Life of St. Francis of Assisi
meadows; then come the chestnuts and the oaks, higher still the pine,
the fir, the larch, and above all the bare rock.
Among all the peaks there is one which especially attracts the
attention; instead of a rounded and so to say flattened top, it uplifts
itself slender, proud, isolated; it is the Verna.[2]
One might think it an immense rock fallen from the sky. It is in fact an
erratic block set there, a little like a petrified Noah's ark on the
summit of Mount Ararat. The basaltic mass, perpendicular on all sides,
is crowned with a plateau planted with pines and gigantic beeches, and
accessible only by a footpath.[3]
Such was the solitude which Orlando had given to Francis, and to which
Francis had already many a time come for quiet and contemplation.
Seated upon the few stones of the Penna,[4] he heard only the
whispering of the wind among the trees, but in the splendor of the
sunrise or the sunset he could see nearly all the districts in which he
had sown the seed of the gospel: the Romagna and the March of Ancona,
losing themselves on the horizon in the waves of the Adriatic; Umbria,
and farther away, Tuscany, vanishing in the waters of the Mediterranean.
The impression on this height is not crushing like that which one has in
the Alps: a feeling infinitely calm and sweet flows over you; you are
high enough to judge of men from above, not high enough to forget their
existence.
Besides the wide horizons, Francis found there other objects of delight;
in this forest, one of the noblest in Europe, live legions of birds,
which never having been hunted are surprisingly tame.[5] Subtile
perfumes arise from the ground, and in the midst of borage and lichens
frail and exquisite cyclamens blossom in fantastic variety.
He desired to return thither after the chapter of 1224. This meeting,
held in the beginning of June, was the last at which he was present. The
new Rule was there put into the hands of the ministers, and the mission
to England decided upon.
It was in the early days of August that Francis took his way toward
Verna. With him were only a few Brothers, Masseo, Angelo, and Leo. The
first had been charged to direct the little band, and spare him all
duties except that of prayer.[6]
They had been two days on the road when it became necessary to seek for
an ass for Francis, who was too much enfeebled to go farther on foot.
The Brothers, in asking for this service, had not concealed the name of
their master, and the peasant, to whom they had addressed themselves
respectfully, asked leave to guide the beast himself. After going on a
certain time, "Is it true," he said, "that you are Brother Francis of
Assisi?" "Very well," he went on, after the answer in the affirmative,
"apply yourself to be as good as folk say you are, that they may not be
deceived in their expectation; that is my advice." Francis immediately
got down from his beast and, prostrating himself before the peasant,
thanked him warmly.[7]
Meanwhile the warmest hour of the day had come on. The peasant,
exhausted with fatigue, little by little forgot his surprise and joy;
one does not feel the burning of thirst the less for walking beside a
saint. He had begun to regret his kindness, when Francis pointed with
his finger to a spring, unknown till then, and which has never since
been seen.[8]
At last they arrived at the foot of the last precipice. Before scaling
it they paused to rest a little under a great oak, and immediately
flocks of birds gathered around them, testifying their joy by songs and
flutterings of their wings. Hovering around Francis, they alighted on
his head, his shoulders, or his arms. "I see," he said joyfully to his
companions, "that it is pleasing to our Lord Jesus that we live in this
solitary mount, since our brothers and sisters the birds have shown such
great delight at our coming."[9]
This mountain was at once his Tabor and his Calvary. We must not wonder,
then, that legends have flourished here even more numerously than at any
other period of his life; the greater number of them have the exquisite
charm of the little flowers, rosy and perfumed, which hide themselves
modestly at the feet of the fir-trees of Verna.
The summer nights up there are of unparalleled beauty: nature, stifled
by the heat of the sun, seems then to breathe anew. In the trees, behind
the rocks, on the turf, a thousand voices rise up, sweetly harmonizing
with the murmur of the great woods; but among all these voices there is
not one which forces itself upon the attention, it is a melody which you
enjoy without listening. You let your eyes wander over the landscape,
still for long hours illumined with hieratic tints by the departed star
of day, and the peaks of the Apennines, flooded with rainbow hues, drop
down into your soul what the Franciscan poet called the nostalgia of the
everlasting hills.[10]
More than anyone Francis felt it. The very evening of their arrival,
seated upon a mound in the midst of his Brothers, he gave them his
directions for their dwelling-place.
The quiet of nature would have sufficed to sow in their hearts some
germs of sadness, and the voice of the master harmonized with the
emotion of the last gleams of light; he spoke with them of his
approaching death, with the regret of the laborer overtaken by the
shades of evening before the completion of his task, with the sighs of
the father who trembles for the future of his children.[11]
For himself he desired from this time to prepare himself for death by
prayer and contemplation; and he begged them to protect him from all
intrusion. Orlando,[12] who had already come to bid them welcome and
offer his services, had at his request hastily caused a hut of boughs to
be made, at the foot of a great beech. It was there that he desired to
dwell, at a stone's throw from the cells inhabited by his companions.
Brother Leo was charged to bring him each day that which he would need.
He retired to it immediately after this memorable conversation, but
several days later, embarrassed no doubt by the pious curiosity of the
friars, who watched all his movements, he went farther into the woods,
and on Assumption Day he there began the Lent which he desired to
observe in honor of the Archangel Michael and the celestial host.
Genius has its modesty as well as love. The poet, the artist, the saint,
need to be alone when the Spirit comes to move them. Every effort of
thought, of imagination, or of will is a prayer, and one does not pray
in public.
Alas for the man who has not in his inmost heart some secret which may
not be told, because it cannot be spoken, and because if it were spoken
it could not be understood. SECRETUM MEUM MIHI! Jesus felt it deeply:
the raptures of Tabor are brief; they may not be told.
Before these soul mysteries materialists and devotees often meet and are
of one mind in demanding precision in those things which can the least
endure it.
The believer asks in what spot on the Verna Francis received the
stigmata; whether the seraph which appeared to him was Jesus or a
celestial spirit; what words were spoken as he imprinted them upon
him;[13] and he no more understands that hour when Francis swooned with
woe and love than the materialist, who asks to see with his eyes and
touch with his hands the gaping wound.
Let us try to avoid these extremes. Let us hear what the documents give
us, and not seek to do them violence, to wrest from them what they do
not tell, what they cannot tell.
They show us Francis distressed for the future of the Order, and with an
infinite desire for new spiritual progress.
He was consumed with the fever of saints, that need of immolation which
wrung from St. Theresa the passionate cry, "Either to suffer or to die!"
He was bitterly reproaching himself with not having been found worthy of
martyrdom, not having been able to give himself for Him who gave himself
for us.
We touch here upon one of the most powerful and mysterious elements of
the Christian life. We may very easily not understand it, but we may not
for all that deny it. It is the root of true mysticism.[14] The really
new thing that Jesus brought into the world was that, feeling himself in
perfect union with the heavenly Father, he called all men to unite
themselves to him and through him to God: "I am the vine, and ye are the
branches; he who abides in me and I in him brings forth much fruit, for
apart from me ye can do nothing."
The Christ not only preached this union, he made it felt. On the evening
of his last day he instituted its sacrament, and there is probably no
sect which denies that communion is at once the symbol, the principle,
and the end of the religious life. For eighteen centuries Christians who
differ on everything else cannot but look with one accord to him who in
the upper chamber instituted the rite of the new times.
The night before he died he took the bread and brake it and distributed
it to them, saying, "TAKE AND EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY."
Jesus, while presenting union with himself as the very foundation of the
new life,[15] took care to point out to his brethren that this union
was before all things a sharing in his work, in his struggles, and his
sufferings: "Let him that would be my disciple take up his cross and
follow me."
St. Paul entered so perfectly into the Master's thought in this respect
that he uttered a few years later this cry of a mysticism that has never
been equalled: "I have been crucified with Christ, yet I live ... or
rather, it is not I who live, but Christ who liveth in me." This
utterance is not an isolated exclamation with him, it is the very centre
of his religious consciousness, and he goes so far as to say, at the
risk of scandalizing many a Christian: "I fill up in my body that which
is lacking of the sufferings of Christ, for his body's sake, which is
the Church."
Perhaps it has not been useless to enter into these thoughts, to show to
what point Francis during the last years of his life, where he renews in
his body the passion of Christ, is allied to the apostolic tradition.
In the solitudes of the Verna, as formerly at St. Damian, Jesus
presented himself to him under his form of the Crucified One, the man of
sorrows.[16]
That this intercourse has been described to us in a poetic and inexact
form is nothing surprising. It is the contrary that would be surprising.
In the paroxysms of divine love there are _ineffabilia_ which, far from
being able to relate them or make them understood, we can hardly recall
to our own minds.
Francis on the Verna was even more absorbed than usual in his ardent
desire to suffer for Jesus and with him. His days went by divided
between exercises of piety in the humble sanctuary on the mountain-top
and meditation in the depths of the forest. It even happened to him to
forget the services, and to remain several days alone in some cave of
the rock, going over in his heart the memories of Golgotha. At other
times he would remain for long hours at the foot of the altar, reading
and re-reading the Gospel, and entreating God to show him the way in
which he ought to walk.[17]
The book almost always opened of itself to the story of the Passion, and
this simple coincidence, though easy enough to explain, was enough of
itself to excite him.
The vision of the Crucified One took the fuller possession of his
faculties as the day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross drew near
(September 14th), a festival now relegated to the background, but in the
thirteenth century celebrated with a fervor and zeal very natural for a
solemnity which might be considered the patronal festival of the
Crusades.
Francis doubled his fastings and prayers, "quite transformed into Jesus
by love and compassion," says one of the legends. He passed the night