Life of St. Francis of Assisi
altar; faith in this mystery of love appeared to him indeed as the
salvation of the Order.
Was he wrong? How can a man who truly believes in the real presence of
the God-Man between the fingers of him who lifts up the host, not
consecrate his life to this God and to holiness? One has some difficulty
in imagining.
It is true that legions of devotees profess the most absolute faith in
this dogma, and we do not see that they are less bad; but faith with
them belongs in the intellectual sphere; it is the abdication of
reason, and in sacrificing their intelligence to God they are most happy
to offer to him an instrument which they very much prefer not to use.
To Francis the question presented itself quite differently; the thought
that there could be any merit in believing could never enter his mind;
the fact of the real presence was for him of almost concrete evidence.
Therefore his faith in this mystery was an energy of the heart, that the
life of God, mysteriously present upon the altar, might become the soul
of all his actions.
To the eucharistic transubstantiation, effected by the words of the
priest, he added another, that of his own heart.
God offers himself to us as to his children. This is why I beg
you, all of you, my brothers, kissing your feet, and with all
the love of which I am capable, to have all possible respect for
the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then addressing himself particularly to the priests:
Hearken, my brothers, if the blessed Virgin Mary is justly
honored for having carried Jesus in her womb, if John the
Baptist trembled because he dared not touch the Lord's head, if
the sepulchre in which for a little time he lay is regarded with
such great adoration, oh, how holy, pure, and worthy should be
the priest who touches with his hands, who receives into his
mouth and into his heart, and who distributes to others the
living, glorified Jesus, the sight of whom makes angels rejoice!
Understand your dignity, brother priests, and be holy, for he is
holy. Oh! what great wretchedness and what a frightful infirmity
to have him there present before you and to think of other
things. Let each man be struck with amazement, let the whole
earth tremble, let the heavens thrill with joy when the Christ,
the Son of the living God, descends upon the altar into the
hands of the priest. Oh, wonderful profundity! Oh, amazing
grace! Oh, triumph of humility! See, the Master of all things,
God, and the Son of God, humbles himself for our salvation, even
to disguising himself under the appearance of a bit of bread.
Contemplate, my brothers, this humility of God, and enlarge your
hearts before him; humble yourselves as well, that you, even
you, may be lifted up by him. Keep nothing for yourselves, that
he may receive you without reserve, who has given himself to you
without reserve.
We see with what vigor of love Francis's heart had laid hold upon the
idea of the communion.
He closes with long counsels to the Brothers, and after having conjured
them faithfully to keep their promises, all his mysticism breathes out
and is summed up in a prayer of admirable simplicity.
God Almighty, eternal, righteous, and merciful, give to us poor
wretches to do for thy sake all that we know of thy will, and to
will always what pleases thee; so that inwardly purified,
enlightened, and kindled by the fire of the Holy Spirit, we may
follow in the footprints of thy well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ.
What separates this prayer from the effort to discern duty made by
choice spirits apart from all revealed religion? Very little in truth;
the words are different, the action is the same.
But Francis's solicitudes reached far beyond the limits of the Order.
His longest epistle is addressed to all Christians; its words are so
living that you fancy you hear a voice speaking behind you; and this
voice, usually as serene as that which from the mountain in Galilee
proclaimed the law of the new times, becomes here and there unutterably
sweet, like that which sounded in the upper chamber on the night of the
first eucharist.
As Jesus forgot the cross that was standing in the shadows, so Francis
forgets his sufferings, and, overcome with a divine sadness, thinks of
humanity, for each member of which he would give his life; he thinks of
his spiritual sons, the Brothers of Penitence, whom he is about to leave
without having been able to make them feel, as he would have had them
feel, the love for them with which he burns: "Father, I have given them
the words which thou hast given me.... For them I pray!"
The whole Franciscan gospel is in these words, but to understand the
fascination which it exerted we must have gone through the School of the
Middle Ages, and there listened to the interminable tournaments of
dialectics by which minds were dried up; we must have seen the Church of
the thirteenth century, honeycombed by simony and luxury, and only able,
under the pressure of heresy or revolt, to make a few futile efforts to
scotch the evil.
To all Christians, monks, clerics, or laymen, whether men or
women, to all who dwell in the whole world, Brother Francis,
their most submissive servitor, presents his duty and wishes the
true peace of heaven, and sincere love in the Lord.
Being the servitor of all men, I am bound to serve them and to
dispense to them the wholesome words of my Master. This is why,
seeing I am too weak and ill to visit each one of you in
particular, I have resolved to send you my message by this
letter, and to offer you the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Word of God, and of the Holy Spirit, which are spirit and life.
It would be puerile to expect here new ideas either in fact or form.
Francis's appeals are of value only by the spirit which animates them.
After having briefly recalled the chief features of the gospel, and
urgently recommended the communion, Francis addresses himself in
particular to certain categories of hearers, with special counsels.
Let the podestas, governors, and those who are placed in
authority, exercise their functions with mercy, as they would be
judged with mercy by God....
Monks in particular, who have renounced the world, are bound to
do more and better than simple Christians, to renounce all that
is not necessary to them, and to have in hatred the vices and
sins of the body.... They should love their enemies, do good to
them who hate them, observe the precepts and counsels of our
Redeemer, renounce themselves, and subdue their bodies. And no
monk is bound to obedience, if in obeying he would be obliged to
commit a fault or a sin....
Let us not be wise and learned according to the flesh, but
simple, humble, and pure.... We should never desire to be above
others, but rather to be below, and to obey all men.
He closes by showing the foolishness of those who set their hearts on
the possession of earthly goods, and concludes by the very realistic
picture of the death of the wicked.
His money, his title, his learning, all that he believed himself
to possess, all are taken from him; his relatives and his
friends to whom he has given his fortune will come to divide it
among themselves, and will end by saying: "Curses on him, for he
might have given us more and he has not done it; he might have
amassed a larger fortune, and he has done nothing of the kind."
The worms will eat his body and the demons will consume his
soul, and thus he will lose both soul and body.
I, Brother Francis, your little servitor, I beg and conjure you
by the love that is in God, ready to kiss your feet, to receive
with humility and love these and all other words of our Lord
Jesus Christ and to conform your conduct to them. And let those
who devoutly receive them and understand them pass them on to
others. And if they thus persevere unto the end, may they be
blessed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.[32]
If Francis ever made a Rule for the Third Order it must have very nearly
resembled this epistle, and until this problematical document is found,
the letter shows what were originally these associations of Brothers of
Penitence. Everything in these long pages looks toward the development
of the mystic religious life in the heart of each Christian. But even
when Francis dictated them, this high view had become a Utopia, and the
Third Order was only one battalion more in the armies of the papacy.
We see that the epistles which we have just examined proceed definitely
from a single inspiration. Whether he is leaving instructions for his
successors, the ministers-general, whether he is writing to all the
present and future members of his Order, to all Christians or even to
the clergy,[33] Francis has only one aim, to keep on preaching after
his death, and perhaps, too, by putting into writing his message of
peace and love, to provide that he shall not be entirely travestied or
misunderstood.
Considered in connection with those sorrowful hours which saw their
birth, they form a whole whose import and meaning become singularly
energetic. If we would find the Franciscan spirit, it is here, in the
Rule of 1221, and in the Will that we must seek for it.
Neglect, and especially the storms which later overwhelmed the Order,
explain the disappearance of several other documents which would cast a
glimmer of poetry and joy over these sad days;[34] Francis had not
forgotten his sister-friend at St. Damian. Hearing that she had been
greatly disquieted by knowing him to be so ill, he desired to reassure
her: he still deceived himself as to his condition, and wrote to her
promising soon to go to see her.
To this assurance he added some affectionate counsels, advising her and
her companions not to go to extremes with their macerations. To set her
an example of cheerfulness he added to this letter a Laude in the
vulgar tongue which he had himself set to music.[35]
In that chamber of the episcopal palace in which he was as it were
imprisoned he had achieved a new victory, and it was doubtless that
which inspired his joy. The Bishop of Assisi, the irritable Guido,
always at war with somebody, was at this time quarrelling with the
podesta of the city; nothing more was needed to excite in the little
town a profound disquiet. Guido had excommunicated the podesta, and the
latter had issued a prohibition against selling and buying or making any
contract with ecclesiastics.
The difference grew more bitter, and no one appeared to dream of
attempting a reconciliation. We can the better understand Francis's
grief over all this by remembering that his very first effort had been
to bring peace into his native city, and that he considered the return
of Italy to union and concord to be the essential aim of his apostolate.
War in Assisi would be the final dissolution of his dream; the voice of
events crying brutally to him, "Thou hast wasted thy life!"
The dregs of this cup were spared him, thanks to an inspiration in which
breaks forth anew his natural play of imagination. To the Canticle of
the Sun he added a new strophe:
Be praised, Lord, for those who forgive for love of thee,
and bear trials and tribulations;
happy they who persevere in peace,
by thee, Most high, shall they be crowned.
Then, calling a friar, he charged him to beg the governor to betake
himself, with all the notables whom he could assemble, to the paved
square before the bishop's palace. The magistrate, to whom legend gives
the nobler part in the whole affair, at once yielded to the saint's