Parts 1 to 12 in a series of 52
The aim of these reflections is to offer some understanding of the spirituality of Saint Francis of Assisi. It is obvious that one saint differs from another as, for example, in the New Testament the personalities and styles of Saint Peter and Saint Paul differ markedly. We could say that they had different spiritualities. What then does the word spirituality mean? Spirituality is the way a person is attracted to the Lord and how he or she develops this attraction into a discipline of life. In St Paul it is clear that the dominant influence in his life was the vision he had on the Damascus Road. As he set out with his soldiers to persecute the Christians, the Lord appeared to him and said: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? [Acts 9:4]. Paul was overwhelmed by the thought that the Lord identifies himself with every Christian. To strike a Christian is to strike Christ. In his preaching and thinking Paul often came back to this thought. He developed a theology or spirituality based on his experience of Christians being the body of Christ and he said in 1 Corinthians 12:27: Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Was there an experience in Francis' life that shaped how he thought of the Lord? There certainly was as is evident when we read his Testament. Before he died the incident he recalled as shaping his life was his meeting with a leper. He described this incident not long before he died and in the following meditation we will see how this incident affected Francis.
In his Testament Francis states that the sight of lepers made him feel sick. But one day, as he was riding outside the town of Assisi, he met a leper on the road. Face to face with the leper, Francis experienced a challenge of grace. He realized that how he reacted to the leper was how he reacted to Christ himself because in the leper he experienced the presence of the Lord. His experience was similar to the experience of Saint Paul on the Damascus Road. Francis could easily have greeted the leper, perhaps given him money and wished him well without even getting off his horse. But Francis felt this was not enough. Instead he got off his horse and kissed the leper. In his Testament Francis said of this incident: 'What had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body. And afterwards I delayed a little and left the world'. To appreciate the significance of this incident we must remember that Francis was a young, educated citizen of Assisi. His father was a cloth merchant and Francis had travelled with his father to France to buy cloth. He was ambitious for glory and was popular with the youth of Assisi. We can presume that since his father was a cloth merchant Francis wore fine clothes. A leper was an exact opposite of Francis. A leper had no place in society, was not allowed to enter a town and his or her ambitions were completely thwarted by illness. Yet it was in a leper that Francis experienced the Lord and this experience became the dominant influence in his life. In the next reflection we can see how this experience became the basis of Francis' spirituality.
What thoughts went though Francis' mind as he remembered his meeting with the leper? Firstly, he felt a sharp embarrassment. In the leper he had experienced the presence of the Lord who is sinless, who is all perfect and is God. Yet in the leper the Lord appeared ugly, deformed and repulsive. Francis, on the other hand, was embarrassed that he, a sinful human being, was well dressed, highly regarded, popular and ambitious. Should he not then live and dress in a way that reflects more clearly how he felt before the leper? Later, Francis would say that we are what we are in the eyes of God and no more. In this way Francis began to translate his meeting with the leper into an ideal or spirituality of poverty. Secondly, he realized that since the Lord met him in the person of a leper, it was clear the Lord did not attach any importance to social status for its own sake. The leper had no social status and was not allowed to enter a town. Francis was a prominent young citizen of Assisi with an attractive future ahead of him. Francis began to feel that he should live as a person who is unimportant to society and so he gave up his position in society and took this second step towards a life of poverty. Thirdly, Francis had found where he would find true sweetness in life: 'What before had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body'. With St Paul, Francis learnt to regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord [Phil 3:8]. This was Francis' third step toward Lady Poverty.
4. Admonition 1: The Body of Christ
One way to know a person is to listen to the sort of advice he or she gives. Some people always seem to give sad advice pointing out what can go wrong. Others encourage us to be happy and look at what is bright in our lives. Saint Francis has left us twenty-eight snippets of advice, known as Admonitions, so by looking at these we can see what sort of a person Francis was. It can be said first of all that he was a person who was concerned with the most important thing in life, namely, how to recognize Jesus. Francis said that when the apostles saw the Lord they saw a man like themselves and when we look at the Lord we see only sacred bread. But what the Apostles saw with their eyes was only part of the truth for the Person they saw was God. So when we look at the host during Mass we see only bread but we believe that we are looking at God. So Francis advises us: 'Let us, as we see bread and wine with our bodily eyes, see and firmly believe that they are His most holy Body and Blood living and true'. We commonly use the word admonition to mean a warning. But Francis in his these twenty-eight Admonitions is not so much warning us as giving us advice. It is hoped in these articles to look at more of these Admonitions and so build up a picture of Francis. To know Francis is to know Franciscan spirituality because the aim of Franciscan spirituality is to look at life, prayer, creation, the Church and God in the way that Francis looked at them.
In the previous article I mentioned how Francis advised us to see the Lord as God in the bread of the host. But Francis also gives us advice by his actions as well as by his words. Not long before his death Francis wrote a testament in which he spoke again about how he saw the Lord in the bread of the host. Francis realized that we have the Eucharist and the mass because we have priests who consecrate the host and offer mass. When Francis attended mass and looked at priests he concentrated on the presence of the Lord. He was not distracted by any sins he saw in priests because he was totally absorbed in looking for the Lord. Francis was not blind to any sins the priests might have committed. He said that when he sees any sin in them, he turns his attention to the Lord. He acted in his way 'because,' he said, 'in this world, I see nothing corporally of the most high Son of God except His most holy Body and Blood which they receive and they alone administer to others'. Today, it is all too easy for us to consider sin in priests. Sadly, the sins of some priests have received much attention in our newspapers and news programmes. This is sad and it is a severe test to our faith that, perhaps, is being tested more than was the faith of Francis. Can we say with Francis that while we are aware of the sins of priests we do not let these sins distract us from the presence of the Lord in the sacraments they give? Saint Francis did not want to live in an unreal world. He saw sin in priests but he did not let the sin blind him to the Lord present in the sacraments and in the Eucharist. He acted in this same way with the Pope and Bishops to whom he gave obedience even when they did not understand what he felt the Lord was calling him to do. This example of Francis is a challenge to us.
Francis recognized the presence of Jesus in the sacrifice and sacrament of the Eucharist. But he also found God and the Lord in other people, in the world and in animals. This is a significant element of Franciscan spirituality and it is the reason why Francis has been declared the patron saint of ecology, of the care of the earth. Francis met the Lord in a special and personal way when, standing before the leper, he realized that how he reacted to the leper indicated how he reacted to the Lord. He found the sight of lepers quite sickening just as all people feel about embracing the cross of the Lord. But when Francis generously kissed the leper and so responded to the Lord in the leper, he found that what had seemed bitter to him was turned into sweetness of soul and body for him. After this experience he began his religious vocation and retreated from his usual pattern of life. In a remarkable way he also found images of God in fire, water, the sun and the moon and in the whole world that God has given us. He also found a peace with wild animals. On one occasion Francis was able to tame a wolf that had been attacking the people of the town of Gubbio. This showed that within his lifetime Francis had come close to becoming one with Christ. He was marked with the stigmata, the marks of the passion of our Lord to show that he had carried his cross to his Calvary; he showed that he had reached a state of peace in the kingdom of God. Long before in history, the prophet Isaiah had foretold this peace, namely, that the lion would lie down with the calf in the kingdom of God [Isa 11:6].
7. Admonition II: The evil of self-will
In his second Admonition Francis speaks about the evil of self-will. By self-will Francis means disobedience. When God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they disobeyed God and ate the fruit. They listened to what they wanted and not to what God wanted. Francis expresses this most vividly when he says: 'And so, through the suggestion of the devil and the transgression of the command, it became the apple of the knowledge of evil'. It is pointless to recognize Jesus in the sacraments, in the Church and in creation if we do not listen to what Jesus is saying to us. At times this is a challenge because many conflicting voices tell us how to live, what is right, what is allowed and so on. Francis believed that Jesus was telling him to start a new way of life based only on the Gospel. Many bishops and many of his companions tried to persuade him to accept the form of religious life as worked out by earlier monks such as Saint Benedict and Saint Bernard. But for Francis to do this would have been to go against what he believed the Lord was telling him to do. Had Francis done what they wanted he would have felt that he was eating the apple of self-will. So in this Admonition Francis asks us to listen to our conscience and not put the suggestions of other people before the voice of our conscience. To follow our conscience is to refuse to eat the apple of self-will. Francis says: 'For they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good who make their will their own and, in this way, exalt themselves over the good things the Lord says or does in them'.
8. Admonition III: Perfect obedience
A single remark can be misleading. On one occasion Francis said that obedience meant being like was a skeleton that can be put wherever one wishes. So an obedient person is one who accepts without question the circumstances of life. To take this remark as Francis's whole advice on obedience would be most misleading. Francs showed a broader attitude towards obedience when he wrote a short letter to his companion, Brother Leo. Leo and Francis had been walking from one town to another. As they walked Leo told Francis of a difficulty he had. After the journey Francis wrote a letter to Leo. In the letter, Francis speaks to Leo as a mother speaks to her children, that is, he speaks kindly not looking for faults but anxious to help Leo. Francis' advice to Leo then is kindly and considerate. He encourages Leo to come back and talk to him if he ever feels the need for this and this would have encouraged Leo. Francis then gives the surprising advice that Leo is to decide on what to do by listening to his conscience. Francis wrote: 'In whatever way it seems better to you to please the Lord God and to follow His footprint and poverty, do it with the blessing of the Lord God and my obedience'. This advice should not surprise us because Francis himself found his obedience by following his conscience. Many people advised Francis to adopt one of the tried and approved rules for religious life. In his conscience Francis was not free to do this and by following his conscience he gave us the Franciscan way of life.
9. Admonition IV: Let no one make being over others his own
A strong tendency in our society is for personal independence, even for living on one's own in a unit or house. Perhaps we may not want to be in charge of other people but we can be reluctant to have other people over us. Be at as it may, it will always be necessary to have someone in charge of work, of government, and to be in management. It was the same for Francis. He founded an Order and was in charge of the Order he founded. He was its founding father. Like anyone else Francis had to work out how best to be a superior. In his fourth Admonition he shows how he worked this out; he then advises us how we to act when in charge. He said: 'Let those who are placed over others boast about that position as much as they would as if they were assigned the duty of washing the feet of their brothers'. More than that, he advises us not to be upset should we lose a position of authority. In fact, Francis resigned from being the head of the Order and asked that one of the brothers be appointed as his superior. He said that he would be happy to obey a novice who had just entered the Order if he were appointed his superior. Francis founded an Order that was to be a group of brothers but within this group he laid down that there be superiors to regulate the life of the Brothers. While Francis did go away to caves for times of payer, his life was a life of obedience. This is a long way from wanting an independent lifestyle. Francis gave a new way of life to the Church. He did not do this for the sake of being independent but for the sake of trying to live the Gospel in a literal way and to follow the footprints of the Lord who was obedient even to the point of death.
10. Admonition V: Let no one be proud, but boast in the cross of the Lord
We tend to write about and preach outstanding events in the lives of the saints. In Francis we point to the wonder of the stigmata and his ability to tame even a wild wolf. But when Francis speaks about himself what he mentions are his weaknesses. This should not surprise us. A saint like Francis is a person who has experienced more keenly than us the presence and wonder of knowing God. When a person experiences God, the person also experiences the vast difference between God and us. When the prophet Isaiah was given a vision of God he said I am a person of unclean lips [Isa 6:5]. Before the presence of God, Isaiah felt unworthy. In his fifth Admonition Francis reminds us of our dignity in being created in the image and likeness of God. Yet, he adds, all other creatures obey God more faithfully than we do. Creatures follow the laws of nature just as we should follow the law of the Gospel. But in fact each of us has to take responsibility for Our Lord being put to death for our sins. Of what can we boast? Francis says we should not boast of our knowledge or of our human skills, great as they may be. Nor should we boast of our abilities and talents that have been given to us as gifts from God. But we can boast of our weaknesses and in carrying the cross of the Lord. Like St Paul, Francis knew that by recognizing his own weakness he allowed the Spirit of the Lord to work in him and make him strong: I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me [2 Cor 12:9].
11. Admonition VI: Imitation of Christ
Are saints more talented than we are? For us it is difficult, almost impossible to persevere through Lent with some penance we have chosen for ourselves. Yet when we read the lives of the saints we wonder at their long fasts, their hours of prayer, their great virtues and the miracles they worked. All of this seems to be a long way from what we know of ourselves. And yet Our Lord said to us in the Gospels that we should be perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect. St Francis felt the same as we do as we see in his sixth Admonition in which he speaks of imitating Christ. Clearly he found it difficult to imitate the saints he knew and venerated because he wrote in this Admonition: 'it is a great shame for us that the saints have accomplished great things and we want only to receive glory and honour by recounting them'. Living a Franciscan spirituality then has to be more than taking on the name of Franciscan be it as our identity or as our ideal. Everyone admires Francis of Assisi but to what extent do we feel that we can imitate him and by imitating him imitate Christ. All Francis wanted to do in his life was to live the Gospel and this we can all want. A first and necessary step in the imitation of Christ is to want to imitate Christ. This we can all do. Then when we feel embarrassed at how poorly we imitate Christ we can remember that Francis too felt inadequate and a poor disciple of Christ. Throughout his life he retained the feeling of being unworthy, the feeling he had when meeting God in the leper.
12. Admonition VII: Let good action follow knowledge
The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life [2 Cor 3:6]. To imitate Christ we have to know Christ and we learn of Christ from the Gospels. But we can know Christ for many reasons. For example, we can read the Gospels out of curiosity, out of a sense of duty, or simply to be able to tell others what the following of Jesus entails. This gives us knowledge but knowledge of itself is of little value. Knowledge must flow over into what we do. Francis heard a passage of the Gospels read in church and the passage struck a chord in him. He heard the words that say a disciple of Christ should not have gold or money, but should preach the kingdom of God and do penance. When Francis heard these words from the Gospel of Matthew he said: 'This is what I want, this is what I seek, this is what I desire with all my heart'. Immediately, Francis went out of the Church and began to put these words into actions. Franciscan spirituality entails knowing Francis, how he thought and what he did. Through this knowledge of Francis we have a road map showing us how to follow the footprints of Christ. But, with this map in hand, do we say, yes this is what I want to do and then go out and do it? It is all too easy to have knowledge, even to keep learning more and yet not put into practice what we know. We can know the letter of the Gospels but, unless we listen to the voice of the Spirit within us, the letter will kill us.
This is the first 12 chapters of a series on Franciscan spirituality to be published on this website
Fr Campion Murray ofm is a conventual Franciscan Friar and a distinguished theologian. He lives and works in the Franciscan community at Campbelltown NSW Australia
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