Feast of St Francis

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matt 5:9). They are truly peacemakers who amidst all they suffer in this world maintain peace in soul and body for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. St Francis, Words of Admonition, #15

“St Francis was a mystic” writes C. K. Chesterton in his biography (pp. 72-3) “but he believed in mysticism and not in mystification. As a mystic he was the mortal enemy of all those mystics who melt away the edges of things and dissolve an entity into it environment. He was a mystic of the daylight and the darkness; but not a mystic of the twilight.” Or, putting it another way, Chesterton also notes (p.72): “In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of [humanity].”

There are many tales in the biographies of St Francis that tell of his love for each tree, his profound sensitivity towards and connection with the world around him. The thirteenthcentury Franciscan Saint, Bonaventura (1221-74) tells in his Life of St Francis of walk that Francis and one of his brothers took through the Venetian marshes. They come across a flock of birds in the bushes singing. Francis says to his companion: “Our sisters the birds are praising their Creator, let us too go among them and sing unto the Lord praises and the canonical Hours.” Well, not only do the birds stay put when the brothers enter their midst, but they continue twittering so loud that the monks can’t hear each other recite the Office. So Francis says to the birds: “My sisters the birds, cease from singing, while we render our due praises unto the Lord.” Complete silence then descends as the brothers continue with their prayers; and after the doxology, taking St Francis’ leave, the birds once again take up their song.

As with so many early biographies of the saints, it is hard to distinguish history from hagiography, but these Franciscan stories have certainly grown from the seeds of real-life experiences to which St Francis’ followers and earliest congregations and friends bore witness. But they have also become didactic metaphors and theological reflections that are just as significant and enduring as any modern scholastic telling of history. In my sermon last week, we were reflecting on Thomas A’Kempis’ Imitation of Christ; the life of St Francis is an exemplar of that Christian calling and tradition.

In my children’s talk this week, I told the story of St Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio. Very different, indeed the precise opposite of our modern tale “The Wolf on Wall Street,” the fourteenth-century Franciscan, Brother Ugolino, portrays this delightful vignette in his Fioretti which most of us will know as The Little Flowers of St Francis of Assisi. The city of Gubbio was being terrorised by a man-eating wolf. St Francis courageously decides to confront the wolf in the woods, and rather than being eaten himself, he comes to understand the wolf’s plight. They even shakes hands (or a paw) sealing a pact that leads to peace between the wolf and the townsfolk. They all live, quite literally, happily ever after, as Ugolino writes:

The wolf lived two years at Gubbio; he went familiarly from door to door without harming anyone, and all the people received him courteously, feeding him with great pleasure, and no dog barked at him as he went about. At last, after two years, he died of old age, and the people of Gubbio mourned his loss greatly; for when they saw him going about so gently amongst them all, he reminded them of the virtue and sanctity of St Francis.

I think there is certainly some veracity in this tale, and no doubt also some exaggeration, but the underlying truth is the imitation of Christ that shone from St Francis’ every encounter with animals as much as human beings.

Another of Ugolino’s Fioretti tells of St Francis’ audience with a human wolf, the “Sultan of Babylon” as he calls him. Even the historians attest to this encounter. Much as Muslims flock to the Hadj today (or at least did so before the pandemic) the life-time goal of the medieval Christian was to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem; St Francis’ time came in 1217. As the saint was perhaps devoutly walking the Via Dolorosa, he heard of the humiliating defeat of the European crusaders in Egypt, in a battle with the armies of Sultan Malik al-Kamil. Francis feels that God is calling him to meet with this powerful adversary, and accompanied only by Brother Illuminatio, he sets off on a fool-hardy journey to Egypt.

Frances’ pilgrimage into the heart of conflict was no easy task. He was beaten by guards, threatened with beheading, and finally bound in chains and presented to the Sultan. The then bishop of Acre tells of this mission, that must have been the talk of the town, in his Eastern Chronicles (cited in Cowan, p.111): “Not only Christ’s faithful, but also the Saracens and their allies admire the humility and perfection of … [this] simple and unlettered man, delightful to God and men, named brother Francis.”

Remarkably St Francis does not become a martyr, but befriends the Sultan, and some even say facilitated his death-bed conversation years later (that part of the story may or may not be true). By all accounts the Sultan and his sages spoke for hours with St Francis about poetry, theology and philosophy. Sadly this tale does not end as joyously as that of the Wolf of Gubbio. After laying siege to Damietta, and starving the inhabitants, the crusaders finally took the city. A tenth of the 3,000 residents were kept as hostages; all the rest were butchered, sold into slavery or given as bondsmen to the Church.

“They are truly peacemakers who amidst all they suffer in this world maintain peace in soul and body for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He may have failed to bring political peace, but St Francis dramatically lived out his calling to follow Christ. He practiced what her preached. May this be our calling too, as we seek to imitate Christ, and to draw inspiration from the Fioretti, the little flowers of this great saint.

Make me a channel of Your peace Where there is hatred, let me bring Your love Where there is injury, Your pardon Lord And where there's doubt, true faith in You

REFERENCES:

Bonaventura, The Life of St Francis (Dutton, 1263/1904) www.ecatholic2000.com/bonaventure/assisi/francis.shtml

Ugolino Brunforte, The Little Flowers of St Francis of Assisi (Heritage Press, 1328/1965) www.capdox.capuchin.org.au/francescanea/little-flowers

C. K. Chesterton, St Francis of Assisi (Dover, 1924/2008)

James Cowan, Francis: A Saint’s Way (Hodder & Stoughton, 2001)