|
|
|
 |
 |
October 4th is the feast day for Saint Francis
of Assisi. At Connor’s school, the vicar will be
blessing the children’s stuffed animals during chapel
in keeping with the saint’s patronage of animals
and the environment. This past Tuesday, we hosted
a rather large dinner with Michael’s coworkers from
Caffe Medici as the honored guests. The spaghetti
and Umbrian wine made a perfect segue into my opportunity
to tell the story of Francis’ life.
Born in 1181 in central Italy, Giovanni began to be called “Francesco, the “little Frenchman” quite early on due to his enthusiasm for French culture (his mother was from France). In a time of massive urbanization and increased economic opportunity for the newly formed middle class, Francis received the benefits of his father’s lucrative business as a merchant -- education, material abundance, and leisure time. From the onset, he was a charismatic and often mischievous leader taking the charge in one adolescent folly after another.
His desire for fame led him to become a soldier, and he was captured in battle and imprisoned for a year in neighboring Perugia. When he returned, he quickly made off again to Spoletto seeking more adventure, but there he became seriously ill. During his sickness he had a vision which convicted him that he must care for the poor and renounce his personal wealth. Upon coming home, he recklessly started giving his things away and advocating a lifestyle of poverty. His friends were confused; his father was furious. When he was commanded to stop throwing away his inheritance by the local bishop, he tore off his clothes before the assembly and gave them to his father before escaping naked into the woods!
Francis later had another vision in which God told him, “Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” He took this to be a literal mandate to rebuild the old cathedral, but later understood it to be a metaphor for the Holy Catholic Church. By this point Francis had gathered some followers, and so he wrote a Rule and initiated a movement known as the Friars Minor. At roughly the same time, Francis heard a sermon from Matthew 10:9 that moved him to combine preaching with his vow of poverty.
The Friars Minor dispersed into small groups of missionaries, and as their reputation spread, the Franciscan ideal grew rapidly. Francis himself wanted to travel to the Muslim lands preaching peace rather than crusades. After several failed launches, he finally managed to go to Egypt, where he received a hearing from the Sultan (the commanding officer of the Muslim armies). Though the Sultan refused to be converted, he clearly demonstrated admiration for the barefoot monk and vowed to pray that God would reveal to him the greatest path of truth.
Francis is often considered the world’s most beloved saint, a result of his boundless enthusiasm and exuberant love for Creation. Many stories abound of Francis’ tenderness and care for animals, including frequent sermons admonishing the birds to praise their Maker and for wolves to repent and make peace with the local villages they were terrorizing. His famous Canticle of the Sun is considered the first poem written in Italian dialect. He is also the first to organize a live Nativity scene.
Like most of the great men and women of faith, when their stories are seen in the proper context they become far less heartwarming and inspirational and far more exhortative and convicting. Francis lived in a time of tremendous power-mongering and conflict. Popes and kings heightened their positions by rallying the peasantry to fight holy wars, utilizing the age-old tactics of rousing paranoia and misinformation. The new monks were fighters, not intercessors (i.e. The Templars). Innocent III was the most powerful pope in history, yielding an authority over and above that of every kingly rule in Europe. Francis traveled to Rome in search of Innocent’s approval for his new monastic order. After dismissing Francis rather cavalierly, Innocent had a dream in which he saw Francis holding up the papal cathedral on his shoulders. The pope was wise enough to recognize God’s hand and recalled Francis in order to give his papal blessing.
With the 12th century continent in a tremendous state of flux, only the organic sincerity of the layman had the adaptability to embody the uncompromising nature of Christ. Like his Master-Teacher, Francis inadvertently subverted the “powers and principalities” simply by sincerely following the full Gospel of Jesus. Though he could be accused of mimicking Jesus too literally by today’s perspective, Francis’ pure and complete surrender to the way of Jesus truly embodied the cure for the disease that had taken hold of the Church. Just as before, our age cries out for courageous and determined disciples of Jesus. With fear and trembling I utter these words from the Prayer of Saint Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
