis's case was to be the only one I have seen in which is having the stigmata seemed perfectly natural.
This is Francis's autograph. The words
are those he would wish for any who read this page, and which he based
on a blessing from his own Jewish heritage:
May the Lord bless thee and keep thee,
May He lift His countenance upon thee and be gracious unto thee.
May the Lord look upon thee with kindness and give thee His peace.
And, in the Franciscan tradition, I leave you with the greeting: Peace
and all good!
© 1996 by Elizabeth G. Melillo, Ph.D.
E-mail:design@gloriana.nu
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." -
C.S. Lewis