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What St. Francis did for Humankind
Francis' vision of humanity is fundamentally optimistic. No individual, not even the sinner, can be condemned. On the contrary, every human being is an image of Christ and a likeness of our Creator. Francis' relationships with others were marked by unconditional respect, given equally to Popes, bishops, priests, sisters, nobles, the poor, thieves, robbers, the sick, believers of other faiths, and total unbelievers. In the mystical experience of the Saint of Assisi, the worth of every human being is not determined by condition, or time, or place.
In his writings and in his life, Francis showed a particular esteem and consideration for lepers, in whom he saw a very special presence of Christ: lepers and priests. The lepers were for him a living image of the suffering Christ, towards whom his thoughts turned whenever he sought to fathom the depths of God's love. The loving tenderness that he actually expressed in the service of lepers was a sign of his own real conversion to the Gospel.
Francis of Assisi was able to reawaken the Church to human beings and their sufferings. He sought to alleviate the conditions that made it so difficult for people to live in harmony. He knew that only one who is himself free of the debilitating influence of riches and egotism can understand the needs of those who have less, and can effectively espouse the cause of the poor. For Francis, poverty was only secondarily a "not having." It was first of all a sharing with others - especially with society's "least" - of one's goods and one's life. Those who sought to be Friars Minor and Poor Ladies were thus directed first to distribute their goods to the poor.
Francis continually sought to establish peace among citizens divided by personal or social hatred. For Francis, the true evangelist was committed to healing the social environment by removing the causes of tension and conflict, in accord with God's word. In this sense, Francis saw the minister of the Gospel as directly responsible for promoting the welfare both of individuals and of the entire community.
It was this same spirit, finally, with its unlimited perspective, that quickened Francis's missionary zeal and made him so effective a mediator between Christianity and Islam. Francis proposed that the military crusade favoured by the Catholic political establishment be replaced by a peaceful endeavor to communicate. He visited the Sultan of Egypt and conversed with him, man to man, believer to believer, with no authoritative mandate. To his friars, who were to live in communion of spirit as well as in a complete sharing of temporal goods, Francis proposed as a model of life the natural human family. The friars were to pattern their mutual relationships upon those between a mother and her son. They were to create a family-like atmosphere among themselves as spiritual brothers called together by the Spirit. His dramatic departure from his own family did not occasion in him any disapproval or surrender of the fundamental value of family life. "Woe to him who is alone," says the author of the Sacrum Commercium, "because no one can help him."
