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1. Life and Context

Among all the other gifts which we have received and continue to receive daily from our benefactor, the Father of mercies, and for which we must express the deepest thanks to our glorious God, our vocation is a great gift.

(The Testament of St Clare)4

Francis has become one of the best-known and best-loved saints of recent times. It is odd to think that, after his intense popularity in his own time and immediately after his death, he was little known or studied until the end of the nineteenth century. He didn’t write all that much himself, but after he was canonized almost immediately after his death, several Lives of St Francis were written. Some were by people who had actually known him, often early brothers of the order, so his story as told by them does have an immediacy recognizable from the Gospels. The first ‘modern’ attempt at a scholarly Life of St Francis was published in 1894 by the French author Paul Sabatier, and the thirst for Franciscan spirituality has hardly slackened since.

The Challenge of St Francis

So who was St Francis, and what does he have to say to us today, nearly 800 years after his death? He remains a hugely charismatic figure, and his way to God attracts many people through its sincerity and wholeheartedness. Conventional images of Francis conjure up a dreamy-faced young man in a brown habit, surrounded by birds and animals. He is often made to appear sweet and unthreatening, even whimsical. Yet this image of him is seriously misleading. It is unlikely that such a person could have a lasting impact over eight centuries; still less that he could have any valid message for a cynical and questioning generation like our own. Perhaps the animal-lover persona has been imposed on Francis in order to soften the real bite of his message for today – to keep him ‘safe’ so that we do not have to take him seriously? We do not want to be reminded that gospel living, if it is done wholeheartedly, is anything but safe. Over-emphasizing the cute, animal-loving Francis enables us to miss the point – that following Christ is a dangerous vocation. Complete simplicity has its cost.

Francis has much more to offer us. His way of being in the world has a great deal of significance for our behaviour and attitudes. It is not because he skips around facilely chanting ‘hullo trees hullo sky’ like an adult fotherington-tomas5 that Francis has become the patron saint of nature and ecology! Instead, much more demandingly, he points to a new way of living as a citizen of the world. Not just other human beings but all creatures, from the elements to the insects, are our partners in a song of praise to God who created all of us for relationship and co-existence. Psychology has made us much more aware of how self-centred we are. But embarking on the Franciscan way demands that we question ourselves profoundly. What is at the heart of my life? Does my knowledge of myself, and of God, lead me into relationship with others as they really are, or only as they are of use to me?

If we take on Francis’ challenge, we will be required to relinquish our sense of control. There is no room here for a sense of superiority about our place in the created order. We do not have the right to exploit other creatures for our own satisfaction, or to satisfy our own perceptions of what we need. In Francis’ vision, we have no right of power or dominion over our environment, but are required to work with it. Most vitally of all, we are called to recognize the hand of God at work in our lives, and in the lives of all the other creatures who share our space. God is at the centre of this equation. A right relationship with each creature involves learning to know it as its Creator intended it to be known; understanding the purpose of its existence, enabling it to fulfil whatever potential it has to reflect that Creator back to other creatures.

Such a view was revolutionary in Francis’ time, and little, essentially, has changed; although we have made great advances in scientific understanding, our view of ourselves as the real masters of the universe has done untold damage to our environment. So Francis’ sermons to the birds and the animals become a contemporary challenge to all who are capable of understanding. We desperately need to rediscover the humility that characterizes Francis’ whole approach to his world. And we also need to rediscover God at the centre of life.

A Way of Commitment

Christians do not have a monopoly on the desire to live well and fulfil our human potential. The Church, at least in the affluent West, has to adjust to the fact that it has lost much of its former power to influence what people believe or how they behave. Moreover, those of us who call ourselves Christian have to face the fact that it is now our beliefs that are counter-cultural, marginalized, irrelevant to the mainstream culture in which we live. Here too, Francis may be able to indicate a way forward. Although he was always loyal to the institutional Church, that very loyalty led Francis to question the institution from the inside, in a way that a mere interested observer could not have done. Slavish obedience to an institution – ‘my Church, right or wrong’ – would not have led Francis or his soul-mate St Clare to insist on the adoption of their respective Rules against the wisdom of the hierarchy. And an institution which stifled opposition by insisting on slavish obedience could not have allowed itself to be won over by their vision, or their persistence. It is not for nothing that obedience has its root in the Latin audire, to hear. Listening to each other is essential for growth in any relationship. Francis and Clare found the root of their vocation was in obedient, attentive listening to God.

Such concepts may seem alien to a world which has grown used to the rational as the only approach. Insistence on a loving God can seem impossibly naive when faced with disaster. Religion itself is discredited by the devastation wreaked by fundamentalists of every creed. However, whether or not there is any room in our personal philosophy for a God, we will all need at some stage to question the values that shape our lives. What truly lies at the heart of our life defines who we are. Francis’ life shows the possibility of living with complete consistency.

Much anxiety is expressed nowadays about our apparent fear of lasting commitments. This is demonstrated, or so the argument goes, by shifts in attitude to relationships, to institutions, or indeed to the concept that any hard and fast rules can apply to the way we live. It is often assumed that this fear is especially prevalent among younger people. In my own experience, however, it has little to do with being incapable of commitment. It is not that my generation is any less willing to follow our values than those who came before us. It is, rather, that we take commitment extremely seriously, and we are only too aware of the pain that can be caused when it breaks down. In the affluent West, at least, we are presented with such a range of choices that we are paralysed by the fear of choosing wrongly and losing everything which gave our lives meaning. Simplicity is paradoxically seductive to people who are continually being bombarded with ‘lifestyle choices’. Having no choice rescues us from the anxiety of choosing from among a barrage of options. Discovering our utter dependence on God sets us free to be ourselves.

Francis’ gift is to make such absolute commitment seem attractive to the ordinary person. He shows that it is possible to give up everything one has been taught to value, and yet remain totally oneself. Francis himself emerged from this process as someone very human and certainly fallible, yet uncompromised in his attempt to live his faith to the full. Living without props, with no protection and no evasion, seems suddenly possible for the rest of us.

The way of Francis is intensely earthy and real, full of joy and celebration of life as it is, and eager to improve what it could be. A living faith needs to equip us for real life. To walk in the way of Francis gives us the opportunity not to escape the painful parts, nor yet to wallow in suffering when it comes to us, but to try to integrate it and find whatever meaning there may be in it. As we struggle with the hard questions of human existence, Francis is alongside, offering us as a model his own unchanging priority: ‘My God and my all.’

The figure and message of Francis appeal across religions, as well as to many of those who try to live with integrity and justice but espouse no formal religious faith. His journeys to Africa to meet and discuss faith with representatives of Islam establish him as an important figure in the history of peaceful interfaith dialogue. However, it is impossible to speak of following Francis in any truly meaningful way without understanding that for him, to live was to follow Christ. Few saints have demonstrated more graphically or literally what it means to do so. Throughout his life, Francis sought with increasing fervour to become united with the person, life and passion of Jesus. Two years before his death, he received a tangible sign of the reality of that developing union – the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, in his hands and feet and side. Paul’s statement, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’,6 could have been the blueprint for Francis’ own discipleship.

The way of Francis is, or should be, the way of Christ. The point of exploring Franciscan spirituality (a term of which Francis would certainly not have approved) is therefore not to focus on Francis himself, but to use him as a lens to God. However, in order to understand Francis’ particular impact, or his potential as a guide for our own pattern of discipleship, we do need to know something of his history.

Background

Giovanni Bernardone was born in the Italian town of Assisi, probably in 1181 or 1182. His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a cloth merchant who traded with France, and his mother, Pica, was a Frenchwoman. So Giovanni became known as ‘Francesco’, the little French one, which translates into English as Francis. He was brought up according to the norms for a wealthy mercantile family of the time. Money was just coming into its own after the age of barter, and the merchant class was beginning to find itself a considerable political and social force. Francis, therefore, grew up as a member of a family of consequence. His early biographers hint that he was overindulged, used to the best of everything. It is clear that as a young man he was something of a leader on the social ‘scene’ in Assisi, with a large gang of friends and an appetite for parties and music. The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano makes much of Francis’ dissolute youth, in order to point up the extent to which his life was changed by direct encounter with God: ‘[Francis] miserably wasted and squandered his time almost up to the twenty-fifth year of his life. Maliciously advancing beyond all of his peers in vanities, he proved himself a more excessive inciter of evil and a more zealous imitator of foolishness.’7

Conversion Experiences

Like most Christians who take their faith seriously, Francis underwent not one single conversion but a series of conversion experiences. For him there was not just one blinding flash, but a revelation of different layers of truth and conviction. A number of different visionary experiences over a period of years pushed him deeper and deeper into the search for God. The exact chronology of these experiences is difficult to determine, but it is certain that their cumulative effect was to change Francis’ life for ever. His sense of mission developed gradually as each was absorbed into the fabric of his relationship with God.

Like Ignatius of Loyola, Francis’ first urge to change direction came through an episode of illness and dependence. He had taken the path of many young men of his class by seeking fame and fortune in a military campaign: Italy at that time was divided into separate city states, and Francis had joined in the battle between Assisi and Perugia, only to be wounded and captured. During that period of imprisonment, he began to experience unease and dissatisfaction with the direction his life was taking. It was not, yet, enough to provoke him to radical change, but it was the first in a series of warning bells which it eventually became impossible to ignore. Perhaps this experience of enforced simplicity, having nothing which his captors did not choose to give him, was his first indicator of the possibilities of a life of dependence on a generous God.

After a year in prison in Perugia, Francis was ransomed by his father and went home, first to convalesce and then to work in the family cloth business. It is not uncommon that families who have paid a ransom to free one of their members from imprisonment come, consciously or otherwise, to feel that they have in some way bought the person’s loyalty. This could only have served to emphasize the growing clash of values between Francis and his father. Francis was not to be bought. Ties of commerce, and even ties of affection, had to give way to the call of God, which was becoming too compelling to withstand.

As Francis’ health improved, questions again began to surface about how he might best serve God. Celano remarks that Francis was still trying to ‘avoid the divine grasp’,8 a sensation surely familiar to anyone who has struggled with the nature of vocation. Francis’ initial response was to try the life of chivalry again, intending to join a campaign to Apulia, in the south of the country. One night he dreamed of a house full of soldiers’ equipment, and assumed that this meant he would succeed in his quest for military honours. Instead, however, it became clear to him that this was not what the dream really meant. He was not to go to Apulia after all, but God would arm him instead for the struggle which would concern him most deeply for the rest of his life – his own battle to do the will of God, whatever the cost.

Francis then withdrew into a time of intense prayer and meditation. It is during this period that the tension between activity and contemplation in the Franciscan tradition first becomes apparent. On the one hand, Francis was burning to do something to indicate his eagerness to serve God in whatever capacity he was called to; on the other, he seems always to have known that only long periods of prayer and solitude would produce the answers on which he was to act.

At this time, Francis was gripped by a growing conviction that in order to serve God fully, he would have to become poor. If there was a Damascus road for Francis, it was one of the roads outside Assisi where, out riding one day, he encountered a leper. Lepers, of course, were outcasts from society; they could not live inside the town walls but had to scratch an existence as best they could from begging. Francis the rich man’s son found them physically repulsive to the point of nausea. The mountain road did not offer any possibility of escape from this direct encounter. He passed the leper, but then felt impelled to dismount from his horse, approach the man, embrace and kiss him. Some versions of the story underline the moral by claiming that when Francis looked back down the road after this meeting, there was no sign of the leper, despite the lack of side-roads. In any case, it struck Francis powerfully that in touching the leper, he was in fact embracing Christ. From that day onwards he had a special concern for lepers, whom he referred to as ‘Christian brothers’.9 Further, he saw in this man who had no possessions, status or security a mirror for his own way of service to God. Becoming a friend and brother of lepers, whether literally affected by leprosy or unwelcome to mainstream society for other reasons, put Francis himself firmly on the margins – but Franciscan living recognizes that society’s margins may well be God’s centre.

Such a seismic shift in values did not go down well with Francis’ family. His former friends and associates found it embarrassing to see the well-born, stylish Francis in the company of ‘non-people’. There was widespread mockery, and accusations of insanity. The final, decisive break with the past came when Francis went to pray in the dilapidated old church of San Damiano. An old crucifix hung there, and Francis had spent some hours in contemplation before it when he thought he heard Jesus speaking to him from the cross: ‘Francis, go and rebuild my church, which as you see is falling down.’ Typically impetuous, he began to gather stones to rebuild San Damiano, which later became the home of the first Franciscan women, St Clare and her Poor Ladies. Francis then travelled to Foligno, a few kilometres from Assisi, to sell some of his father’s cloth. Instead of returning home with the money, he gave it to the priest at San Damiano, although this ‘gift’ was not accepted. Refusing to return home, Francis hid in the priest’s house, but his father found him and took him before the Bishop of Assisi to demand the return of his money. It was here that Francis made his dramatic gesture of renunciation of everything his father had represented to him. Standing naked before the Bishop, Francis mirrored the poor Christ on trial. No power on earth could deflect him from the course he saw that God wanted him to take. There is no record that he was ever reconciled with his earthly father. Instead, claiming God as his only father,10 Francis found the root of his being in God alone, finding his identity as brother to all the other creatures of God’s world.

Come, Follow Me

With a characteristic flair for extremes, Francis thus came to embrace the life of the gospel with the same wholeheartedness he had previously dedicated to enjoying himself. Perhaps his preoccupation with literal poverty came partly from recognizing that his father’s values and his own former lifestyle had not led anywhere real or satisfying. His freedom from possessions was also a freedom from distractions. Nothing, however good or desirable in its own right, could be allowed to divert him from God. Scholars may speculate on how the rich young man of the Gospel actually responded to Jesus’ call to ‘Go, sell all you have and give the money to the poor; then come, follow me.’11 Francis’ own response was never in doubt.

Francis was an all-or-nothing character in everything he did. He displayed the same singleness of mind and heart in his youthful pursuit of extravagance as in the frugality of his life after his conversion. In fact, an appetite for life in all its variety remains one of the central identifying marks of Franciscan living. Francis’ insistence on a life of poverty and dependence may seem stark and uncompromising. His choice profoundly challenges the values of a materialistic world. Yet the way of Francis should never be allowed to become a sterile renunciation of that world or its people. Still less should it be a withdrawal from the life of the world out of hatred or fear of its reality. Even Franciscan hermits are deeply enmeshed in the concerns of the world through their prayer. Their lives, no less than lives of active service to the poor, are love in action. Franciscan spirituality is rooted in love for all things, and all people, as they are. The search for God in our lives begins with what already is, because everything in existence is already marked by the hand of God the Creator. There are plenty of signposts to the divine presence in our world, if only we have the perception to recognize them.

So how may Francis aid us in our search for a credible way forward in these times of global insecurity? There should be enough evidence already to show that Francis’ relevance is not merely bound up with his own time or context. His attitude to the life of faith can teach us much about our own journeys and questions. Francis’ love for God and all creation calls us outward from preoccupation with self, into connection and relationship with the world and its people. His devotion to the crucified Christ also calls us inward, to intimate communion with God our Creator, and to respond in passionate self-giving. His call to right relationship challenges us to think creatively about today’s ‘lepers’: those we find it hardest to accept become, through this lens, our beloved brothers and sisters. We have already acknowledged something of the importance of learning to listen – to discern the presence of God at work in our world and in each other, to learn what he has in mind for us. Like Francis, we are called not just to follow Christ in outward observance, but to become Christlike. Further, we are to reflect back the image of Christ already alive in each person, by loving them and encouraging them into becoming the person they were uniquely called to be. The Good News is for all people, without exception. If we are prepared to listen, Francis can speak it with prophetic urgency for our time, as he did in his own.

Suggested Exercises

1 What is at the heart of your life? Is there anything about your priorities which you want, or need, to change? How might you go about this?

2 Are there any elements of Francis’ own story which have particular resonance for you? What have been the memorable turning points or ‘conversion moments’ in your life?

3 Where are you completely committed (relationships, faith, work)? What holds you back from total commitment?

Notes

4 St Clare of Assisi, Testament, in Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady, eds, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, Mahwah, NJ, Paulist Press, 1982, p. 226.

5 Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, The Compleet Molesworth, Pavilion Books, 1985.

6 Galatians 2:20.

7 Thomas of Celano, Life of Saint Francis, First Book, chapter I. (Referred to hereafter as 1 Cel. Celano’s second Life of Saint Francis, also known as The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, is referred to as 2 Cel.)

8 1 Cel. II.

9 A Mirror of the Perfection, 32, in Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short, eds, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, New York, New City Press, 1999–2001 (referred to hereafter as FED 1–3), vol. 3, p. 242.

10 Matthew 23:9.

11 Matthew 19:21.