What St. Francis did for the Church

The Church | The Physical World | Humankind

"Since I am the servant of all, I am obliged to serve them all and to communicate to them the fragrant words of my Lord." (Second Version of the Letter to the Faithful)

St. Francis of Assisi
Francis insists in his Testament that Christ alone led him on the path to true human fulfillment by revealing to him his vocation both in the Church and in society. He had already been sorely disillusioned by the emptiness of the ideals presented to him by his own middle-class, war-torn society, and he had become convinced that no mere human perspective could adequately satisfy the deepest longings of his heart--a heart naturally generous and open to the most sublime inspirations. It was only after he had left the world and begun to do penance that he came to understand his own true identity and what he was called to do for himself and for others. The utterly open and honest relationship he went on to establish between himself as a "new man" and other people and things was therefore the result of a divine revelation.

In a sense, then, he really modified the religious interpretations of his time in accord with his own personality and life experience.
For Francis, the highest goal of the quest for human fulfillment was the Trinitarian God revealed in the Incarnate Word: the biblical God he had been raised to worship, the God preached and adored in the liturgy of his day. But Francis was not a passive believer, one who could simply accept what was handed to him. He had to relive the content of his faith. With his naturally vital and creative genius he sought to assimilate the God presented to him in the Church's teaching. In a sense, then, he modified the religious interpretations of his time in accord with his own personality and life experience.

Because he had received no formal higher education at the hands of the monks and clerics (at that time, the monks and clerics were virtually the only ones who had and thus could transmit culture), Francis would admit humbly that he was "illiterate and uncultured." His background was secular experience coupled with popular religion, and he was aware of the conflict that existed between his realities and Church authority. Unencumbered by theological abstractions, he read the Gospel itself in a literal, historical way, always seeking the obvious, simple and direct meaning of God's word.

Insisting that he wanted to know only "Christ, poor and crucified," Francis loved to dwell on contemplation and imitation of God's Son, the perfect model of selfless love and suffering. The crucified God was for him the concrete embodiment of the totality of Gospel teaching, just as the Tau with which he liked to sign his letters and mark his brothers' cells symbolized that same image of immolated Love.

Jesus Christ, "Image of the invisible God," clothed with humanity and freely reduced to the condition of a servant became for Francis the model for all human behavior and the norm for every human decision, whether individual or social. Naturally, the people to whom Francis preached were captivated by this intensely personal approach to God; they too began to rediscover the Lord as their closest and most faithful friend: Emmanuel living in the midst of his people like a shepherd among his beloved sheep.

Francis himself had experienced and was able to present to others a living God, a God who lived in the midst of his people and so joined them in their human hopes, joys and sufferings.
The proponents of the established religious culture continued to portray Christ in the majestic, triumphal images of Byzantine Christendom. But the new urban population, with its Christian humanism, was listening to something different as Francis proclaimed insistently that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, "had made the Lord of Majesty to be our Brother." Francis himself had experienced and was able to present to others a living God, a God who lived in the midst of his people and so joined them in their human hopes, joys and sufferings.

It was especially in the Eucharist, the liturgical embodiment of the whole mystery of God made man, that Francis experienced the Body and Blood of the Most High. And it was in the Eucharist that he saw the Lord Jesus Christ as "filling everybody, present and absent, who is worthy of him."

Francis saw the prayers of the Mass and of the Liturgy of the Hours as privileged moments of ongoing Christian education. He himself took advantage of this. The Mass was for him not only a sign and nourishment of faith, but also the main source of the newly-formed fraternity's spiritual experience. The Poverello insisted repeatedly, both in his writings and in his preaching, on God's gift of himself in the Eucharist. Francis was firmly convinced that the Christian life is a never-ending process of development - of tasting ever more deeply of the divine Reality. Perhaps this explains his repeated, enraptured questioning during prolonged times of contemplation: "Who are you … who am I?"

The Church authorities, in approving Francis' radically new vision of the Gospel life, showed themselves open to his religious ideals. Popes, Cardinals, Bishops all convinced that the Poverello possessed the Spirit of God and that his vocation had come from God alone defended his way of life and encouraged both privately and officially his apostolate of preaching the Gospel in a form accessible to the people.

Through Francis' merits, his work in full communion with the Church, and his faith,  Jesus gained new life in the hearts of many people who had forgotten him.
Francis, for his part, showed himself respectful and considerate, always seeking their approval for any new venture. Even for the Mass and the Crèche in Greccio he had sought the permission of Honorius III. And thus, through the Saint's merits, through his work always done in faith and in full communion with the Church, Jesus gained new life in the hearts of many people who had forgotten him. And Francis applied the power of his movement to the discrediting of heretical sects and the strengthening of the Church. As much by his fervent preaching as by the irresistible eloquence of his example, he strengthened the wavering and protected those lured by novelty from the inroads of contemporary "reformers" who were more preoccupied with destructive criticism than with constructive proposals. Unlike those "reformers" Francis loved the Church's hierarchy, in whom he refused to see any sin, insisting instead on the presence in them of God's Son whom they represented.

Again, it was mainly through his personal example that Francis, spurning all compromise, showed not only the faithful but also members of the Roman Curia that the Gospel could be lived literally. He accomplished this even though some had insisted that the Rule of Gospel living he had proposed was "strange and too difficult for human nature."

Francis, filled with love for Christ, had a special love for Mary because she had "made the Lord of Majesty our Brother" and "obtained for us mercy." In her, after Christ, he placed his entire confidence, honoring her as Advocate for himself and his brothers; and in her honor he would sing special praises, offer eloquent prayers, and preach with particularly moving intensity.

As an integral part of his Christocentric spirituality, Francis celebrated Mary's spiritual greatness with names that were as theologically accurate as they were charged with emotion. He spent whole nights in prayer, "praising the Lord and his glorious Virgin Mother." From Francis, we learn also how the mystery of Mary's divine motherhood can be given new life and meaning in the hearts of the faithful:
"We are all mothers of Christ," Francis tells us, "whenever we bear him in our heart and body with love ... and we give birth to him through holy works that must shine forth as an example to others."

In a religious attitude of loving obedience Francis opened his life generously to the word of God, to his superiors in the Church and in the Order, to the brothers that the Lord gave him, calling them to the same vocation to which he himself had been called, and indeed to all people, Christian and non-Christian, to all animals, and all nature.

Through poverty, heroically exercised with respect to both material and spiritual goods, he asserted that God is the Absolute Good who must be preferred in everyone's life to any contingent value whatever. Francis opened himself to the Spirit of the Lord. He wanted to be poor even in relation to God, and so he sought constantly to purify his intentions. He even avoided prayers of petition lest he tend through them to try to "appropriate" the Most High, and confined his prayers instead to praise, thanksgiving, and mystical rapture.

Through chastity for the sake of God's Kingdom, Francis abandoned his body to the Lord Jesus Christ. And keenly aware of the communion of saints - our fellowship with the blessed - he served as a sign to his contemporaries of humanity's future condition: of the time when we shall all celebrate as God's sons and daughters, as his friends, and as his companions at the heavenly banquet. Hence the frequent expression of lyric praise found in the early biographies to the effect that Francis "seemed to be a new man, of another world."

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Franciscan Firars of California © 2007