Here I am after some months of no blogging, but a wonderful time of travel and rest. And reading.
I have at last finished a biography of my namesake—I claim him as such—Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis of Assisi, by Jacques Le Goff, was first published in French, later in English in 2004 and now in Routledge Classics. It is both a well-researched biography and an inspiring presentation of the challenges of Francis’ life for today.
Francis was born in 1181 or 1182, and was baptised John Baptist Bernadone. It was later that he chose the name Francesco, for which many reasons have been posited, the most likely being his deep love of France and its language. It was said of him that ‘when he was full of the ardour of the Holy Spirit he spoke out loud in French’. (p25)
Le Goff explains how difficult it is to write a biography of St Francis, since the deep tensions between two groups of his followers led to one group destroying all of the sources relating to the formative years of the ‘order’ or community following him.
Francis came from a wealthy family and was expected to take over the family business. As a youth he joined in the activities of rich youth, including supporting wars against ‘the infidels’. Le Goff explains the years-long process of Francis’ conversion. This is helpful as there is no pretence that such a profound life change was in any way easy or rapid, and I am sure that Francis would assert the same for us today. If anything, conversion to the rugged simplicity of a gospel life-style (not just ideas of beliefs) is nothing short of a life project.
‘Francis, go and repair my house that, as you can see, is falling all to ruin.’
As Le Goff explains, Francis had not yet developed a sense of God’s call as more symbolic than literal. So he went to a church in disrepair, San Damiano, and took up a trowel, climbed the scaffolding, and made himself a mason.
This incident is significant in many ways of Francis’ life and faith. He is not content with a faith that is a matter of ‘the heart’, or the mind. It must be expressed in action, bodily action, preferably with some discomfort, as his later choice of course fabrics for clothing showed. Bodily life was crucial to discipleship, as was physical labour—often undertaken with minimal clothing or (at times) none. As he was famous for his love of animals, so too he welcomed what we might call our own creaturely life.
Soon, however, he proceeded to his life-long mission, which was preaching. It has been said of him that he urged his followers always to preach the Gospel, if necessary using words.
Francis was ‘always on the road’, Le Goff says, and accepted many deprivations in order to reach parts of his country with his message of a simple Gospel and a simple life. He welcomed poverty as a ‘beloved sister’. In this regard, he declared, ‘one gets to heaven more quickly from a hut than from a palace’.
As he gathered followers, he sent them out also, in the pattern of Jesus’ mission, two by two.
Le Goff details the developments of a community of followers, in different groupings or levels of commitment. Francis was strongly opposed to hierarchy and struggled with the demands of the Popes and the Roman curia. But he was not trying to leave the Church or start a new church. Rather like the One he served, his call was to renewal of faith and life, in practical and meaningful ways. He was not so much a heretic, though many would have seen him as such, but an innovator and in some senses an orthodox conservative. Le Goff says: ‘it has been said of him that like Saint Dominic but in different ways, he saved the Church when it was threatened with ruin by heresy and by its own internal decadence.’ (p65)
Le Goff identifies other key elements as well. Though Francis wrote very little, what he did offer was poetic and richly evocative, perhaps most famously his Canticle of the Creatures. In this poem, as with his daily life, there is a joyful celebration of all that is given to us, in small things and in life-long challenges.
This classic picture indicates ‘scenes from his life’.
Francis suffered poor health in most of his short life and died in 1226. His death, as his life, evoked differing responses: those who wished to build massive monuments to his honour, and those who wanted only a simple chapel in a crypt. Both were built.
Succeeding rules and powers limited who may preach and where they may preach, whereas the man himself refused any such limitations.
The challenge of Francis’ life is to consider what such a profound, everyday expression of faith might be for us, in a radically different and yet equally needy world. We who have so much in material wealth are in need of a return to such a life, in touch with nature, willing to become poor in spirit, that we too might receive joy and share the riches of all that is simply given to us. We too might pray for that same spirit of life.