St. Fraincis of Assisi (Oct. 4th)

 As often is the case, the current week is filled with many Saints and Feast Days worthy of reflection:

Sept 30th - St. Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Oct 1st - St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Oct 2nd - The Holy Guardian Angels

Oct 3rd - Blessed Maria Guadalupe Ricart Olmos, OSM, virgin and martyr

Oct 4th - St. Francis of Assisi

Oct 5th - St. Faustina Kowalska, Virgin

Oct 6th - St. Bruno, Priest

Oct 6th - Bl. Marie-Rose Durocher, Virgin

Of these, I choose to write about St. Francis of Assisi.

The future  St. Francis of Assisi, was born around 1181 to a quite successful cloth merchant from Assisi and his wife who he had brought back from the Provence part France at the end of one of his trips.  Indeed, Francis’ name can be understood to mean: “Little Frenchman.” 

That the future St. Francis of Assisi’s father would have been a quite wealthy merchant was a relatively new phenomenon at the time, with the Italian peninsula becoming progressively wealthier after some 400-500-600 years of political chaos and near universal poverty.

Though all would make their marks in the generations immediately following St. Francis of Assisi’s life (1181-1226), his near contemporaries would have included:

1. Marco Polo (1254-1324), who the son of Venetian merchants, who recorded his travels with his father and uncle all the way to China, 

2. the Seven Holy Founders all of whom were Florentine merchants, who in 1233 set aside their previous fortunes to found the mendicant religious order, the Servants of Mary, to which I belong, not unlike the Franciscan Order founded by St. Francis.

3. Dante Alighieri (1265-1231), the poet and writer from Florence who left us a vivid description of the lives and scandals of the by-then quite notable and rich of his time, and even

4. Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492) who, though he did come two centuries later, largely completed the transformation of Europe from a complex of brutish, swords and walls-based fiefdoms, to a continent where travel and commerce would rule the day.

Yet, this societal and economic transformation produced new divisions: While yes, the merchant class became rich, it soon became obvious to all, including to good pious Christians of the time, that a lot of people were being left behind.

And so there was a reaction:

The future St. Francis as well as many of his friends, left their inheritances, their prospects of having comfortable lives and chose to live in greater solidarity with their poorer brothers and sisters.  The Servite Founders of my order, who were merchants themselves, did similarly.

They all saw that one couldn’t live a truly Christian life in luxury while there were so many people all around them living in terrible poverty.

That would seem to have been  the first step, and as I’ve said, a fair number of other Christians of the time took it.

What perhaps made the future St. Francis exceptional was that he went far beyond most others in embracing the “marginalized Other” around him:

1. While the Story of Jesus’ birth was _always_ part of the Christian tradition, the future St. Francis was the one who really came to emphasize it – that Jesus was born of a poor if holy family, in a stable among the animals.  Every time we see a creche around Christmas time, we have St. Francis to thank for it, and the message that Jesus came for everyone can not but stay with us.

2. But the future St. Francis’ love for everyone came to extend beyond our human brothers and sisters to all of Creation.  In a Canticle attributed to him, he thanked God for creating all the elements, Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, Wind and Fire around us.   

3. Stories then abounded of the future St. Francis love of animals. Among the most famous of these stories was one in which the future St. Francis helped negotiate a peace between a village named Gubbio and a wolf that had been previously terrorizing it.  To this day, parishes across the world bless animals on the occasion of St. Francis’ feast day (Oct 4th).

4. And St. Francis’ peace-making extended beyond lovely stories about making peace between angry villagers and annoying wolves: The future St. Francis accompanied the Fifth Crusade in its attempt to recapture the Holy Land.  The fighting proved futile, but during a random siege of a city in Egypt, the future St. Francis decided to sneak across the line and talk to the Sultan of Egypt, named el-Kamil (a nephew of the great Muslim leader Saladin), directly.  The Sultan was so impressed with the future St. Francis, that though he did not convert (which had been the future St. Francis’ intent) he first let the future St. Francis visit the various Christian sites in the Holy Land and then gave his Franciscan Order custody of them.  The arrangement which HOLDS TO THIS DAY (see the Custody of the Holy Land) largely brought an end to the Crusading Era, at least in the Holy Land – if the Christian Holy Sites were handed back to Christians, and safe travel was guaranteed to them, there was no longer a purpose to continue fighting over them.

The impact of St. Francis on the Christian world has been enormous, and like so many saints, and perhaps even _more_ than most Christian saints, his legacy remains both an example and a challenge to us to this day:

If God created everything, why not treat all that surrounds us with due reverence and respect?  St. John Paul II made St. Francis of Assisi the patron saint of Ecology.

If God created all of us, why not try to convert those who aren’t Christians rather than fight them?  And if converting by words proves hard, why not try to convert them by our actions rather than simply by our words?

 St. Francis, could have lived a comfortable life back in Assisi selling luxury cloths like his father did.  Instead, he gave up that comfort to try to promote the Gospel.  And he did so in ways that help us to appreciate just how grand God’s Creative Plan for the world, for the universe and for all of us really is.

It is truly difficult to think of a Christian saint greater than he.