From: richarra@gmail.com

On the Love of Solitude and Silence  (V)

    In silence and quietness the devout soul makes progress and learns
the hidden mysteries of the Scriptures (Ecclus.39:1-3). There she
finds floods of tears in which she may nightly wash and be cleansed
(Ps.6:6). For the further she withdraws from all the tumult of the
world, the nearer she draws to her Maker. For God with His holy angels
will draw near to him who withdraws himself from his friends and
acquaintances. It is better to live in obscurity and to seek the
salvation of his soul, than to neglect this even to work miracles. It
is commendable in a Religious, therefore, to go abroad but seldom, to
avoid being seen, and to have no desire to see men.
--Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Bk 1, Ch 20

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October 4th – St. Francis of Assisi

In the case of many saints, people have disagreed whether they
qualified for that title. St. Francis of Assisi, on the other hand,
comes as close as possible to being everybody’s saint. Not only
Catholics, but those of different faiths or of no formal faith have
agreed that the “Poverello”, the “little poor man” of Assisi deserved canonization. The basic reason for this universal popularity is that
Francis, who appeared to be so charmingly simple, was actually a very complicated man, many marvelous things at once.

Francesco di Bernardone, the son of Pietro di Bemardone and Giovanna (“Pica”) di Bernardone, was born in Assisi early in 1182. His father
was a well-to-do textile merchant. The baby was baptized Giovanni, but
Pietro, a Francophile who had been on a business trip to France on his
son’s day of birth, gave him the additional name Francesco, the
“little Frenchman”. That was the name that stuck.

Francis grew up therefore in affluent circumstances. He learned his
father’s trade well, but he was also a “showy spender”. Money made him
a leader among his teen-aged friends in their much partying. Even so,
he was never insensitive to the needs of the poor.

It took young Bernardone several years to discover his true destiny.
Raised by his father on the poems and songs of French chivalry, he at
first felt called to be a soldier. When he was 20, Assisi became
involved in an armed dispute with the nearby city of Perugia. Francis
enlisted and marched with his fellow townsmen against the Perugian
enemy. But the Perugians won the battle, captured the young would-be
warrior, and held him prisoner for a year. When they released him he
returned home only to be stricken with a serious illness that
incapacitated him for another 12 months. Captivity and illness did
not, however, dissuade him immediately from military ambitions. Once recuperated, he volunteered to join the papal army of Walter de la
Brienne, who was opposing the German emperor’s efforts to conquer
Italy. But en route to the battlefield (no farther south than
Spoleto), Francis was taken ill again. In a dream he heard a voice
inviting him to “follow the master rather than the man.” So he turned
his horse back to Assisi. He did not know the meaning of the obscure
dream, but convinced of its spiritual import, he forsook both business
and partying thereafter, and began to meditate and pray a lot. His
social crowd noticed thereafter that he was quieter and more pensive.
Asked if he was perhaps in love, he replied, “Yes, I am going to take
a wife more beautiful and worthy than all you know.” The “wife,” it
would turn out, would be “Lady Poverty.”

When out riding one day he encountered a leper in the road. Shocked,
he automatically turned back from the “unclean” one. Then, realizing
what he had done, in a moment of grace he dismounted, approached the
stricken man, put a coin in his hand and kissed it. In later years he
would refer to this episode as the moment when he had “left the
world.”

God advanced him one step more in fall 1203. As Francis prayed in the half-ruined church of San Damiano outside the city walls, he seemed to
hear Christ telling him, through the lips of the figure on the altar
cross, “Francis, go and repair my church, which as you can see is in ruins.” Interpreting the command literally, Francesco rushed off to
gather structural materials. To pay for these materials he took some
bolts of cloth from his father’s shop and sold them. When Pietro
learned of this he was furious. He had been trying of late to get his
son to come back to the family store. Now, hard man that he was, he
haled Francis before the church court of the bishop of Assisi,
demanding that he pay for the “stolen” cloth, and threatening to
disinherit him. The bishop instructed Francis to pay for the fabric,
which he did. But he also renounced his inheritance, and even returned
the clothing on his back to his father, declaring that henceforth only
God the Father would be his parent. Clothed in a borrowed smock, young Bernardone thus publicly proclaimed his dedication to God in voluntary
poverty. Henceforth he would live the gospel literally, and depend
only on the alms given him by permission of Lady Poverty.

Francis increased his hours of prayer, his begging on behalf of the
needy, and his manual labor. He restored not only San Damiano church
but also two others: St. Peter’s and St. Mary of the Angels. While
attending Mass in the last-named church in 1208, he heard the Gospel
passage read, in which Christ sent his disciples forth in poverty to
preach the Good News. (Mt 10:7-19). He concluded that this was God’s revelation to him of his own special vocation. At once he started to
preach repentance and peace through the streets of Assisi. The
response to his message was immediate. Not only did he attract the
populace; within a few weeks a dozen men begged him to let them join
him in this work. A new religious order thus came into existence.
Francis called them the “Fratres Minores” (“Lesser Brethren”). With their help he preached penance and poverty throughout Italy. He went
to Rome with them in 1210 and received from Pope Innocent III the
verbal approval of a simple rule of life for them to follow. Francis
himself was ordained a deacon around the same time. Out of humility he
never sought promotion to the priesthood.

The friars were assigned the chapel of the Porziuncola as their
headquarters, but Francis insisted on paying rent for it. To his mind
the Friars Minor, consecrated above all to poverty, should own no
property even as a community.

The Friars Minor exploded into existence. By 1220 they numbered almost
five thousand. In 1212 Francis, aided by St. Clare, also established a
female branch, the Poor Clares; and in 1221 he would set up a third
order for lay persons. Some of these tertiaries lived together in
their own religious communities; the rest, men and women, followed the
ideals of the order while remaining in the world.

Italy needed just this, for contemporary heretics, practicing a
poverty that contrasted with the luxury of the current Catholic
clergy, had prompted many Italians to repudiate the hierarchy. On the
other hand, the Franciscan friars, begging crusts for themselves and
the poor from door to door, were unswerving in their loyalty to the
pope and bishops.

The friars were soon preaching penance throughout Italy. Francis
himself before long gave the order an international character. Still a
soldier and crusader at heart, he sought personally (without luck) to
convert the Muslims in Egypt.

Franciscans would eventually get access to the Mideast, to China, and
even to the New World. But in the Founder’s day they concentrated particularly on re-evangelizing the length and breadth of Italy. It
was wonderful to see how the simple sermons of the friars touched the
hearts of people. Cures and moral miracles were reported wherever they
went. About them arose a legendary aura that found literary expression
in charming collections of stories about Francis and his friars. One
thinks of the early biographies, of the Mirror of Perfection, of The
Little Flowers of St. Francis. Here we still meet Francis the
troubadour, the preacher to the birds, the promoter of Christmas
cribs, the tamer of the wolf of Gubbio, the environmentalist. Like a
knight errant, liberated by poverty, he brought a fresh prospect of Christianity wherever he went.

Why this phenomenal growth of the Franciscan order? It so happened
that Francis’ era was one of spiritual decline and worldliness. In
God’s providence, he was meant to revive the faith by kindling anew a
warm Christian devotion. It was also an era of heresy, especially
Catharism, which denied the goodness of God’s creation. Reintroducing
the faithful to the simple life, Francis refuted Catharism with his
joyful praise of all God’s creation.

Francis of Assisi’s personal attractiveness assisted him mightily in
his work as a reformer. The rise of a whole literature on the
beginnings of the Friars Minor bears witness to this charm: his own
few writings; his early biographies; and the several collections of
legends, especially the Fioretti (“The Little Flowers”). But the
entrancing stories of his gentleness, his affection for all of God’s creatures as his “brothers” and “sisters”, and even the accounts of Francis as a miracle worker, should not obscure the fact that the “Poverello” was likewise a man of terrifying self-denial, one whose suffering, mental and physical, made him resemble Christ more and more
as time passed.

The Franciscan Order itself caused him much mental anguish. As it grew
in size, its members were always in danger of watering down the
radical poverty that the founder had espoused. To head off a division
in the Franciscan family, all members, including Francis himself, had
to agree to a new rule that made some concessions to practicality.
Francis did not like the concessions, but when Pope Honorius III
approved the new rule in 1223, the Saint, always respectful of
authority, accepted it. Even in his last testament, however, he would
urge the importance of strict poverty, not only of the individual
friars but of the whole order. He himself had retired as “minister
general” of the friars in 1220, to be succeeded by Fra Elias of
Cortona.

In his latter years, Francis underwent much physical suffering.
Chronic stomach trouble and incipient blindness took their toll. The
“cure” attempted on his eyes–cauterizing them with fire – proved as crude as it was ineffective. In these same days of retirement he
reached the climax of his prayer-life. In 1223, while spending
Christmas at Greccio, he devised the first-known Christmas crib beside
the altar. Then and afterward, his prayers were often accompanied by
ecstasies and levitations, which he sought to conceal.

In 1224, when he was praying in a little rural hermitage at LaVerna,
he fell into an ecstatic state during which he received the stigmata
of Jesus crucified. This is the first recorded case of a person
receiving the marks of Christ’s passion. In Francis’ case the charisma meant additional pain, because the hand and foot wounds in his case
had in them “nails” of hard flesh, which made walking difficult. The imprints of the Passion can be considered as confirming Francis’
spiritual resemblance to Christ himself....

Towards the end of his life Francis added a final verse to his
Canticle in praise of our “Sister, Bodily Death”. As that Sister approached, he had himself carried back to the Franciscan headquarters
at the Church of the Portiuncula, and laid on the ground. Having made
his peace with all his brethren and urged them always to love each
other, to love Lady Poverty, and to love and honor the clergy of the
Church, he died in the early evening of October 3, 1266, as the
Passion according to St. John was being read....
–Father Robert


Saint Quote:
"The Church is bathed in the light of the Lord, and pours her rays
over the whole world; but it is one light that is spread everywhere,
and the unity of her structure is undivided."
--St. Cyprian [251AD], The Unity of the Catholic Church


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Meditation:
 Why did Jesus leave his disciples forty days after his resurrection?
Forty is a significant number in the scriptures. Moses went to the
mountain to seek the face of God for forty days in prayer and fasting.
The people of Israel were in the wilderness for forty years in
preparation for their entry into the promised land. Elijah fasted for
forty days as he journeyed in the wilderness to the mountain of God.
For forty days after his resurrection Jesus appeared numerous times to
his disciples to assure them that he had risen indeed and to prepare
them for the task of carrying on the work which he began during his
earthly ministry.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)