Francis of Assisi was a master of making room for the new and letting go of that which was tired or empty. As his first biographer said, “He was always new, always fresh, always beginning again.” Much of Francis’ genius was that he was ready for absolute “newness” from God, and therefore could also trust fresh and new attitudes in himself. His God was not tired, and so he was never tired. His God was not old, so Francis remained forever young. There are always new vocabularies, fresh symbols, new frames and styles, but Francis must have known, at least intuitively, that there is only one enduring spiritual insight and everything else follows from it: The visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world, and the invisible world is much larger than the visible.

I would call this mystical insight “the mystery of incarnation,” or the essential union of the material and the spiritual worlds, or simply “Christ.”

Our outer world and its inner significance must come together for there to be any wholeness—and holiness. The result is both deep joy and a resounding sense of coherent beauty. What was personified in the body of Jesus was a manifestation of this one universal truth: Matter is, and has always been, the hiding place for Spirit, forever offering itself to be discovered anew. Perhaps this is exactly what Jesus means when he says, “I am the gate” (John 10:7). Francis and his female companion, Clare, carried this mystery to its full and lovely conclusions. Or, more rightly, they were fully carried by it. They somehow knew that the beyond was not really beyond, but in the depths of here.

I want to share with you one of the most attractive, appealing, and accessible of all frames and doorways to the divine. It is called the Franciscan way after the man who first exemplified it, Francesco de Bernardone, who lived in Assisi, Italy, from 1182–1226. Most of us already know the basic story line of his life, and he already has the longest single entry of any one person in the Library of Congress. You can find many good biographies on your own.

A supreme irony I want to mention right at the beginning is that Francis and Clare, two dropouts who totally spurned the entire success, war, and economic agendas of thirteenth-century Assisi, have now been fully sustaining its economy for eight hundred years through the pilgrims and tourists who pour into this lovely medieval town! For centuries now, the Bernardone and Offreduccio families have been very proud of their children—but they surely were not when those children were alive. Francesco and Chiara later became Saint Francis and Saint Clare, for good but also for ill.

As Dorothy Day said about official saints, it allows us to “dismiss them too easily.” If we settle for any pretty birdbath Franciscanism, it is very hard to ever get beyond it, nor is it justified in its own social reality. Francis often functions as an idealized, free, and happy self for many spiritual seekers—from hippies to pious conservatives to socialists to liberal activists—but that is not always the real Francis.

We will first of all examine the ongoing effects and utter newness that emerged after Francis, and then perhaps we will appreciate his revolutionary life with even greater awe. As Søren Kierkegaard said, “We live life forward, but we understand it backward.” We will try to do just that with both Francis and Clare. Looking at the many connections that Francis made in his life and that have endured will dramatize how he helped us turn back onto that original but long lost street called the Gospel. We will try to understand Francis by reading his life from what has emerged through his and Clare’s imitators and followers who discovered and rediscovered what can only be called radical simplification.

Here I am thinking of people like Thérèse of Lisieux, Charles de Foucauld, Dorothy Day, Seraphim of Sarov, Nicholas von Flüe, thousands of Catholic and Protestant missionaries, Mother Teresa, and, most recently, Pope Francis. The way of Francis of Assisi cannot be contained inside of formal Franciscanism, simply because it is nothing more than the Gospel itself—in very distilled and honest form.

I want to illustrate here what Francis clearly changed and did differently, and what flowed from his unique wholeness. We will see that Francis was at once very traditional and entirely new in the ways of holiness, and he is still such a standing paradox. He stood barefoot on the earth and yet touched the heavens. He was grounded in the Church and yet instinctively moved toward the cosmos. He lived happily inside the visible and yet both suffered and rejoiced in what others thought was invisible. Again and again, he was totally at home in two worlds at the same time, and thus he made them into one world.

He, like all saints, delighted in both his Absolute Littleness and his Absolute Connection in the very same moment. Of course, they totally depend on one another. He and Clare died into the life that they loved instead of living in fear of any death that could end their life. They were both so very eager to love, and they somehow knew that dying to the old and unneeded was an essential part of living this love at any depth. Most of us do not seem to know that—and resist all change.

Yet Francis’ holiness, like all holiness, was unique and never a copy or mere imitation. In his “Testament,” he says, “No one told me what I ought to do,” and then, at the very end of his life, he says, “I have done what was mine to do, now you must do yours.” What permission, freedom, and space he thus gave to his followers! Bonaventure echoed that understanding of unique and intimate vocation when he taught, “We are each loved by God in a particular and incomparable way, as in the case of a bride and bridegroom.”

Francis and Clare knew that the love God has for each soul is unique and made to order, which is why any “saved” person always feels beloved, chosen, and even “God’s favorite” like so many in the Bible. Divine intimacy is always and precisely particular and made to order—and thus “intimate.”

Have you noticed that Francis of Assisi is hardly ever pictured with a book, like so many of the teacher saints? Or holding a church building as great churchmen are often painted, or even with his Rule, as Benedict or Basil might be? He is usually pictured glowing, or dancing, in ecstasy, with animals, or with his arms raised to the sky. His liberated body—in touch with everything—is itself his primary message. I have even noted that many paintings of him do not have a halo, as do most holy icons. He is so clearly transformed that we do not need to be reassured that he is among the holy ones, it seems. (If you doubt me, check it out for yourself in art museums!) Francis’ body, life, and message seem to glow on their own. A certain radiance and happiness accompanies his very name—Francesco, Franz, François, Francisco, little brother Francis.

Jesus himself, Paul, his iconoclastic interpreter, and both Francis and Clare made room for the new by a full willingness to let go of the old. This is a quite rare pattern in the history of formal religion, which is too often a love affair with small and comfortable traditions. Each of these game-changing people had the courage and the clarity to sort out what was perennial wisdom from what was unreal, passing, merely cultural, or even destructive, which is exactly how Jesus describes the way “a disciple of the kingdom” behaves. He says that such disciples are “householders who bring out from their household things both old and new” (Matthew 13:52). John the Baptist describes Jesus as a “winnowing fan” within religion itself—that separates the grain from the chaff (Matthew 3:12)—instead of just presuming that religion is all “grain” and the outsiders are all “chaff.”

True spiritual discernment is never as simple as the ego would like to make it. Discernment guides us in doing solid soul work, work that Francis and Clare took on with determination and honesty—with almost no initial counselors, ecclesiastical validation, or outside encouragement. Think about that. Yet they slowly and fully earned the trust and admiration of their contemporaries, even though they were formally breaking most of the cultural and even ecclesiastical rules. (We have no record of either of their fathers ever relenting in their opposition to them, however.) Franciscanism, however, is not an iconoclastic dismissal of traditional Christian images, history, or culture, but a positive choosing of the deep, shining, and enduring divine images that are hidden beneath the too-easy formulas. Theirs is no fast-food religion, but slow and healthy nutrition.

Both Jesus and Francis did not let the old get in the way of the new, but like all religious geniuses, revealed what the old was saying all along. I find much wisdom in what the contemporary faith seeker Christian Wiman writes, but never more than when he says, “Faith itself sometimes needs to be stripped of its social and historical encrustations and returned to its first, churchless incarnation in the human heart.”

Francis both named and exemplified that first churchless incarnation of faith in the human heart, but then he somehow also knew that it was the half-knowing organized Church that passed this shared mystery on to him and preserved it for future generations.

He had the humility and patience to know that whatever is true is always a shared truth, and only institutions, for all their weaknesses, make this widely shareable, historical, and communal. He understood the humility (kenosis) and the patience of incarnation. Even a little bit of the truth is more than enough for a saint. Precisely because both Jesus and Francis were “conservatives,” in the true sense of the term, they conserved what was worth conserving—the core, the transformative life of the Gospel—and did not let accidentals get in the way, which are the very things false conservatives usually idolize. They then ended up looking quite “progressive,” radical, and even dangerous to the status quo.

This is, of course, the constant and consistent biblical pattern, from Abraham to Moses, to Jeremiah, to Job, to John the Baptist, to Mary and Joseph. With courage and wisdom great seers invariably end up saying something exactly like Jesus did: “The law says, and I also say…” (Matthew 5:20–48).

Francis even says to a cardinal who was overseeing an early gathering of the friars, “I do not want to hear any mention of the rule of St. Augustine, of St. Bernard, or of St. Benedict. The Lord has told me that he wanted to make a new fool of me.”6 Wow! That is a mouthful on several levels! Was he rejecting earlier great saints, or was he, in fact, quite sure of what he uniquely had to do, even if it made him look like an idiot, which was a word he once used about himself? Great saints are both courageous and creative; they are “yes, and” or non-dual thinkers who never get trapped in the small world of “either-or” except in the ways of love and courage, where they are indeed all or nothing.

The biblical prophets, by definition, were seers and seekers of Eternal Mystery, which always seems dangerously new and heretical to old eyes and any current preoccupations with security. The prophets lived on the edge of the inside of Judaism. John the Baptist later does the same with Temple Judaism, and Paul then sharply disagrees with Peter and the new Christian establishment in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1–14). Francis and Clare continued this classic pattern in their own hometown as they physically moved from upper Assisi among the majores to the lower side of town and the minores.

There they had nothing to prove or defend, plus the most opportunities to have fresh and honest experience—and to find their True Center. It is ironic that you must go to the edge to find the center. But that is what the prophets, hermits, and mystics invariably know. Only there were they able to live at the edges of their own lives too, not grasping at the superficial or protecting the surfaces of things, but falling into the core and center of their own souls and their own experiences.

You can now let Francis and Clare show you how to die into your one and only life, the life that you must learn to love. It will show itself to be one continuous movement—first learning to love your life and then allowing yourself to fully die into it—and never to die away from it. Once death is joyfully incorporated into life, you are already in heaven, and there is no possibility or fear of hell. That is the Franciscan way. The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world.

Francis and Clare somehow came to see through the common disguises of heaven and hell, and they seemed to come to this on their own somehow!

The most famous and most widely read of the early collections of Franciscan stories emerged around the year 1330 in the Marches (borderlands) of Ancona, Italy, and was called The Little Flowers of Saint Francis. From that classic of Western literature and other early sources, I have selected a few of the original stories about the death of St. Francis. These reflections are written in gratitude for the life and spirituality of Francis of Assisi, who continues to inspire countless seekers to embrace the joy found in walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

Obedience in Death

One of the brothers once asked St. Francis what kind of a death he hoped for: a quick, unexpected death or a prolonged, painful death. And St. Francis said, “Brother, I want whatever death God wants for me.”

What faith, what love there is in that answer! It reveals St. Francis’ total surrender to the will of the “most high, all-powerful, all good Lord.” It echoes the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, not my will, but yours be done,” and on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

The surrender of Jesus to the very Trinity of which Jesus is the Word is the ultimate act of love of the Beloved, whom Francis had embraced as a young man, the crucified Jesus who said to Francis through the lips of the San Damiano cross, “Go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruin.”

The Wounds of Christ

It was on Mount La Verna, two years before he died, that Francis himself completed his repair of God’s house when, like Jesus, he emptied himself of whatever was keeping God’s house from being repaired and surrendered his life to the will of the Father as the ultimate act of love.

So strong was Francis’ love of Christ that the selfless love within him broke through his own body in the form of the sacred stigmata, the wounds of Christ crucified. It is a wonder that Francis did not begin to rise toward heaven then and there. But, of course, such spiritualism would be a denial of the mystery of Christianity: the incarnation of God in Jesus who, though God himself, suffered a very human death.

So, too, incarnate love kept Francis human, as well as shot through with the Spirit of God. He lived two more years in pain and suffering that were transformed by God’s voice shortly after Francis returned from Mount La Verna to Assisi. Francis had been away on Mount La Verna in Tuscany for a couple of months on a retreat in honor of St. Michael the Archangel, whose feast fell quite near the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. During that retreat, on or around September 17, 1224, Francis received the wounds of Jesus in his hands and feet and side.

When, a month or so later, he finally returned to Assisi, he went first to the monastery of St. Clare and her sisters, where a humble lean-to had been constructed on the side of the monastery. He was, practically speaking, blind from trachoma, an eye disease he had picked up in 1219 in Egypt during the Fifth Crusade. He was also suffering from what seems to have been tubercular leprosy, and he was hemorrhaging from the wounds of Christ.

Weak and frail and saddened by the direction some of the friars were taking the order, Francis lay in the dark of his improvised hut with field mice scurrying over his body for over 50 days with only Brother Leo, his scribe and confessor, by his side. His pain became so extreme that at one point he cried to God to help him bear his suffering with patience.

God answered his prayer, saying, “Tell me, Brother: if, in compensation for your sufferings . . . you were given an immense and precious treasure: the whole . . . earth changed into pure gold, pebbles into precious stones, and the waters of the rivers into perfume. Would you not regard the pebbles and the waters as nothing compared to such a treasure? Would you not rejoice?”

Francis answered, “Lord, it would be a very great, a very precious, and inestimable treasure beyond all else that one can love and desire.”

“Well, Brother,” the voice said, “be glad and joyful in the midst of your infirmities . . . as of now, live in peace as if you were already sharing my kingdom.”

Immediately, Francis was filled with joy because he knew he was already in God’s kingdom. Although he was suffering, all of creation had already been transformed for him so that when he died, not only would he join God in heaven, but he would also see all of creation transformed just as he had been told it already was. What he had seen in the vision of God’s voice, he would see with his own eyes.

He was so excited that, the next morning, Francis called his brothers together and sang to them the “Canticle of the Creatures” that he had just composed. And as he sang, Francis’ words revealed a new understanding and vision of the universe God had created, a vision of the transformation of everything we see around us in a new creation where there is no pain or suffering.

Our Sisters and Brothers

In his “Canticle of the Creatures” Francis praises God through creatures and very specifically through the four elements of the universe: earth, water, air, and fire. He embraces them as his brothers and sisters: Sister Earth, Sister Water, Brother Wind and Air, and Brother Fire. These transformed creatures show forth the goodness and glory of God, all of them having been redeemed by the mystery of the incarnation of God in Jesus. We and they give glory to God not by becoming pure spirit, but by being who we are: creatures overflowing with the spirit of God.

St. Francis realized that in surrendering to his own humanity, his own creatureliness, he was already rising even as he continued to live for two more years. It was as though he had turned, as Jesus had encouraged us, and become a child again.

St. John of the Cross once said that the Resurrection is interior to the cross. And Francis certainly was inside the cross of Jesus for the last two years of his life, but he was also seeing anew. As Franciscan Friar Eloi Leclerc said in The Canticle of Creatures: Symbols of Union: “Purified vision is attained only through a kind of agony—when we have become poor enough to welcome such purity and innocence. What chaos we must have within us if we are to see the world born again into the light! It is always in the shadow of the crucified Christ that the Christian, at the end of the journey, recovers the vision of the child.”

Meeting Sister Death

When he finally was nearing his physical death, Francis returned to the hearth of the order, the Porziuncola, or Little Portion, as he called the small chapel of St. Mary of the Angels on the plain below Assisi. He asked to be laid naked on the ground so he could die in total poverty with nothing of his own, like Christ on the cross. He knew that in that space and in that place, Sister Death would be able to find him and embrace him. In his “Canticle of the Creatures,” even death itself becomes a sister to Francis: When she comes to him, she will find him “in God’s most holy will.”

He reached out, too, to his dear friend, Lady Jacoba dei Settesoli, in Rome. He asked Brother Leo to write to her, telling her he desired to see her before he died, adding: “I ask you to bring some cloth for a tunic, the color of ashes, like the cloth made by Cistercian monks beyond the Alps. Also, bring some of your sweet cookies made of almonds and honey.”

How endearing this request is, and as Brother Leo was copying down Francis’ words, Lady Jacoba was already on her way to Assisi, having been told in prayer to leave immediately for Assisi if she wanted to see Francis alive.

When he had been laid on the barren ground, Francis asked that the passage in John about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples be read aloud. When the Gospel words had been spoken, Francis responded by reciting his favorite psalm, 142, and asked those present to join in. A few days later, according to St. Bonaventure, “When all of the mysteries were fulfilled in him and that most holy soul was released from the flesh and absorbed into the abyss of the divine brightness, the blessed man fell asleep in the Lord.”

A Loving Embrace

All these details are given to show us how close St. Francis was to creatures, and they to him, and how he taught us how to die, as well as how to live. St. Francis embraced his death as he embraced his life: with love. He demonstrated graphically that everything is God’s gift—even death itself—if we but embrace it with love and make death not only a portal through which we pass into eternal Love, but also a song of praise to God for giving us “Sister Death” to accompany us and reassure us that she has indeed found us to be in God’s most holy will.

St. Francis himself sings just such a mantra of hope at the end of his “Canticle”:

Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister
Bodily Death
From whom no one living
Can escape.
Woe to those who die
In mortal sin!
Blessed are those whom she
Will find in your most holy will,
For the second death
Will do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord,
And give him thanks and serve him
Humbly but grandly!

Such is St. Francis; such are all who live and die in God’s most holy will and who die welcoming their Sister Death, whom they know will do them no harm.

The Death of St. Francis

It is said that one of the brothers saw the soul of Francis ascending straight to heaven. Brother Thomas of Celano, Francis’ first biographer, added these details about St. Francis’ death in his Treatise on the Miracles:

The larks are friends of daylight and shun the shadows of twilight. But on the eve that St. Francis passed from this world to Christ, just as twilight was descending, the larks rose up to the roof of his cell and began circling it with clamor of wingbeat and song. No one knew if they were singing with joy or sadness, for their voices were filled with joyful tears and sad joy, as if they were orphaned children weeping and singing their father into heaven. The city guards who were keeping watch there were filled with wonder, and they summoned others to witness the sight.

St. Francis established three different Orders. The first one is for the friars; the second is for nuns, such as the Poor Clares; and the third is for laypeople. When Francis was establishing his Order, there were people who wanted to follow him but said, “We can’t join your First Order, we have a different calling from God. We can’t join the Second Order, we don’t have that calling. How can we follow the Gospel as secular people?”

Francis then gave them a Rule of their own to live by. Some people think that much of what Francis was calling people in his day to do is contained in the First Letter to All the Faithful, in which he invites the people to simply live the Gospel life. This means especially heeding the call of Christ to follow him and live the Beatitudes as best they can in their own particular way of life.

You might not know this, but Francis was not a priest himself; he really was a secular person. Although he did become a deacon, he was never a priest. The largest part of his life was spent as a secular person. One of Francis’s most important callings was that we go from Gospel to life and life to Gospel; that’s what the Secular Franciscans are all about and what they try to incorporate and live throughout their life.

By sharing in spiritual companionship through the larger fraternity groups of the Third Order, Secular Franciscans try to understand the Gospel as Francis did and then live it in their daily lives.

Secular Franciscans do not live the same way that people did in Francis’s time, when the Order was established—nor do Franciscan friars or sisters, for that matter. But the focus of all Franciscan Orders is still the same as it was over eight hundred years ago in the time of Francis: to live the Gospel life in all that we do. Below is testimony from two Secular Franciscans.

Barbara Mulligan, ‘Learn the Way of Francis’

March of 1982 was a time of pain and sadness in my life. Yet it was also a time when the most exciting experience I’ve ever known happened to me: I met the Lord. I felt the overpowering love and presence of Jesus, and from that moment on, my life was changed. The pain and sadness were gone, replaced by a joy and strength I’d never known before.

I had read Scripture prior to this time, but after this experience with Jesus it was as though I’d never read a word of it before. It took on a whole new meaning.

I knew that strength and perseverance come from the Lord, and nothing in the world could take that away. I intended to keep my eyes on Jesus. As time passed, my hunger for Scripture increased. Since that time, my day is never complete if I don’t read at least one passage from Scripture. Often times it will be more than that.

Shortly after my encounter with Jesus, God, in his infinite goodness, sent me a friend, my sister in Christ, Pauline. Our greatest common denominator was our desire to grow in our relationship with Jesus. We joined a Bible study class, started a prayer group of five people, and worked in parish ministry. But somehow that wasn’t enough; something was missing.

One day, I was helping out with a class at the parish, and they showed a video of the life of St. Francis. I’ve been familiar with Francis all my life; he’s the little man with a bird on his shoulder. There was only enough time to show half of St. Francis’s life that day, and I was really disappointed; I couldn’t wait to see the rest. Just as I’d seen Jesus so differently than ever before, I found the same thing was happening with Francis.

After Mass the next Sunday, a book in the parish book rack caught my eye: Murray Bodo’s Francis: The Journey and the Dream. I bought it, and as I read it, I found what I had been searching for. Francis brought the Gospel to life. He carried out the commands of

Jesus, literally. I was awed. I would never read the Good News again without thinking “Francis did that, Francis prayed that way, Francis told his brothers this or that.” As all of this was unfolding, I thanked God and prayed that the Spirit would lead me in the next step. As I was reading the Gospel of Luke one day, I felt that the Lord spoke to me through it. The passage is Luke 6:46–47: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.” I began to think about times when

I might not have followed Christ in my daily life, and I found selfishness, prejudice, pride, many things I’d never seen before. This brought me to the sacrament of reconciliation, which I celebrated with a priest who understood and gave me guidance. I began to understand what the sacrament was all about.

After finishing Francis: The Journey and the Dream, I read three or four more books about the life of St. Francis and was more intrigued with the man than ever. Pauline was at the same point in her own spiritual journey, and we began talking about the Secular Franciscans. After prayer and discernment, we decided to look into the process of becoming one. I have never been sorry.

In the years since becoming a Secular Franciscan, I continue to learn the way of Francis. I shed much of the excess baggage I had carried through the earlier years of my life and simplified things immeasurably. I began to realize my needs were few, and I had far too much; possessions were no longer important. Internally, I continue to look into myself and my reaction to the people around me, and realize that I don’t always react as Jesus would have. As I strived to lead the Gospel life, it is not easy, but I know that by following in the footsteps of Francis, I am tracing a path straight to God.

Pauline Williams, ‘Leper in All of Us’

My initial conversion experience came at a time when I was in a very desperate situation. It came very simply. I was reading a book that had brief scriptural messages in it as daily guidance. I had read this book every day for two years before it had an impact on me. But one day, sitting alone in my dining room, the Lord touched me. I heard in my heart what this book was saying to me, instead of in my mind. That was the beginning of my search to become closer to Jesus.

In the months following that experience, I participated in a women’s retreat, and saw Jesus so plainly in my sisters who attended that. That led me to my spiritual sharing and spiritual pal Barbara; I found Francis with her.

Throughout this time it was invaluable to attend meetings with other people, where we could all share stories about the difficulties in our life and how our faith was helping us to deal with these difficulties. These meetings helped me, as they did the others there, not to get discouraged in our pursuit of a closer relationship with Jesus.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why Jesus talks so much about lepers. When Francis first began his spiritual journey, he embraced a leper. This suggests that there is leper in all of us; we all have an opportunity to embrace the leper.

One final thing I’d like to mention. It has taken me many years to be able to see Jesus when I look in the mirror; being able to do this has brought me joy. I have learned that by letting Jesus into my heart and then out again, I can begin to see him in myself.

Learn more about the Secular Franciscan Order here.

Apparently, Brother Leo had not denied himself the pleasure of telling about the miracle that had just occurred, for their way was marked by popular demonstrations and by miraculous cures. Everyone wanted to see and touch the stigmatic of La Verna, who had become as a living relic, endowed with supernatural virtue. Even his donkey’s bridle was believed to help mothers in difficult childbirth obtain a happy delivery.

Francis, meanwhile, humble and absorbed in God, did not hear the murmurs of veneration by which he was accompanied. Pulling the sleeves of his habit over his bandaged hands, he extended only his fingertips to be kissed by his admirers, not even looking around him.

“Shall we reach Borgo San Sepolcro soon?” he inquired, long after they had passed the town. They made a short halt at the hermitage of Monte Casale, where he restored an epileptic friar to health. Stopping also at Citta di

Castello, he delivered a possessed woman who “barked like a dog,” and cured a young boy “whose wound healed over in the form of a red rose.”

Already the first snows had made their appearance on the mountains. One night when our travelers, prevented by a storm from reaching shelter, had been forced to take refuge under an overhanging rock for the night, they were unable to light a fire—a thing which put the muleteer in a bad humor. “It is all Francis’s fault,” he grumbled, “that we are in this fix and liable to freeze to death.”

The saint touched the grumbler on the back, and (writes St. Bonaventure) the mere touch of his stigmatized hand made the shivering man warm again. A few minutes later he dozed off, and as he himself related later on, he never slept better in his life.

Pained but with Purpose

No sooner had Francis arrived at the Portiuncula than, as though filled with new zeal, he wanted to resume his apostolic tours. But the aggravation of his gastric disorders and the pain caused by the stigmata and his weakness from the loss of blood, troubled the friars. They begged him to seek medical treatment, but he gaily calmed their fears. Did not his honor as Christ’s knight require him to die in harness? And throughout that winter and the following spring, mounted on a donkey, Francis continued to go about Umbria, preaching in as many as three or four villages in a day.

At Foligno, Brother Elias told him of a dream he had had about him: an old priest all in white appeared to him, warning him that Francis would die in two years. This announcement filled the Poverello with joy, but his infirmities soon increased to the point that the friars feared lest he should succumb before that date. He became almost blind and suffered from excruciating headaches.

As Honorius III and the Curia, driven from Rome by a popular uprising, were lodged in Rieti, Cardinal Hugolin urged Francis to consult Teobaldo Saraceni, the pope’s physician. Now the saint had a horror of doctors, and in order to get him to agree to treatment, Elias had to appeal to his spirit of obedience and quote this Scripture verse: “The Most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them” (see Sirach 38:4).

It was in the summer of 1225 that Francis consented to go to Rieti. Taking with him those who remained his nurses to the end—Brother Masseo and the Three Companions—he decided first to take leave of St. Clare, whom he feared never to see again. Upon his arrival, his condition became so grave that he had to give up going any farther. He stayed about seven weeks at San Damiano, where St. Clare had the consolation of caring for her spiritual father. She had a hut of reeds built for him between the chaplain’s house and the convent, like the one he occupied at the Portiuncula; but before getting any rest there, he spent some dreadful hours.

One would have thought that, “summoned by the devil, all the mice in the country had met there to torment him.” The wattles of his cabin were full of them, and the ground was covered with them. They climbed up on the table where he ate and into the bed in which he was attempting to sleep, and scurried squeaking over his face. One night, his patience exhausted, and tempted to despair, the Poverello cried out to God who seemed to have forsaken him. It was then that a familiar voice was heard:

“Francis, if in exchange for all these evils, you were to receive a treasure so great that the whole earth—even if it were changed into gold would be nothing beside it, would you not have reason to be satisfied?”

“Certainly, Lord!”

“Then, be happy, for I guarantee that one day you shall enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven, and this is as certain as if you possessed it already.

What did they matter now—after such an assurance—the mice, the suffering, and the other inventions of the Evil One? The divine words filled Francis with heavenly joy; the cabin of torments became a place of delight; and this malefic night inspired the invalid, overwhelmed by every ill, with the most optimistic song ever to spring from a human heart.

We like to think that it was at San Damiano that the Poverello composed it. For did not everything in this place which had seen the birth of his vocation, recall God’s mercies toward him? The cave in which he had hidden to escape his father’s “prison.” The stone bench where the old priest had sat and talked to him. The miraculous crucifix that had shown him his way. And this chapel rebuilt by him, whence in the silent night he could hear the chant of the Poor Ladies. No doubt, the thought of Sister Clare—the perfect incarnation of his ideal—the nearness of the four good brothers who cared for him with such tender devotion, and the thought of so many more of his sons who followed the Gospel so well in their poor hermitages, were added consolations.

So Francis blessed his fruitful and beautiful existence. He blessed all nature and life, victorious over death and evil; he blessed the sun that illumines man’s joys and sorrows, his struggles and triumphs; he blessed the earth, where man may merit heaven; and he thanked God for having created him. When the sun had risen, he called his companions and said to them: “The Lord has deigned to assure me that I shall one day enter His Kingdom. So to show Him my gratitude, I desired to compose this new song which you are about  to hear.” And the blind saint, for whom the least ray of light was a torture, sang to them what he called “The Canticle of the Creatures”:

Most High Almighty Good Lord,
Yours are praise, glory, honor and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong, And no man is worthy to mention You.
Be praised, my Lord, with all Your creatures, Especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is daylight, and by him You shed light on us.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor.
Of You, Most High, he is a symbol.
Be praised, my Lord for Sister Moon and the Stars.
In heaven You have formed them clear and bright and fair.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Wind
And for air and cloud and clear and all weather,
By which You give Your creatures nourishment.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Water,
For she is very useful, humble, precious and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire,
By whom You light up the night,
For he is fair and merry and mighty and strong.
Be praised, my Lord, for our Sister Mother Earth,
Who sustains and rules us
And produces varied fruits with many-colored flowers and plants.
Praise and bless my Lord
And give Him thanks and serve Him with great humility.

Such is the hymn that won for the Poverello the title of the “Orpheus of the Middle Ages,” the incomparable psalm which Renan considered the “most beautiful piece of religious poetry since the Gospels.” Sister Clare probably was the first to hear it, she who loved poetry and music and who also showed herself so grateful to God for the gift of life. Francis dictated it in Italian, such as we still have it; then had it sung by his companions to a melody he had adapted for it. And he himself was so pleased with it that for a moment he thought of sending Brother Pacifico through Europe to sing it to everyone.

An occasion did come soon to call on the talents of the former troubadour.

A violent quarrel had once more set the civil and religious authorities of Assisi at loggerheads. Bishop Guido had excommunicated the podesta Oportulo who had countered by forbidding all relations between the bishop and the officials. Nothing could be more painful to the saint than to see his fellow citizens at odds. Immediately adding a new stanza to his poem, he called Brother Pacifico and said: “Go find the podesta for me, and invite him with his worthies to come to the bishop’s palace to hear my song.”

There was a great crowd in the bishop’s courtyard when the King of Verse appeared with his musicians: “You are about to hear,” he announced, “the ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ which Francis has just composed to the glory of God, and for the edification of his neighbor. And he himself asks you through me to hear it with great devotion.” Brother Pacifico then intoned:

Most High Almighty Good Lord,
Yours are praise, glory, honor and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
And no man is worthy to mention You.
Be praised, my Lord, with all Your creatures,
Especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is daylight, and by him You shed light on us.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor.
Of You, Most High, he is a symbol.

Alternating with their leader, the friars repeated the stanza in unison. Meanwhile the podesta, writes the author of the Speculum, “had risen, and, with hands joined and tears in his eyes, was listening with reverent attention.” The entire audience imitated him, moved by these accents of a beloved voice and at hearing their dear saint singing the beauties of a world he could no longer see.

Be praised, my Lord for our Sister Mother Earth,
Who sustains and rules us and produces varied
fruits with many-colored flowers and plants.

It was at this point that Francis had introduced his plea for pardon and peace, his true heart’s message to his fellow citizens:

Be praised, my Lord, for those who grant pardon for love of You,
And bear sickness and tribulation.
Blessed are they who shall bear them in peace,
For by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

At these words, the emotion of the assemblage was at its height, and sobs choked them as the podesta turned toward the bishop. Falling on his knees before him, he said: “Even if he had killed my own son,  there is not a man in the world that I would not want to forgive now, for love of God and His servant Francis. With much greater reason, my Lord, I am ready to make whatever satisfaction you may desire.”

Bishop Guido was no less prompt to admit his own errors. Raising the podesta to his feet and warmly embracing him, he said: “I likewise ask your forgiveness. Pardon me for not fulfilling my charge with proper humility and for having yielded once more to anger.”

They separated completely reconciled; and, thanks to Francis, charity and peace won out once more among the people of Assisi. As soon as he was able to be moved, the saint left Sister Clare, whom he was never to see again, and with his companions, headed for Rieti, fifty miles away. They passed near Terni, then along the winding course of the Velino, coming at last into a lovely plain at the end of which was to be seen—etched against the somber mass of Monte Terminillo—the smiling city where the papal Curia was staying.

Rieti was preparing a triumphal welcome for the stigmatized saint of La Verna. To avoid it, or because of his exhausted state, three miles before reaching his destination Francis asked hospitality of the parish priest of San Fabiano. He was a poor priest whose income was derived from a vineyard. He gave Francis and his escort a warm welcome, but was soon to repent having a saint in his home. For his house was invaded by crowds of pilgrims. The horses of the prelates of the Curia trampled down his garden, and the thirsty throngs picked his choicest grapes and ravaged his vineyard. As he was blustering against the people who had ruined him, Francis observed: “Father, there’s no use in crying over spilled milk. But tell me, how much does your vineyard bring you in the best years?”

“Fourteen measures.”

“Well, then! If you will agree not to call people names any more, I’ll guarantee you twenty from this vintage. And if you fall short, I promise to make up the difference.”

St. Francis Arrives

But the saint did not have to make up anything, for when the grapes were harvested, the priest had his twenty measures. And this was a real miracle, for his vineyard had never yielded more than fourteen before.

The arrival of Francis at Rieti gave full scope to the popular devotion. The bishop’s palace, where Hugolin installed him, was the scene of sometimes stormy demonstrations. People fought over his garments, his combings. A farmer who had collected the water in which Francis had washed his hands, sprinkled his sick flock of sheep with it and they were immediately healed. The case is also told of a canon named Gideon, who was also sick, but as a result of his debaucheries, and who came up to Francis weeping and asking him to bless him.

“How can I make the sign of the cross over you,” Francis asked him, “a man who lives only for the flesh? I will bless you, though, in Christ’s name; but know that evil will befall you again, if you ever return to your vomit.”

And the prediction came true; for when the cured canon went back to his sinful life, he alone was killed when the roof fell in at the house of a fellow canon where he was passing the night. Meanwhile, the saint’s condition grew steadily worse. His stomach, liver, and spleen were seriously affected, while he continued to suffer horribly in his head and eyes. At that time, wishing to hear some music, he summoned a friar who had been a troubadour in the world, and begged him to borrow a viol and give him a little concert. “It would do Brother Body so much good,” he remarked, “to be a little distracted from his sufferings.”

But the former troubadour, who believed that a saint ought to stay in character, observed that some people might be scandalized. “Then let’s not say any more about it,” replied Francis, “for we do have to make concessions to public opinion.”

But the next night, a mysterious visitor came and played the viol under his windows. In the morning, Francis sent for the scrupulous friar. “God consoles the afflicted,” he observed. “Last night, to make up for the concert you refused me, He permitted me to hear one infinitely more beautiful than all the music of earth.”

Not wanting, however, to tarry longer in the palace of the Bishop of Rieti, he asked to be taken to the hermitage of Fonte Colombo. It was there that he underwent treatment by a doctor.

The treatment consisted of cauterizing with a red hot iron the flesh around the more affected eye, from ear to eyebrow.

The sick man shuddered at the sight of the preparations, then addressed the glowing iron: “Brother Fire, the Most High has made you strong and beautiful and useful. Be courteous to me now in this hour, for I have always loved you, and temper your heat so that I can endure it.”

“We fled,” confessed his companions, “so as not to witness his sufferings. But our Father said to us: ‘Men of little faith, why did you run away, when I did not feel anything at all?’ Then turning to the doctor, he said: ‘If it wasn’t done right, you may do it again!’”

And this the doctor did, for he opened the veins over Francis’s temple, after which another physician thought it his duty to pierce both ears with a red-hot iron.

With all this, Francis enjoyed great spiritual happiness. Sometimes the brothers heard him singing new hymns, whose words and music he had composed. Some of them he sent to St. Clare, who was also ill and much worried about him. His heart was more eager than ever, and his head teemed with impossible projects. “Brothers,” he would say, “let us start serving our Lord, for so far we have done nothing.”

For Francis would have liked to live his life over again, seeking new apostolic and knightly adventures. Since this was impossible, he began to dictate letters, two of which, at least, have come down to us.

In one, addressed to the “rulers, consuls, judges, and governors of all countries,” Francis urged these highly placed personages to “think of death which waits for no man, not to transgress God’s Commandments, and to receive frequently our Lord’s sacred body and blood.” Then perhaps recalling what he had seen in Muslim lands, he begged them to “appoint a public crier or other means to invite the people every night to praise and thank the Lord.”

In the other letter, addressed to all the guardians of his Order, he asked them to urge clerics and bishops to venerate the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ above everything else, and to use only proper chalices, corporals, and linens at the altar. And so it was that the Little Poor Man spent his last winter on earth.

When spring came again, Elias and Hugolin had Francis taken to Siena, where it seems there were also some very celebrated physicians. It was during this journey in the plain extending south of San Quirico d’Orcia, that a meeting occurred that has become legendary.

Francis saw three old women coming toward him, so perfectly alike in age, height, and features, that one would have thought them triplets. As they passed him, they bowed reverently and greeted him: “Welcome, Lady Poverty!” “Never,” writes Thomas of Celano, “did a greeting give so much pleasure to St. Francis.” Believing them to be beggar women, he requested the doctor who accompanied him to give them something. Dismounting, the latter gave each of them some money. Thereupon the three sisters disappeared so suddenly that our travelers, who had turned around almost at once, were unable to see what had become of them. “It was doubtless a celestial vision,” writes St. Bonaventure, “symbolic of the virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience, to which Francis had always been so faithful. But as poverty,” he adds, “was incontestably his chief title to glory, it was natural that it was this virtue these mysterious virgins wished especially to honor in him.”

The reception Francis received at Siena was no less enthusiastic than that of Rieti. Clergy and laity vied with one another in their display of both curiosity and veneration. The biographers tell us that a knight made Francis the gift of a pheasant that did not want to leave him and that refused to eat whenever it was separated from him. They also speak of a learned Dominican who came to propose to him a theological difficulty from which he extricated himself with honor. They further declare that it was there, with the connivance of Brother Pacifico, that a friar of Brescia succeeded in seeing the sacred stigmata. “I forgive you,” said the saint later to the King of Verse, “but you have caused me much pain.”

As for the doctors of Siena, their efforts were as ineffectual as those of the pope’s physician. One night the saint vomited such a quantity of blood that the friars believed his last hour had come. Gathered round his pallet, they were inconsolable: “What is to become of us,” they mourned, “poor orphans that we are, abandoned by him who was father, mother, and good shepherd to us?”

Death’s Door

They besought him to leave them a written testimony of his last wishes, to guide them in the future. Francis had Brother Benedict of Pioraco, who had celebrated Mass several times at his bedside, summoned. “Write,” he said, “that I bless all my friars present and to come. And as I am not able to speak longer, here, in a few words, is what I want them to know: In memory of me who have blessed them, let them always love and honor one another. They must ever love and honor our Lady holy Poverty, and they must ever humbly and faithfully obey the prelates and clergy of our holy Mother the Church.”

Meanwhile, Brother Elias, who had been alerted, hastened to the invalid to take him “home” to die. Francis himself desired to breathe his last at the Portiuncula; while his fellow citizens, who had just been despoiled by the people of Bettona of the body of St. Crispolto, did not intend to be dispossessed this time.

Assuredly, it is rather painful to observe the preoccupation of Elias and the Assisians during the last months of the Poverello’s life. But we must remember that the people of the Middle Ages were a little less hypocritical than we; and we should likewise recall the development that the cult of relics had taken on at this period. Nothing outweighed for a city the advantage of possessing the body of a servant of God to place on its altars. Piety, patriotism, and self-interest were here in accord; and men were as willing to shed their blood then for holy relics as they have since been for assuredly more futile motives.

Led by the Minister General, the cortege wended its way toward Cortona; and the invalid stopped for a few days at the hermitage of Le Celle, a league from the city. There, a poverty-stricken man who had just lost his wife and had several children to care for, came to Francis to ask for alms. Francis gave him his cloak, saying, “It is very fine, as you see. That is why, if you dispose of it, be sure to make whoever wants it pay you well.”

It was a new cloak, for it replaced the one the saint had taken off on the same trip to give another poor man. The brothers lost no time trying to get it back; but the beggar held on to it so stubbornly that they had to hand him a good sum to make him give it up.

Some time after returning to the Portiuncula, with the onslaught of the summer heat, they decided to take Francis up to the healthier air of the hermitage of Bagnara, in the mountains east of Nocera. Later, while there, the saint seemed at death’s door. The swelling of his legs had gone up to his abdomen, and he could not take any nourishment. Fearing the worst, the municipality of Assisi dispatched its men at arms to meet the cortege. Thus escorted, the group reached the village of Satriano in the mountains. There, driven by hunger and thirst, the knights and their retinue attempted in vain to procure some provisions. “It’s up to you, then,” they said laughingly to the friars, “to feed us, since the people here refuse to sell us anything whatever.”

“You should have gone about it differently,” replied Francis, “and put your trust in God and not in flies.” By flies he meant their money. “Ever since man sinned, all earthly goods are alms that God gives with equal kindness to good and evil men. So go to them and ask them for what you need for the love of God.” They obeyed and this time obtained all they desired.

The arrival at Assisi was in the nature of a triumph. “Everybody exulted,” writes Celano; “for they hoped that the Saint would soon die, and they blessed God for bringing him back to their city.”

But in the spring of 1206, all that was there among the wheat fields sparsely set with olive trees was a ruinous chapel. Within, suspended over the altar, hung a mild and serene Byzantine crucifix. Although the church was no longer frequented, an indigent priest was still attached to it, living, no doubt, on alms and the suffrages of the faithful.

“Now one day as Francis was passing, he entered the chapel. Kneeling before the wooden crucifix, he began to pray, when suddenly the figure of Christ, parting its painted lips, called him by name and said, ‘Francis, go repair My house, which is falling in ruins;’

“It would be impossible,” the biographer continues, “to describe the miraculous effect that these words produced on the hearer, since the latter declared himself incapable of expressing it. But one may reverently conjecture that Christ then impressed on his heart the sacred wounds with which he was later to mark his stigmatized body.

For how many times in the future was not the blessed man to be met along the road, shedding compassionate tears over the Savior’s Passion?”

It was not a rare thing for knights to become builders of churches, in expiation of the faults committed in their adventure-filled lives. Had not one of the four sons of Aymon, men said, abandoned his military career to help build the Cathedral of Cologne? Francis may have believed himself called on to imitate him; for, taking literally an order evidently applying to the Church of Christ itself, he at first thought that he was to restore the chapel of San Damiano. He at once offered the priest money for oil and a lamp, so that a suitable light might burn before the image of Christ crucified.

But where was he to find the necessary resources for rebuilding the chapel?

That need not be an obstacle! Francis thought of his horse and the bales of cloth at home. He returned home, made up a bundle of the most precious stuffs, then fortifying himself with the sign of the cross, leaped to the saddle and set off at a gallop for Foligno. There (as he usually did) he met customers who bought his merchandise.

He also sold them his horse, so that he had to make the ten miles back to Assisi on foot. When he returned, the priest of San Damiano was in the chapel. Francis kissed his hands, detailed his plans to him, and attempted to give him the receipts for his sale. But the priest took this at first for a practical joke. Was not this risky money, which might embroil him with Francis’s family? And then, how was a man to believe in the sudden conversion of this young fop, who even yesterday was scandalizing the whole town by his follies? So, Francis did not succeed in having his gift accepted. But he did win the priest’s confidence and got his permission to stay with him. As for the purse that was burning his fingers, he tossed it like a dead weight into the corner of a window and thought no more about it.

Meanwhile, Peter Bernardone was in a towering rage and deeply distressed at learning what his son had done. Assembling his friends and neighbors, he rushed to San Damiano “to seize the fugitive and bring him home.”

Fortunately, the new hermit had taken care to secure a place of refuge—a sort of dugout under a house that no one, except a friend, knew about. As the conspirators drew near, he ran and hid in it, and let them shout it out. He hid for a whole month, eating in his cave the little food that was brought him, and beseeching God to help him carry out his plans. And in this dark retreat, the Lord sent him such consolation and delight as he had never known.

The time came, however, when, blushing at his fears, he left the hiding place; and resolved to face the music, he headed for town. He was exhausted by his austerities. People seeing him gaunt and wan—he who a short time before had been so full of life—thought that he had lost his mind, and began to yell, “Lunatic! Madman!” Urchins slung stones and mud at him; but he went on, without appearing to notice their taunts.

Hearing the hullabaloo, Peter Bernardone came out of the house and saw that it was his son they were harrying. He became furious. Hurling himself on Francis like a fierce wolf on an innocent lamb, he dragged him into the house, where he chained him and shoved him into a dungeon. He spared neither arguments nor blows to wear down the rebel, but the latter refused to be shaken.

Personal business, however, obliged the father to leave; and Francis’s mother profited by this to try her hand at swaying her son.

Seeing that he remained inflexible, one day when she was alone in the house, she broke his chains and set him free. The father’s fury knew no bounds, when, on his return, he learned of the prisoner’s escape. He launched into reproaches against his wife; then attempted a final move at San Damiano, where Francis had again settled.

But trial had steeled his courage. He went forth now with assurance, with peaceful heart and joyous mien. He calmly walked up to his father, declaring that he no longer feared either irons or blows and that he was ready to endure all things for the love of Christ. Feeling that all hope was lost for the time being, Peter Bernardone concerned himself only with recovering the Foligno sales money and sending the young rebel into exile. This respectable citizen hoped in this way to get the son who shamed him out of the way, and perhaps by cutting off his living, to bring him back home someday.

Shouting angrily on the way, he rushed to the palace of the commune, and swore out a warrant before the consuls. The magistrates charged a town crier to summon Francis to appear before them.

But the young man, who was bothered neither about exile nor about giving back the money, refused to obey; and claiming that having gone into God’s service, he was no longer under civil jurisdiction, he declined to appear. The consuls declared themselves incompetent and rejected the plaintiff’s claim, leaving him with no recourse but to appeal to the jurisdiction of the Church.

The Bishop of Assisi at that time was Lord Guido, who occupied his diocese until after the saint’s death. He formally bade the accused to appear before his tribunal. “I will go before the bishop,” replied Francis, “for he is the father and master of souls.” The judgment was most probably rendered in public, in the piazza of Santa Maria Maggiore, in front of the bishop’s palace.

“Put your trust in God,” said the bishop to the accused, “and show yourself courageous. However, if you would serve the Church, you have no right, under color of good works, to keep money obtained in this way. So give back such wrongly acquired goods to your father, to appease him.”

“Gladly, my Lord,” replied Francis, “and I will do still more.” He went within the palace and disrobed; then, with his clothing in his hands, he reappeared, almost entirely nude, before the crowd.

“Listen to me, everybody!” he cried. “Up to now, I have called Peter Bernardone my father! But now that I purpose to serve God, I give him back not only this money that he wants so much, but all the clothes I have from him!” With this, Francis threw everything on the ground. “From now on,” he added, “I can advance naked before the Lord, saying in truth no longer: my father, Peter Bernardone, but: our Father who art in Heaven!”

At this dramatic climax the bishop drew Francis within his arms, enveloping him in the folds of his mantle. The spectators, catching sight of the hair shirt that the young man wore on his skin, were dumbfounded, and many of them wept. As for Peter Bernardone, unhappy and angry, he hurriedly withdrew, taking with him the clothing and purse.

And that was the way Francis took leave of his family. One would like to think that he saw his mother again, and from time to time showed some mark of tenderness toward this woman who admired him and had had an intuition of his sublime destiny.

But the biographers make no further mention of her. For some time after that, Francis did no more about San Damiano. The funds on which he had counted had vanished, and he had not yet learned that poverty sufficeth for all things. He had first to go in search of suitable clothing, since all that he had to cover him was a little coat full of holes that the bishop’s gardener had given him after the scene of the day before. He drew a cross on it with chalk by way of a coat of arms; then he set out through the woods singing the Lord’s praises in French at the top of his lungs.

His heart was overflowing with joy. There was to be no more now of circumspection and feeling his way. A pathway of light opened straight before him. He was consecrated to the Master’s service; he had just been made Christ’s knight and had solemnly espoused Lady Poverty. God was rewarding him by making him happy. He was making the woods ring with his songs when some robbers, scenting a prey, rushed up.

This man with his threadbare cloak was a disappointment to them. “Who are you?” they asked. “I am the herald of the Great King!” replied Francis with assurance. As he did not yet have the gift of taming wild beasts, the robbers beat him up and threw him into the snow at the foot of a ravine. “There you are, oaf!” they shouted as they made off. “Stay there, God’s herald!”

Francis climbed out of the slush-filled hole only with great effort, and when the ruffians were out of sight and hearing, he went on his way, singing louder than ever. He then directed his footsteps to a monastery, where he thought the monks would consent to clothe him in exchange for work.

The monks took him on as a kitchen helper but gave him nary a stitch to cover him. For food, they let him skim off a little of the greasy water they fed the pigs. It is true that afterward, when Francis’s reputation for sanctity began to be established, the prior was ashamed at the way he had treated him and came to beg his forgiveness. And he obtained it easily, for the saint said that he had very pleasant memories of the few days spent in his kitchen.

It was at Gubbio that an old friend gave him something to wear. So afterward men saw him wearing a hermit’s garb—a tunic secured at the waist by a leather belt, sandals on his feet, and a staff in his hand. He next stayed a while with the lepers, living in their midst, bathing their sores, sponging off the pus from their ulcers, and giving them loving care for the love of God.

Then he went back to San Damiano.

There, the chaplain still recalled recent events, and Francis had to reassure him by telling him of the bishop’s encouragement and approval. After this, the restoration of the chapel could begin. As Francis had no money with which to buy materials, he was obliged to beg for them. He went through the city crying, “Whoever gives me a stone will receive a reward from the Lord! Whoever gives me two will have two rewards! Whoever gives me three will receive three rewards!” Sometimes, like a jongleur who sings in order to earn his salary and repay his benefactors, the collector would interrupt his rounds to sing to the glory of the Most High.

And whether he addressed himself to God or to men, whether he begged for hewn stone or celebrated the divine attributes, the Little Poor Man (his biographers observe) “always spoke in a familiar style, without having recourse to the learned and bombastic words of human wisdom.” Is this an allusion to the jargon and to the false science that flourished in the schools? One thing certain is that here you have defined the man and the style, which go together in St. Francis.

Simple he was in his person, having but one aim and one object, honestly and openly sought. Simple he was in speech, knowing what he said, and saying only what he knew; avoiding lengthy, pompous, and obscure discourse, speaking—like Jesus in the Gospels—to make himself understood and to be useful to others. Picturesque and sublime, his talks, coming from the heart, reached men’s hearts, delivering them from their sadness and their sins, and revealing to them the happiness that comes from belonging to God.

Moreover, if many still held the new hermit to be a madman and persisted in insulting him, many already were beginning to understand him; and, moved to the depths of their being, they wept as they listened to his words. They saw him carrying stones on his back and striving to interest everyone in his project. Standing on his scaffolding, he would joyously hail the passersby. “Come here a while, too,” he would shout, “and help me rebuild San Damiano!”

It may be that crews of masons responded to his appeals, and working under his direction, helped him in his tasks. It was then, accounts tell us, that he predicted that virgins consecrated to God would soon come and take shelter in the shadow of the rebuilt chapel. One can imagine how he drove himself—he who had always been petted and pampered by his parents. Taking pity on him, his priest-companion began—poor as he was—to prepare better food for him than that with which he himself was satisfied.

Francis, at first, raised no objections; but seeing that he was being mollycoddled, he said to himself: “Francis, are you expecting to find a priest everywhere who will baby you? This is not the life of poverty that you have embraced! No! You are going to do as the beggars do! Out of love for Him who willed to be born poor and to live in poverty, who was bound naked to the cross, and who did not even own the tomb men laid Him in, you are going to take a bowl and go begging your bread from door to door!” So Francis went begging through the town, a large bowl in his hands, putting everything that people gave him into it. When it came to eating this mess, he felt nauseated. He managed, however, to get it down, and found it better than the fine food he used to eat at home.

He thereupon thanked God for being able—frail and exhausted as he was—to adjust himself to such a diet; and from then on, he would not let the priest prepare anything special for him. Let no one imagine, however, that he was not sometimes subject to false shame. For instance, one day when oil was needed for the chapel lamp, he went up to a house where a party was in progress, with merrymakers overflowing into the street. Recognizing some old friends and blushing to appear before them as a beggar, he started back. But he soon retraced his steps and accused himself of his cowardice before them all. Then, making his request in French, he set off again with his oil.

Thomas of Celano observes here that “it was always in French that St. Francis expressed himself when he was filled with the Holy Ghost; as if he had foreseen the special cult with which France was to honor him one day,” and wanted to show himself grateful in advance.

No one, though, ever loved his homeland more than he did, or was more beloved by its people. But the veneration of his fellow citizens did not come in a day. A considerable number of them began by mocking him at will, including his brother, Angelo, eager to show himself for once witty at Francis’s expense. This happened very likely in a church, where Francis was praying one wintry morning, shivering with cold beneath his flimsy rags.

Passing near him with a friend, the brother remarked to his companion, “Look! There’s Francis! Ask him if he won’t sell you a penny’s worth of his sweat!” Francis could not help smiling. “It’s not for sale,” he replied gently. “I prefer to keep it for God, who will give me a much better price for it than you.”

The barbed shafts no longer struck home. Only one thing continued to distress him, and that was his father’s attitude toward him. For every time that Peter Bernardone met his son, he became infuriated and cursed him.

A son like Francis could not remain under the spell of a father’s curses. So, to an old beggar named Albert, he made the following offer: “Adopt me as your son, and I will share the alms I receive with you. Only whenever we meet my father and he curses me, you make the sign of the cross over me and give me your blessing.”

The arrangement was to Albert’s advantage, and we may be sure that he had no scruples about giving so many blessings as there were curses to ward off. So, addressing the wrathful merchant, Francis would say to him, “You see that God has found a way to offset your curses, for he has sent me a new father to bless me.”

Evidently Peter Bernardone was sensitive to ridicule and ended by taking things more calmly, for we hear no more of him in the biographies. No doubt, he lived long enough to behold the rising star of the Little Poor Man. And who knows if, on seeing his son honored by important personages, he did not put as much zeal into acknowledging him as he had into denying him?

He is also regarded as a patron of priests and travelers, a protector against the devil, and a guardian of the mails. He is called the wonderworker and saint of the world. The story and tradition of devotion to St. Anthony of Padua began almost with the moment of his death on June 13, 1231. His Franciscan brothers tried to keep his death secret to avoid violence and a struggle between citizens of Padua and Capodi Porte to claim his body for burial. Despite their efforts, children began running through the streets of Padua shouting, “The saint is dead!” Crowds came to view the body of Anthony and attend his burial.

His grave at once became a place of extraordinary devotion and numerous miracles. Legends would later attribute to him miracles worked even during his life.

Less than a month after his death the bishop, clergy, nobles and podesta (mayor) of Padua requested his canonization. They gave among their reasons the great veneration and miracles taking place at his tomb. Anthony was not yet dead a year when Pope Gregory IX declared him a saint of the Church, and construction began on a basilica to honor his memory and remains. A papal bull dated two days before the first anniversary of his death granted an indulgence of one year to all who would visit Anthony’s tomb on his feast or within its octave.

Since then, popular piety and devotion to St. Anthony have taken many forms. In some cases, history offers a reason for a particular practice or form of devotion. In other cases, it explained by legend.

And in some instances, the origin of the devotion may be lost or unexplained.

Finder of Lost or Stolen Things

Nearly everywhere, Anthony is asked to intercede with God for the return of things lost or stolen. Those who feel very familiar with him might pray, “Tony, Tony, turn around. Something’s lost and must be found.”

The reason for invoking St. Anthony’s help in finding lost or stolen things is traced back to an incident in his own life. As the story goes, he had a book of psalms that was highly important to him. Besides the value of any book before the invention of printing, the psalter had the notes and comments he had made to use in teaching students in his Franciscan Order.

A novice who had already grown tired of living religious life decided to depart the community. Besides going AWOL, he also took Anthony’s psalter! On realizing his psalter was missing, Anthony prayed that it would be found or returned to him. After his prayer the thieving novice was moved to return the psalter to him and to also return to the Order, which accepted him back.

Legend has embroidered this story a bit. The legend goes that the novice was stopped in his flight by a horrible devil brandishing an ax and threatening to trample him underfoot if he did not immediately return the book. Obviously a devil would hardly command anyone to do something good. But the core of the story would seem to be true. And the stolen book is said to be preserved in the Franciscan friary in Bologna.

In any event, shortly after his death people began praying through Anthony to find or recover lost and stolen articles. And the “Responsory of St. Anthony,” composed by his contemporary, Julian of Spires, o.f.m., proclaims that “the sea obeys and fetters break / And lifeless limbs thou dost restore / While treasures lost are found again / When young or old thine aid implore.”

The Novena to St. Anthony

In many churches and at shrines the world over, it is common to find not only a statue of St. Anthony but also the existence of a continuing novena in honor of the saint. People drop in and out of the devotions, making novenas on nine or thirteen Tuesdays or Sundays. An obvious reason for Tuesday is that Anthony was buried on a Tuesday and that is when the miracles began.

The novena in honor of St. Anthony, according to one or more novena books and leaflets, is linked with a legend about a pious childless couple in Bologna around the year 1617. The story says has it that, after twenty-two years of longing for a child, the wife took her troubles to St. Anthony. He is said to have appeared to her in a dream, telling her, “For nine Tuesdays, one after the other, make visits to the church of my Order; on each of those days approach the holy sacraments of penance and of the altar, then pray before my picture, and what you ask, you shall obtain.”

In one version of the story she conceived but gave birth to a badly deformed child. Again asking the saint’s intercession, she took the child, at Anthony’s instruction, to his altar, and the deformity at once disappeared.

Whatever fact may or may not be behind the legend, in 1898, Pope Leo XIII granted a plenary indulgence to those spending some time in devout meditation, prayers, or the performance of some other acts of piety in honor of St. Anthony of Padua on Tuesday or Sunday of any week with the intention of doing so for thirteen Tuesdays or Sundays without interruption. At the same time, Pope Leo XIII recommended the practice of St. Anthony bread.

St. Anthony Bread

Different legends or stories account for the donation of what is called St. Anthony bread. By at least one account it goes back to 1263, when it is said a child drowned near the Basilica of St. Anthony, which was still being built. His mother promised that if the child was restored to her she would give for the poor an amount of corn equal to the child’s weight. Her prayer and promise were rewarded with the boy’s return to life.

Another reason for the practice is traced back to a baker in France during 1890. Faced with a broken lock on the shop door, the baker prayed through St. Anthony that the locksmith could open the door without breaking it down. She promised bread for the poor in return for her favor. The door was opened, and she kept her promise.

Today St. Anthony bread is the offering or donation given to the poor in honor of St. Anthony for a favor received through his intercession. The donation could also go to a variety of charitable causes. In some places parents also make a gift for the poor after placing a newborn child under the protection of St. Anthony. It is a practice in some churches to bless small loaves of bread on the feast of St. Anthony and give them to those who want them.

St. Anthony Lilies

In many places lilies are blessed on the feast of St. Anthony and given to those who want them. Some people dry them to preserve them or carry them on their person in a cloth container. The lily is meant to remind the possessor of St. Anthony’s purity and our own need to pray for the grace of purity in times of temptation.

This expression of piety is believed to have its roots in eighteenth-century France following the French Revolution. The Franciscans had been expelled from Corsica and their church abandoned. Yet people came to the church for an annual observance of the feast of St. Anthony on June 13. One year, some months after Anthony’s feast, a man wandered into the church and found lilies from the celebration still fresh.

The custom of blessing lilies is another of those approved by Pope Leo XIII. The prayer of blessing asks for the grace to preserve chastity, peace, and protection against the evil one.

St. Anthony’s Brief

“Behold the Cross of the Lord! Be gone, you enemy powers! The lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David has conquered! Alleluia!” are words that Pope Sixtus V had inscribed on the obelisk he erected in the quadrangle in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. They are also words attributed to St. Anthony known as the Brief (or letter) of St. Anthony. Some people carry the words with them, a form of asking for protection against the devil.

The custom of carrying and praying the words comes from the story of a woman in Portugal tempted by the devil and obsessed with thoughts of suicide. As the story is related, she was on her way to drown herself but stopped off at a Franciscan chapel to pray before a statue of St. Anthony. During her prayer she fell asleep and saw St. Anthony, who released her from her disturbed state of mind.

When she woke up she found a letter, or brief, given to her by St. Anthony, with the words quoted above. It has been written that the original letter was preserved with the crown jewels of Portugal. This practice may also be rooted in a story about Anthony’s own struggle with the devil, who was trying to choke him. Anthony, says the early account by a contemporary friar, put the devil to flight by invoking Mary’s help and making the sign of the cross.

Guardian of the Mail

Perhaps you’ve received a letter with the initials S.A.G. written somewhere on the envelope or under the flap or stamp. Or you may even have received a letter with a stamp bearing a picture of St. Anthony with the letters S.A.G. The letters stand for St. Anthony Guide or Guard. Usually the stamp has no more postal value than a Christmas or Easter seal. But in 1931, for the seventh centenary of Anthony’s death, both Italy and Portugal issued postage stamps in his honor.

St. Anthony’s association with the mail is said to have come from an incident in his life. According to a story in Charles Warren Stoddard’s St. Anthony: Wonder-Worker of Padua, Anthony wished to journey to the town of Campo San Pietro, some distance from where he was staying. The purpose of the trip was to rest and reflect.

He dutifully wrote a letter to his superior to ask permission for the trip. But when it came time to give the letter to a messenger, it could not be found. Anthony took it as a sign that he was not to go and put the trip from his mind. Inexplicably, some time later he received an answer from the superior giving permission for the trip.

A further association with the mail goes back to an event that was said to have happened in 1792. One Antonio Dante, so the story goes, journeyed to Lima, Peru, leaving his wife behind in Spain. After his departure she wrote to him many times without receiving any reply. Finally, she went to the church of St. Francis in Oviedo and placed in the hands of St. Anthony’s statue a letter to her husband in Peru. She prayed that Anthony would get the letter to him and obtain a reply.

According to the tale, she returned to the chapel the next day. A letter was still clasped in the hands of the statue. She began scolding St. Anthony for not delivering her letter. The noise she made prompted the sacristan, who said he had tried to get the letter from Anthony’s hands but without success. The wife is then supposed to have reached up and taken the letter from Anthony’s hands quite easily. At the same time, three hundred gold coins spilled from the statue’s sleeve. When the letter was opened, it was not the wife’s letter but a letter from the husband. He said that, not hearing from her for so long, he had thought her dead. But her most recent letter had been delivered by a Franciscan priest.

Holy Matchmaker

Among the Basques St. Anthony is called Santo Casamentero, the Holy Matchmaker or saint of those looking for husbands. According to the Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs by Rev. Francis X. Weiser, Basque girls make a pilgrimage to his shrine in Durango on Anthony’s feast. They pray that he will help them find “a good boy.”

It may help that the young men are said to make the same journey to the shrine, where, gathered outside the church until the young women are finished with their prayers, they wait to ask them to dance. Weiser speculates that the association with engagement and marriage is inspired by all the statues and pictures of Anthony carrying the infant Jesus in his arms.

St. Anthony and the Child Jesus

St. Anthony has been pictured by artists and sculptors in all kinds of ways. He is depicted with a book in his hands, or with a lily or a torch. He has been painted preaching to fish, holding a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament in front of a mule, or preaching in the public square or from a nut tree.

But since the seventeenth century we most often find the saint shown with the child Jesus in his arms or even with the child standing on a book the saint holds. A fuller treatment of this popular image of St. Anthony is found in the previous chapter.

The Chaplet of St. Anthony

Curious readers occasionally share descriptions or drawings of a chaplet of thirteen beads with a medal of St. Anthony. They want to know what kind of rosary or crown this may be. The beads are called the Chaplet of St. Anthony. The chaplet is prayed by saying, in each set, an Our Father on the first bead, a Hail Mary on the second, and a Glory Be on the third. The chaplet seems to have had its origin in nineteenth-century Padua.

Patron of Sailors, Travelers, and Fishermen

In Portugal, Italy, France, and Spain, St. Anthony is the patron saint of sailors and fishermen. According to Fr. Weiser, his statue is sometimes placed in a shrine on the ship’s mast. And the sailors sometimes scold him if he doesn’t respond quickly enough to their prayers.

Not only those who travel the seas but also other travelers and vacationers pray that they may be kept safe through Anthony’s intercession. Several stories and legends may account for associating the saint with travelers and sailors. First, there is the very real fact of Anthony’s own travels in preaching the gospel, particularly his journey and mission to preach  the gospel in Morocco, a mission cut short by severe illness. But after his recovery and return to Europe, he was a man always on the go, heralding the Good News.

There is also a story of two Franciscan sisters who wished to make a pilgrimage to a shrine of our Lady, but they did not know the way. A young man is supposed to have volunteered to guide them. On

their return from the pilgrimage, one of the sisters announced that it was her patron saint, Anthony, who had guided them. Still another story says that, in 1647, Fr. Erastius Villani of Padua was returning by ship to Italy from Amsterdam. The ship, with its crew and passengers, was caught in a violent storm. All seemed doomed. Fr. Erastius encouraged everyone to pray to St. Anthony.

Then he threw into the heaving seas some pieces of cloth that had touched a relic of St. Anthony. At once, the storm ended, the winds stopped, and the sea became calm.

Teacher, Preacher, Doctor of the Scriptures

Among the Franciscans themselves and in the liturgy of his feast, St. Anthony is celebrated as a teacher and preacher extraordinaire. He was the first teacher in the Franciscan Order to be given the special approval and blessing of St. Francis to instruct his brother Franciscans. His effectiveness in calling people back to the faith through his preaching resulted in the title “Hammer of Heretics.” Just as important were his peacemaking and calls for justice.

In canonizing Anthony in 1232, Pope Gregory IX spoke of him as the “Ark of the Testament” and the “Repository of Holy Scripture.” That explains why St. Anthony is frequently pictured with a burning light or a book of the Scriptures in his hands. In 1946, Pope Pius XII officially declared Anthony a Doctor of the Church. It is in Anthony’s love of the word of God and his prayerful efforts to understand and apply it to the situations of everyday life that the Church especially wants us to imitate St. Anthony. While noting in the prayer of his feast the effectiveness that Anthony is known for as an intercessor, the Church especially wants us to learn from Anthony the teacher the meaning of true wisdom and what it means to become like Jesus, who humbled and emptied himself for our sakes and went about doing good.