FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Francis of Assisi was born in 1182 in the Italian town by that name, Assisi. As a young man, he was a playboy and son of a wealthy cloth merchant – so wealthy the father was a millionaire! Despite the wealth, the family was still of the lesser class, the minores. One way Francis could gain status was to become a knight and he set out to do that. But the Lord called him in a different direction and Francis responded to the Lord’s call. That was to set a pattern for the rest of Francis’ life: the Lord’s Call, Francis’ Response.  

And that was what excited me when I discovered this pattern of Calls and Responses in Francis’ life – a pattern I could also trace in my life and in the lives of parishioners, college students, women and men religious of all ages. Francis turned his back on the wealth of his father and took up residence outside Assisi’s walls with the poorest of the poor – the lepers. The Lord spoke to him from the San Damiano Crucifix and asked Francis to rebuild his church. Francis devoted the rest of his life to rebuilding the universal church by following wherever the Lord called him – to villages and countryside, to hermitages and Muslims in Egypt. His was a life of total surrender and dependence on the Lord. The outward sign of that was a life of utmost poverty supported by begging for his food. Little by little the Lord drew him closer. The closer he got to the Lord Jesus, the more followers Francis drew after him to form the Order of Friars Minor.

Francis never withdrew to a mountaintop monastery. He remained with his sisters and brothers in the world. As his union with the Lord grew, so did his union with every thing and every one in that world – birds and beasts, flowers and folks. His was a horizontal spirituality. The world around him was the new meeting place with God ever since the Son of God became the Babe of Bethlehem. Francis’ union with his Crucified Lord resulted in the stigmata impressed on Francis’ hands, feet and side. Francis’ spirituality was truly an Incarnational spirituality, a nature mysticism that reached its zenith in his well-known Canticle of Creatures: Brother Sun and Sister Moon. By the time Francis died in 1226, he and the Lord had truly rebuilt the Church.