Where Does The Money For Sisters Of St Francis Of Assisi

(CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

October is a great month for the saints. Today is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, arguably the most popular and dear of all the saints. (Arguably.) Here is a meditation on his life from My Life with the Saints. And scattered throughout some recommendations for reading on the saint.

Early in my Jesuit training, if pressed, the near I would have been able to say about him was this: He renounced his father'southward wealth, founded the Franciscans, loved nature, sang songs, wrote some poems, and undoubtedly died a happy decease. (Oh, and he lived in Assisi.)

But as much as I establish him a charming figure, my understanding of the world's most pop saint was the rather sentimental 1 that is mutual today, every bit a sort of dopey but well-pregnant hippy who talked to birds. As Lawrence S. Cunningham notes in Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel Life, such a view is "most completely summed upwardly by the ubiquity of those concrete garden statues with a bird perched on the saint'due south shoulder found in everyone's garden middle." In this conception, Francis was cheerful no doubtfulness, but besides a trivial bland. "Such an understanding is coterminous what I would call spirituality light."

Francis of Assisi is a good case of why the legends should never overshadow the life. For within his life lie many surprises awaiting those who are willing to run into Francis on his own terms. As Cunningham emphasizes in his book, unlike the figure that many wish to claim in for all religions, or for no religion, Francis was deeply and thoroughly Catholic. At the same time, he did non hesitate to travel to the Heart Eastward, during the Crusades, to make peace the Sultan. Towards the end of his life, suffering from nifty physical torment--including horrible issues with his eyes--he was rejected past some of his brother Franciscans, who found his style of poverty likewise difficult to live. When riled, he was far less pacific than the garden-variety Francis, once climbing upon a roof in society to tear down a small house in which his Franciscan brothers were living, which he plant inconsistent with their vows of poverty. Throughout his brusque life, his actions confused, angered and annoyed both supporters and detractors. Happily, his real life, which we know a expert deal about, prevents him from ever being completely tamed past the legends.

His begetter, Pietro di Bernardone, was wealthy. This is at the heart of understanding Francis. Though baptized as Giovanni, he was chosen Francesco by his begetter, a textile merchant who loved all things French. (Pietro was on a business trip at that place during his son'southward baptism and gave him his nickname upon his return.) Equally a youth, Francesco was spoiled and dissolute, spending his early years, running with, as Thomas Merton chosen his own friends, "a pack of hearties." At the aforementioned fourth dimension, his chroniclers describe him equally a mannerly and generous immature man, well liked in Assisi despite his penchant for pranks and dearest of the high life. In his superb biography, Julien Green writes, "With his seductive charm, Francesco was the king of all youth, and all was forgiven him."

At the age of 20, Francesco is taken prisoner during a war between Assisi and Perugia, a neighboring boondocks. Though he diameter the ordeal cheerfully, his time in jail left him ill and weakened. On his release a twelvemonth later he decides to become a knight. In training for his new state of life, he promptly purchases an expensive accommodate of armor, consummate with a lavish cloak embroidered with aureate. His father pays for this, of course, equally he paid for all of Francis'due south early interests. The day subsequently purchasing the armor, co-ordinate to tradition, Francesco comes across a nobleman reduced to poverty and spontaneously gives him his new cloak. In the thirteenth century, this would have been an especially charitable activeness. It was considered to be "more noble" to come to the assistance of the poor dignity, since they were not just poor but also shamed.

One dark, in Spoleto, en route to his armed forces service, Francesco has a dream in which a heavenly vocalisation urges him to "serve the primary, not the homo" and return to Assisi. He does so, and begins to discover his sometime life of partying less and less attractive. Over time, he starts living more than simply, praying more, and giving alms.

Riding his horse ane day in the plain of Assisi, Francesco chances upon a "leper," equally they were called, that is, a person suffering from any of the diverseness of skin diseases so common in those days. From childhood, the fragile Francesco has had a horror of lepers; his whole being is revolted by the sight of the man. Yet somehow, since his dream, he understands that his life is being changed. Grasping the demands of his new call, Francesco dismounts and prepares to embrace the human.

In her book Conservancy, Valerie Martin traces the story of St. Francis backwards in time, beginning with his death and ending with the coming together of the leper on the road, an encounter which she describes in mystical terms. The embrace therefore becomes the poetic climax of her narrative, and is indeed a pivotal event in the conversion of the rich immature man. Her lovely retelling deserves to be quoted at length:

Advisedly Francesco places a money in his open palm, where information technology glitters, hot and white. For a moment he tries to form some simple speech, some pleasantry that will restore him to the ordinary world, but fifty-fifty as he struggles, he understands that this world is gone from him at present, that at that place is no turning back; information technology was only and then much smoke, blinding and confusing him, but he has come through it somehow, found the source of it, and now, at last, he is standing in the fire. Tenderly he takes the lepers' hand, tenderly he brings it to his lips. At once his mouth is flooded with an unearthly sugariness, which pours over his natural language, sweet and hot, burning his throat and bringing sudden tears to his eyes. The tears moisten the corrupted hand he presses to his mouth. His ears are filled with the sound of current of air, and he can experience the wind chilling his face, a common cold, harsh wind blowing toward him from the future, blowing away everything that has come up before this moment, which he has longed for and dreaded, as if he thought he might not live through information technology.

From this time forwards, Francesco begins visiting hospitals, giving even more of his money to the poor, and sometimes even his clothes. Walking exterior the walls of Assisi ane afternoon, Francesco, still wondered what path his life would take, stumbled into an old church that had fallen into disrepair, chosen San Damiano.

As he stares at the large crucifix hanging in the church building, he begins to meditate on the passion and death of Jesus, and he weeps for his own sinfulness. In the midst of this meditation, Francesco hears Christ speaking to him from the Cross. "Francesco," the voice says to him three times, "Go and repair my house which you lot see is falling downwardly."

Francesco is thunderstruck. But he is certain most what he needs to do. God has asked him to repair the church at San Damiano. Then he confidently goes to his father's warehouse, steals abroad a commodities of carmine-colored textile, sells it, and brings the gain to the parish priest and asks to stay there in order that he might assist rebuild the church building. But here the saint is mistaken. God is request him to repair the church building, not a church.

By now Francesco's advent appalls the people of Assisi. Dressed in rags and begging for his meals, he brought shame to his family. His father, furious over the loss of his money, and probably every bit upset virtually his son's ignominious behavior, carries Francesco home, shackles his feet and locks him up, until his mother sets him free. He promptly returns to San Damiano to begin his repairs. Farther enraged, Bernardone brings public charges against Francesco. He insists that his son either return the coin he had stolen or renounce his patrimony and render dwelling house.

On April ten, 1206, later being summoned by the bishop to business relationship for his actions, Francesco stands before a crowd of townspeople in the square of Assisi, not very far from his father's house. The bishop tells Francesco to return the money, and identify his trust in God. Francesco does what he was told and "with his usual literalness," every bit Butler'southward Lives of the Saints says, Francis adds this: "The apparel I wear are also his. I'll give them back." With that, he stripped off his clothes and laid them at his begetter's feet, and stood naked in the square.

The gesture would be only every bit shocking today. The bishop wept, stunned past the forcefulness of Francesco'southward actions, and wrapped the fellow in his cope. The symbolism is thus complete. Francesco has stripped himself of his fidelity to his male parent (and, incidentally, to his male parent's business as a cloth merchant) and is wrapped in the protection of the church. He has thrown himself entirely on God's providence. He has abased the pride of his youth. He has embraced a life of radical poverty, in simulated of Christ. Sis Poverty would be, "the fairest bride in the whole world, in imitation of Christ." And he has engaged in what would have been seen at the time as an act of public penance.

Simply at that place is more to it than even that. As Julien Dark-green notes in his biography, "The renunciation in the presence of the crowd was in itself, according to medieval mentality, a juridical act. From now on, Francis, with nothing to his name, was taking sides with the outcast and the disinherited."

Later on his conversion, St. Francis of Assisi conformed his life to the example of Jesus and, every bit Lawrence S. Cunningham notes, offered his life "as a gift to others."

In the leap of 1208, during a Mass in Assisi, Francesco hears the Gospel story in which Jesus asks his followers to "take nothing with them for the journey." Taking this as a personal telephone call, he throws away his shoes, tunic and staff, and put on instead the simple garb of a shepherd--what would become the familiar Franciscan tunic and hood--tied with a cord around his waist. The poor homo and his preaching are then compelling that he begins attracting adherents immediately. By the post-obit twelvemonth there are already 12 followers, who go known every bit the fratres minores (Latin for "bottom brothers"), better known every bit the Franciscans.

In 1210, Francesco presents a formal petition to found a religious order to Pope Innocent Three in 1210. Some of the papal advisers scoff at Francesco's simple plans for his "rule," finding its emphasis on radical poverty overly idealistic and almost willfully impractical. But so impressed is the pope with the human who stands before him that approval is granted swiftly.

Francis returns to Assisi to reside with his brothers in a small rural chapel in the countryside. From in that location, they fan out through central Italy, preaching, begging for alms and performing simple manual labor. In 1212, a women's sectionalisation of the order is founded under the leadership of his close friend Clare, a immature woman of Assisi. Francesco himself cuts off her hair, marker her for a life of poverty. The grouping became known as the "Poor Ladies of San Damiano," chosen today the Poor Clares.

In 1219, during the heart of the Crusades, Francis journeyed to Egypt and was received by the Sultan Mulik al-Kamil, detailed to groovy effect in Paul Moses's new book The Saint and the Sultan. Information technology is an expression of his desire for nonviolence, peacemaking and reconciliation in the midst of an era in which "sacred violence" was embraced even past religious leaders. Francis places himself in a dangerous place and employs his body as an musical instrument for peace. His hopes to convert the Sultan are unrealized, just al-Kamil listens to Francesco with good volition. At the stop of their lengthy discussion he is supposed to have said, "I would catechumen to your organized religion, which is a beautiful one, but I cannot: Both of us would exist massacred."

Later on his return to Italian republic, the number of friars grew, as did tensions amidst the new Franciscans, who had competing ideas about what it meant to lead a religious life. Seeing he was not upwardly to the challenges of running a quickly growing religious lodge, Francis resigned, turning over the direction of his grouping to another brother.

With his health failing (he suffered from a especially virulent eye infection every bit well every bit tuberculosis during much of his later years) he spends increasing lengths of fourth dimension in prayer. During 1 retreat, at Mount La Verna, Francesco has a deep mystical experience in prayer and feels an intense identification with the sufferings of Christ. During this retreat, he becomes the first person to receive the "stigmata," as the wounds of Christ's Passion are imprinted in his hands, feet and sides. Greatly embarrassed by this, he conceals them for the rest of his life by covering his hands with his habit and wearing shoes and stockings on his feet. Much of his fourth dimension was now spent in prayer.

Francesco's terminal few years were filled of pain and discomfort, from both his eyes and the stigmata. Still, he composes during this fourth dimension his joyful "Canticle of Brother Lord's day" during a terminal visit to San Damiano. Information technology is a final expression of his lifelong love of creation and his innate sense of the sacramentality, or holiness of all things, animate or inanimate.

At his decease, Francesco asks to be laid on the blank earth near a favorite chapel in the forest and to exist dressed in an erstwhile grayness addiction. On October four, he welcomes "Brother Death." Though he requests burial in the Criminals' Cemetery the next day his brothers, who loved him so much, went confronting his wishes and took his body in solemn procession to the church in Assisi. In that location it remained until two years afterward his canonization in 1230, when information technology was removed to the basilica that still holds his body.

On my fashion back from East Africa, afterward working with the Jesuit Refugee Service, while stopping in Rome, I was urged by the Jesuits to visit Assisi.

I had only one day in Assisi, which was hands reached by bus from Rome. Simply at that place, in that little town in Umbrian countryside, surrounded past pilgrims, threading my way through the narrow streets, standing in the very places that Francis stood, I was overwhelmed with the holiness of the place. All of Assisi seemed like a church building: the very paving stones seemed holy. Though in that location for just a few hours, I spent most of the time wandering effectually inside the bang-up basilica, staring at the gorgeous cycle of frescos of Francis's life, painted by Cimabue, and, nearly of all, praying well-nigh his tomb. I portrait of Francis is nigh life size, with Francis's anxiety painted very near the floor. Staring into the flecked eyes of the fresco I wondered what information technology must have been like to meet him here in Assisi.

Under the church Francesco is buried, and the surface area surrounding his earthen tomb has been opened up and turned into a footling chapel, with simple wooden pews for the pilgrims. You tin even affect the absurd, moisture dirt that surrounds his remains.

Afterwards I returned from Rome I began a long reading bout, which has never really concluded, of the many biographies of St. Francis, each shading his portrait with different colors: Adrian House'due south factual account, Nikos Kazantzakis lively portrait of a vibrant human, G.Chiliad. Chesterton'south appreciating one, Valerie Martin's poetic narrative, and Lawrence S. Cunningham'south more theological consideration of the globe's nigh pop saint. Forth with these I read through the drove of popular stories about Francis, some true, some probably legendary, called the Little Flowers of St. Francis. One of my favorites biographies was past Julien Green, which combined both fact, legend, theology and personal experience. Information technology was originally published in French nether the name Frere Francois. Only I liked the English name much better: God'southward Fool.