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Franciscan Spirituality

Parts 12 to 24 of a series of 52

13. Admonition VIII: Avoiding the sin of envy

It can come as a shock to realize just how sensitive Francis was to the words of Scripture. There are two short sentences in St Paul that Francis used to great effect. Paul said that unless the Holy Spirit is active within us we are not able even to say Jesus is Lord. He also says that of ourselves we are not able to do good because without the grace of God we can do nothing. Apart from me you can do nothing [Jn 15:5]. Francis applied these two statements of Paul to his reflection on envy. When we envy the good done or said by others we have to remember that they speak and act by the power of the Spirit within them. So to envy them is really to envy what the Spirit is doing. To envy what the Spirit does in others is to envy the Spirit. So Francis did not hesitate to say that this is a sin of blasphemy against the Most High God. Perhaps behind this Admonition there is an echo of Francis's meeting with the leper, the event that prompted his conversion. When Francis met the leper he realized in a moment of grace that in meeting the leper he was meeting Christ. This is true of everyone because the grace of God and the Spirit of God are active in everyone. To envy this then is to envy what God is doing in a person. But at the basis of envy is the thought that what another person has is more than we have. When then we envy what God is doing in others, we are really saying that God is not doing the same in us. This is dangerous and untrue because Our Lord died not for others but for me and for all. The same Lord is active in all of us and loves us.

14. Admonition IX: Love

As used in films, on television and in novels the word love almost always presumes an attraction of one person for another or of a person for some object. It is difficult for us to use the word love of anything that does not attract us. Yet in the Gospels our Lord speaks of the need to love our enemies. In general we use the word enemy of anyone or anything that we harms us or that we would want to harm. Francis in his ninth Admonition used the word enemy of anyone who hurts us. A hurt can come to us in many ways. We can be hurt by people wanting to hurt us and we can be hurt by people who are unaware they are hurting us and who do not intend to hurt us. How often we are offended and upset by a thoughtless remark. Francis always thought first of God. So when someone hurt him, his first reaction was to think of how he had hurt God by his sins. In spite of his sins God continued to love him and so he in turn had to show love to those who hurt him. He showed this love by what he did. He said: 'That person truly loves his enemy who is not hurt by an injury but, because of love of God, is stung by the sin of his soul. Let him show him love by his deeds'. In this Admonition we see again just how conscious Francis was of the presence of God in his life. He lived in the presence of God and tried to gauge all his actions by the standards of the Gospel.

15. Admonition X: Castigating the body

St Paul called out: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? [Rom 7:24]. We need to be rescued from danger, from enemies and from whatever is harmful to us. For Paul, the enemy was his own body. In the tenth Admonition Francis echoes this thought exactly. Francis points out how easy it is to blame someone else when we sin. We can so easily say that so and so tempted me. To say this is to say that we need to be rescued from other people. This is not what Paul said nor is it what Francis says. For Francis we all have an enemy in our bodies and we have to take charge of our bodies. Francis says: 'Each one has the enemy in his power, that is, his body through which he sins'. A person is blessed when he or she holds captive the enemy, namely, one's own body. The body has been given into our charge and we are wise to safeguard ourselves against it. This was advice that Francis put into practice even to an extreme degree. Once when he was tempted by the devil we read that he took off his clothes and whipped himself with a cord saying: 'Come on, Brother Ass, that's the way you should stay under the whip!' Francis tamed a wild wolf, he preached to birds, he brought peace to people but he achieved all this by subjecting his body to discipline, by treating it as his enemy.

16. Admonition XI: Let no one be corrupted by the evil of another

When speaking of envy in Admonition VIII, Francis warned us against envy by pointing out that the good done by people is done in them by the action of grace and of the Holy Spirit. So to envy others is to presume that God is not as active in our lives. But the only action that is not a product of grace is sin. Sin should displease us but the important thing to know is how and why it should displease us. Francis says quite clearly that we are not to be disturbed and angry at sin in other people. We are to be disturbed and angry not because of the sin but because of our love for others. To be angry over sins in other people is to store up guilt for ourselves. Behind these words, that are at first difficult, there is the reality that we are not to judge others because we cannot see into the conscience of another person. We can see a sinful action but we cannot read a human heart and know whether or not a person has sinned in his or her heart. But we do know what is in our own conscience and when we act against conscience. We are fully aware of our own sins. These must disturb and make us angry because they offend God. In this context Francis quotes Matthew's Gospel: Return to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's [22:31]. As Francis uses this text, Caesar applies to other people to whom we must extend love not anger while we must show to God obedience, for we must obey God and not sin.

17. Admonition XII: Knowing the Spirit of the Lord

When we do some good deed we are tempted to feel pleased, even wanting what we have done to be recognized and praised by others. Francis says that such a thought does not come from the Spirit of God. It has already been mentioned in these articles that Francis was aware that we are able to do good only by the power of the Spirit acting in us. But what we do of ourselves without the Spirit is a product of a sinful nature that 'is always opposed to every good'. Francis draws two conclusions from this. He says first that a servant of God does not boast when the Lord performs some good through the servant. The glory belongs to God and to the grace of God. But he concludes further that this servant will regard him or herself as worthless and esteem him or herself less than all others. The reason for this is that the servant believes that had anyone else received as much grace as the servant that person would have done more good than the servant. For this reason the servant esteems him or herself as the least. St Francis lived this out in his life. In his Major Legend of Saint Francis, Saint Bonaventure says that Francis tried to hide in his heart the good things of the Lord, not wanting to display his own glory. When others praised him, Bonaventure relates how Francis would say to himself: 'Francis, if the Most High had given so much to a thief, he would be more grateful than you!' Francis says: 'A servant can be known to have the Spirit of the Lord in this way'.

18. Admonition XIII: Patience

A Franciscan in Germany who had been a soldier during World War II and who had served on the Russian front said to me one day that it is easier to be a saint on a full stomach. When we are deprived of the basic requirements for life, water, food and warmth we begin to learn what sort of a person we are. And of course in war you are face to face with people whose job is to kill you. Francis wrote an Admonition about patience because it was a virtue he had to learn. The path in life to which had God had invited him to follow was to live the Gospel. But for Francis this did not come easy. His challenge is summed up in his experience with the leper. Our Lord explained how closely we are united to Him when he used the parable of the vine and the branches; Christ is the vine of which we are the branches. But it comes as a shock to realize that the branch growing alongside us on Christ the vine is a leper. Francis realized that instinctively he drew back from what he found distasteful: 'While I was in sin it seemed to me too bitter to see lepers'. But when he answered the call of the Lord to meet the leper he learnt that what had seemed bitter was turned into sweetness. So he began to act against his taste and comfort. As a son of a cloth merchant he was accustomed to having fine clothes; he now exchanged these for a poor tunic. He was accustomed to ambition and the company of his companions in Assisi. All these he left to be with Christ. In this Admonition he assures us that we have only as much patience as we feel when things are distasteful to us and difficult. Patience is not tested when we are comfortable.

19. Admonition XIV: Poverty of Spirit

Sometimes Francis acted in a manner we would call bizarre. For example, we read in one of his biographies: 'Taking off his tunic, blessed Francis ordered Brother Peter to lead him naked with a rope tied around his neck in front of the people'. Why would Francis do this? Perhaps, he did this because he felt that the people who already regarded him as a saint were misled in praising him; they were unaware of his weaknesses. So much is recorded in the biography but one can also speculate that Francis remembered how embarrassed he had felt many years earlier when he stood before the leper. When he met the leper Francis was well dressed and regarded by all as an honourable young man while the leper was ugly and held no place in society. Yet Francis experienced Christ in the leper and became acutely aware that the appearances were contrary to the truth. In the leper he experienced the all holy God while in himself he felt a sense of sin. When the people were praising him Francis wanted them to know what he thought of himself and so acted as he did. In this Admonition Francis says that the opposite of poverty of spirit is to do many penances but then take offence when even a single hurtful word is spoken about hem. A person who is truly poor is spirit, he says 'hates himself and loves those who strike him on the cheek'. Poverty of spirit is to acknowledge that we stand before God as sinful people and any offence against us can be and should be accepted as what we deserve for our sins.

20. Admonition XV: Peace Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God [Mt 5:9].

Francis was called a man of peace and apart from being able to be at peace with a wild wolf he also settled a dispute between the Bishop and Mayor of Assisi. What made him a man of peace? It has already been pointed out that Francis was conscious of the presence of the Lord. This awareness stemmed from his meeting the Lord in the person of the leper. So God was in a way more real to Francis than were his companions and the people to whom he preached. But while he was conscious of the presence and reality of God, he was also aware that before God he was a sinner. So he warned us not to be upset by any injury done to us but to think rather of our own sins. By growing in his relationship with God and aware that the Lord forgave his sins and welcomed him, Francis was at peace in himself. Hence in this Admonition he says: 'Those people are truly peacemakers who, regardless of what they suffer in the world, preserve peace of spirit and soul out of love of our Lord Jesus Christ'. We know that when we become absorbed in anything, be it what we are reading, when watching a sporting event, or busy at work, we can lose track of time and we can put aside for a time any thought of hurts or injuries done to us. For the moment we are absorbed in what we are doing. The mind and heart of Francis was centred on the Lord so that he could put aside all other concerns. In this way he preserved peace in himself by remaining in the presence of God.

21. Admonition XVI: Cleanness of heart

Francis lists three conditions to be met before a person can be said to be clean of heart. The first is that a person must 'look down upon earthly things'. In his religious experience of meeting the lord in the person of a leper, Francis came to feel a vanity or sense of discomfort in the circumstances of his father's business and his home. In his own words, he left the world after this meeting and put aside his good clothes and his social position in Assisi. He began to look down on earthly things and became known as the Poverello, the Poor Man of Assisi. But he set aside earthly things so as to be free to 'seek those of heaven'. From the beginning of his conversion, he felt a need to stay in caves and remote places so that he might be uninterrupted in his search for God. He listed this as the second requirement for anyone who wants to be clean of heart. But while, on the one hand, he stayed in caves, we know that he also searched for God in places of natural beauty. When we look at photos of the Carceri near Assisi, of Greccio, and of the mountain of La Verna, we realize how far he travelled to find places of natural beauty that spoke to him of God. His third point is that as we seek for the things of heaven we should 'with a clean heart and spirit, never cease adoring and seeing the Lord God living and true'. This is a remarkable sentence. A clean heart and spirit is found in a person like Francis who is fully occupied with the search for God. But it is not only a search. It is also a prayer of adoration, a conversation with God and an experience of seeing God. From such cleanness of heart Francis was able to write the Canticle of the Creatures.

22. Admonition XVII: A humble servant of God

Humble service for Francis meant two things. He says firstly: 'Blessed is that servant who no more exalts himself over the good the Lord says or does through him than over what He says or does through another'. It has been noted before in these pages how Francs regarded himself as a poor servant of the Lord. He said that if anyone else had received what he had been given they would be far holier than he. So whatever good he saw in others he took it for granted that the person was doing more than he was. Francis could not exalt himself because he was aware of his sinfulness. But he could rejoice over the good done by others. This is one aspect of a humble service of God. The second characteristic of humble service is that 'a person sins who wishes to receive more from his neighbour than what he wishes to give of himself to the Lord God'. While I am not sure what Francis meant by these words, I can see a meaning in the following way. If we are more occupied in our minds with our neighbour than we are with God, then we are looking for more from a neighbour than from God. Our Lord said that where our heart is there is our treasure [Lk 12:34]. If we think more often of our neighbour than of God then we are looking for more from a neighbour than from God. Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well [Mt 6:33].

23. Admonition XVIII: Compassion for a neighbour

Francis repeats the words of our Lord: In everything do to others as you would have them do to you [Mt 7:12]. We see a striking example of this in Francis' life. What he wanted for himself was to be left free in the Church to try and live the Gospels in a literal way. He wanted this because he believed that this was precisely what God was asking him to do. But, as has been noted, the Church was reluctant to give approval to such a way of life and even many of his companions tried to get him to adopt one of the older, approved Rules for religious life. The Church did finally give approval to Francis' Rule and so he was then free to shape the way of life for the Order. When Brother Leo was troubled, Francis wrote a letter to him in which he said: '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'. Just as Francis was left free by the Church to live in the way he believed God was instructing him to live, so Francis gave this same freedom to Brother Leo; Francis supported Leo in the way he had wanted to be supported and trusted. Francis adds that a servant is blessed when the servant gives back to God every good that the Lord has given. The God who cares and provides for us has given us everything we have. So when someone is weak and troubled we know that the Lord cares for the person and we are to help this person as we would want to be helped ourselves. This is what Francis did for Brother Leo.

24. Admonition XIX: A humble servant of God

In this Admonition Francis wrote a few words that, in my opinion, summarize his feelings as he stood before the leper, the experience that changed his life. The Admonition deals with a servant who does not consider himself any better when he is praised than when he is considered worthless and simple. Such a servant is blessed. The reason on which Francis bases this advice is that 'what a person is before God, that he is and no more'. It is not difficult to read this as a summary of Francis's experience of meeting God in a leper. As Francis recalled this experience he realized that what the people of Assisi thought of him was not the truth. The truth lay in what God thought about him. That Francis felt a sense of unworthiness before God was to be expected. Francis was a human person with the weaknesses of human nature. But, on the other hand, his experience was positive and affirming because God had come to him and this meant so much: God loved him, God was interested in him, God had plans for him and challenged him to see his life and the whole world with new eyes. Francis understood the call God was making to him for he says that soon afterwards he left the world. No wonder Francis could say we are what we are in the eyes of God and no more. What more could there be than to know we are loved in spite of being weak and sinful. The bitterness of leaving his home in Assisi was turned into sweetness of body and soul as he began a more intense life with God.

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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