Francis of Assisi

by Christian on October 23, 2009

As I will be spending Christmas this summer in Greccio, the village in Italy where St. Francis started the first nativity, my thoughts have gravitated to the life and ministry of Francis (1181-1226).

In his early life, Francis wanted to be a warrior like one of the knights around King Arthur’s round table. He enrolled in the army, was defeated in a battle against Perugia, and imprisoned. His father, a wealthy merchant, bailed him out, and Francis went back to live in Assisi.

On a pilgrimage to Rome, Francis had a life changing experience. He saw the lepers and beggars throwing money at St. Peter’s tomb and his heart broke for them. He decided to become one of them, begging for his sustenance (today the more conservative Franciscans still rely on the community for their survival).

His luxurious life became disciplined.

Assisi is a cold place to be in the winter, and Francis often deprived his body of necessary warmth. His temptations were strong, and he often threw himself on thorny bushes in hopes of alleviating his lust for Clare.

It’s not surprising he died prematurely.

Often retreating into the caves around Assisi, Francis craved solitude with God. A community of brothers arose around him, and Francis traveled with them from village to village healing the sick, taming wolfs and preaching to animals.

Now, whether or not you believe Bonaventure’s animal accounts, it must be said that someone so radically abandoned to God cannot be tethered to the rules of normality.

Holding the Hem

The hands of Francis began to bleed.

Some believe that this resulted from Francis’s identification with the sufferings of Jesus. Others think that Francis contracted a disease because he hung out with beggars and lepers in Assisi.

When the Black Death killed one out of every three people in Europe during the medieval era, it was the Christians who stayed with the dying. When most people high-tailed it out of town, the Christians stayed and often died because of it. The church gained a reputation for treating the bleeding (the bubonic plague often caused bleeding from the eyes, nose and mouth).

Two days ago, I went to the hospital to get my monthly check up. It’s been eight years since I was diagnosed with an incurable bleeding disorder called ulcerative colitis. When it flares, everything I eat slices the edges of my digestive tract like razor blades through a watermelon. The story of the woman with the bleeding disorder in Luke has taken on fresh meaning for me (see Holding the Hem, a sermon I preached about it at Beeson Divinity School).

There were times during seminary that I remember waking up two hours before class just to bleed in the bathroom. I guess you could say blood became the brother I never had.

Bleeding Francis often called himself “brother ass.” It reminded him of his commitment to decrease (John 3:30) instead of increase. To become less, that Christ might become more.

In an age when increase is at an all consuming high, and evangelical/emergent celebrities are popping up everywhere, Francis speaks directly to us. He would remind us, I think, of John the Baptist’s mission – to prepare the way of the Lord. Not our way, but Christ’s way. To give ourselves to God’s will, God’s way.

Francis took the words of Jesus seriously, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also unto me (Matthew 25).” Instead of begging, Francis could have become a wealthy lawyer or merchant like his dad. But he became “one of the least of these” and lived incarnationally in community.

At the end of his life, Francis was traveling through through Egypt during one of the crusades. At the beginning of his life, this would have been the pinnacle of military conquests – to reclaim Jerusalem. Turns out, the Muslim sultan who fought against the Christians captured Francis and was so impressed with his gentleness, that he not only allowed Francis to return to Italy, but he arranged a personal escort to accompany him. Read this account in The Saint and the Sultan.

“The Stigmata of St. Francis”

The stigmata of St. Francis,
The leper that I’ve shunned
Is the Christ I’m asked to face
On this journey I’ve begun.

The stench had left me stunned,
His countenance I debased,
This leper that I’ve shunned.

My world has come undone
By the miracle of His grace
On this journey I’ve begun.

For the riches that are won
Are gathered in embrace
From the leper that I’ve shunned.

With wounds that leave me numb
Brother Ass is laid to waste
On the journey I’ve begun.

So I no longer run
Or live my life in haste
Fearing the leper I once shunned.

Though I burn with Brother Sun
It’s His passion that I trace
In the hug, that kiss, His face:

See the leper I’ve become
As I live a life displaced
On my journey to the Son.

(from Francis and Clare in Poetry, 135)

Resources

• Article on the Life of Francis from Christianity Today

• Good list of biographies on the life of St. Francis of Assisi

• Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

• Visit Assisi

• National Association for Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease

Blog