St. Francis - Our Patron

It was a hot, humid day, the road was steep and Francis, whose family had long since rejected
him, came face to face with his younger brother. The brother looked at him over superciliously.
"For how much will you sell me your sweat, Francis?"

Francis shook his head, "I can get a higher price from God." Beyond his brother he saw his father,
Pietro Bernadone. The old man spat at him and cursed. They had been through all this before.
"These days, I only call God in heaven, my Father," he replied, "but I must have someone to bless
me". Francis turned to the old beggar who followed him. " You give me a Father's blessing, old
Uncle," he said, and knelt at the beggar's feet.

Like Nazareth, Assisi was an ordinary town. It took great perseverance and miracles to impress
inhabitants so reluctant to have prophets in their midst. Francis was born in 1181. He belonged to
the minores - the non-noble end of the town, (unlike Clare, who was one of the, majores, the
aristocracy) His father, a rich merchant bent on social climbing, had him educated with knighthood
in view. When in a political shake up the Imperial nobility, Clare along with them, were exiled,
Francis would have been among those who helped to pull down the Rocca, the residence of the
Imperial Vicar.

However, the wheel turned and Francis found himself a prisoner of war in Perugia. In the miserable
wait to be ransomed, God slowly began inserting new ideas into his head, and when he got home,
still nursing jail Fever, people began to notice a change. In a series of symbolic events God spoke
to him. Three of them formed the direction of his life.

Rebuild my Church

Francis stopped to pray in the little ruined church of St Damian's and as he prayed before the
crucifix for "Right faith, firm hope and perfect charity," he heard the Lord's voice: "Francis, rebuild
my Church which you see, is falling down." Francis did; he set out, gathered stones and rebuilt St
Damian's, St Mary of the Angels and other damaged shrines. It was only as his life developed that
he understood that what he was to rebuild - on the foundations of the Gospel - was the Universal
Church.

Recognize my face?

Francis feared leprosy. That is, he feared disfigurement and isolation. He could not face the
thought of the man of sorrows, despised by humankind, disfigured beyond recognition, that he was
in fact about to become - not as a leper but as another Christ!

And when Francis saw a leper, a different side of his personality also rebelled: the fastidious and
bunkered eye that could not see a broken human being as a brother.

One day, Francis onFrancis and the Leper horseback, was crossing the plain of Assisi, probably
near to the place along the road from St Mary's, where subsequently, he was to have his
Leprosarium. A leper approached. They were alone. This time, Francis did not run away; he
dismounted and handed the leper an alms, then he took the fingerless hand that had received it,
and kissed it.

Take nothing for your journey

Francis' behaviour, which made his family a laughing stock, infuriated his father who had him
locked up and beaten. But Francis finally alienated Pietro Bernadone in the thing nearest to his
heart. He took some of his father's possessions and sold them to raise funds for his building
project. Pietro brought him before the civil authorities - but Francis claimed the right, as one
already belonging to the Church, to be tried by the Bishop.

Bishop Guido made him restore the money. And Francis in addition, simply stripped off his clothing
and cast it at his father's feet. "Henceforth," he said, "I shall call no man on earth, father, but only
Our Father in heaven!"

After borrowing a tunic from the Bishop, he danced out into the world, singing, "I am the herald of
the great King." Rightly finding this to be a premature claim, some disappointed thieves threw him
into a ditch of snow.

Follow me

This extreme departure from the "religious" conventions provoked extreme reactions. Yet, soon
Francis found himself with eleven followers. He went to Pope Innocent III to beg his blessing -
and, after initial confusion, received it. In the seventeen years that remained of his life on earth,
thousands came to follow Francis. He was an inspiration, not an organisation. Like the queen bee
in a hive whom the workers touch to receive their mandate, Francis communicated by example,
and of the thousands who "ran after him" - only a small number saw him frequently - or at all.

In the resulting chaos, Innocent III's successor, Honorious III, encouraged the Cardinal Bishop of
Ostia, (traditionally, the prelate who crowned the Emperor in the name of the Church), to be a
guide and support to Francis. This was Hugolino de Segni dei Conti, a nephew of Innocent III, who
was later to become Pope Gregory IX. The scurrile Franciscan chronicler, Salimbene, accuses
Hugolino of having an illegitimate son whom he later promoted to the Cardinalate. Yet Hugolino
loved Francis and venerated Clare. He was involved in assisting and "regularising" the new religious
movements in the Church. As Pope, he thoroughly revised the Church's law - (the book of the
Decretals). He was in every way, a remarkable man, but it is questionable if he understood those
whom he loved so devotedly.

He persuaded Francis to appoint a vicar who would govern the order in his stead, and after the
short terms of Peter Catani, (who died), and Gregory of Narni, (who exacerbated the brethren
whilst Francis went on a mission to the Holy Land), the lot fell on the highly capable and
subsequently unscrupulous, Elias of Cortona who was to build the great church that stands over
Francis' relics.

Francis could not betray the Gospel, but neither could he betray the Church which was the visible,
if scarred, face of Christ on earth.

He tried to run away from the nightmare he had helped to create. He went on pilgrimage to
Compostella, he went to Al Kamal, the Sultan of Egypt and the Holy Land, and virtually converted
him, and he hid away in caves and hermitages, and on islands.

Ultimately, he accepted the gift of Mount Alvernia. Here, in 1224, whilst keeping a time of fasting
in honour of St Michael, he received in prayer, a vision of the Crucified Lord in the form of a
Seraph, who imprinted visibly in his flesh, the wounds of the Crucified and Risen Jesus.

Though in pain, nearly blind, and suffering from what were in all, probably, a number of different,
fatal illnesses, serenity came into his soul. He was able to praise God for everything that existed,
even in a wattle hut invaded by real, or diabolically imaginary mice.

Francis was the fully integrated person of the Gospel. He transcended male and female, slave and
free. When he spoke of Jesus he saw himself as a brother and friend and mother.

"We are servants and should be subject to every human creature for God's sake. On all those who
do this and endure to the last the Spirit of God will rest, he will make his dwelling in them and
there he will stay, and they will be the children of your father in Heaven whose work they do. It is
they who are the brides, the brothers and the mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. A person is a bride
when his faithful soul is united with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit; we are his brothers when we
do the will of his Father who is in heaven, and we are mothers when we enthrone him in our hearts
and souls by love with a pure and sincere conscience, and give birth to him by doing good..."
(Letter to all the Faithful)

In the Christmas of 1223 he had made his way to Greccio. He wanted to make the littleness and
poverty of the Incarnation real for others. In a cave on a hillside, above Greccio, Francis had a
Mass celebrated between an ox and an ass. Since he was a deacon, he preached after the Gospel
- imitating the baa of the lamb every time he said the word Bethlehem. From start to finish,
Francis was beautifully crazy.

When he knew that the end was near, he had a new verse added to the Canticle of the Creatures.
"Welcome, Sister Death." He had himself stripped, laid on the bare earth and sprinkled with ashes
whilst, with his wounded hand he concealed the wound in his side. He blest his brothers. A
generous benefactor Jacopa de Settisoli (an old and aristocratic Roman widow whom Francis
insisted on calling his brother) came unsummoned, with the necessities for his burial - and,
woman-like, with the marzipan of which Francis was fond. He ate some and sent for Brother
Bernard, saying, "This food would do Brother Bernard good, too."

He recited Psalm 141, With all my voice I cry to the Lord," with the wonderful concluding prayer,
"Bring my soul out of this prison and then I shall praise your name. Around me the just shall
assemble, because of your goodness to me." So he died, as he had lived - singing. And that
evening the larks of Assisi rose up around the Portiuncula where his body lay, in a great chorus of
song.

Primary Sources

* Francis fo Assisi: Early Documents Vol 1-3 Ed by Regis J Armstrong OFM Cap., J Wayne
Hellmann OEM Cony, and William Short OEM. New City Press. (Also contains full academic
bibliography)