Francis’ gift is to make such absolute commitment seem attractive to the ordinary person. He shows that it is possible to give up everything one has been taught to value, and yet remain totally oneself. Francis himself emerged from this process as someone very human and certainly fallible, yet uncompromised in his attempt to live his faith to the full. Living without props, with no protection and no evasion, seems suddenly possible for the rest of us.
The way of Francis is intensely earthy and real, full of joy and celebration of life as it is, and eager to improve what it could be. A living faith needs to equip us for real life. To walk in the way of Francis gives us the opportunity not to escape the painful parts, nor yet to wallow in suffering when it comes to us, but to try to integrate it and find whatever meaning there may be in it. As we struggle with the hard questions of human existence, Francis is alongside, offering us as a model his own unchanging priority: ‘My God and my all.’
The figure and message of Francis appeal across religions, as well as to many of those who try to live with integrity and justice but espouse no formal religious faith. His journeys to Africa to meet and discuss faith with representatives of Islam establish him as an important figure in the history of peaceful interfaith dialogue. However, it is impossible to speak of following Francis in any truly meaningful way without understanding that for him, to live was to follow Christ. Few saints have demonstrated more graphically or literally what it means to do so. Throughout his life, Francis sought with increasing fervour to become united with the person, life and passion of Jesus. Two years before his death, he received a tangible sign of the reality of that developing union – the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, in his hands and feet and side. Paul’s statement, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’,6 could have been the blueprint for Francis’ own discipleship.
The way of Francis is, or should be, the way of Christ. The point of exploring Franciscan spirituality (a term of which Francis would certainly not have approved) is therefore not to focus on Francis himself, but to use him as a lens to God. However, in order to understand Francis’ particular impact, or his potential as a guide for our own pattern of discipleship, we do need to know something of his history.
Background
Giovanni Bernardone was born in the Italian town of Assisi, probably in 1181 or 1182. His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a cloth merchant who traded with France, and his mother, Pica, was a Frenchwoman. So Giovanni became known as ‘Francesco’, the little French one, which translates into English as Francis. He was brought up according to the norms for a wealthy mercantile family of the time. Money was just coming into its own after the age of barter, and the merchant class was beginning to find itself a considerable political and social force. Francis, therefore, grew up as a member of a family of consequence. His early biographers hint that he was overindulged, used to the best of everything. It is clear that as a young man he was something of a leader on the social ‘scene’ in Assisi, with a large gang of friends and an appetite for parties and music. The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano makes much of Francis’ dissolute youth, in order to point up the extent to which his life was changed by direct encounter with God: ‘[Francis] miserably wasted and squandered his time almost up to the twenty-fifth year of his life. Maliciously advancing beyond all of his peers in vanities, he proved himself a more excessive inciter of evil and a more zealous imitator of foolishness.’7
Conversion Experiences
Like most Christians who take their faith seriously, Francis underwent not one single conversion but a series of conversion experiences. For him there was not just one blinding flash, but a revelation of different layers of truth and conviction. A number of different visionary experiences over a period of years pushed him deeper and deeper into the search for God. The exact chronology of these experiences is difficult to determine, but it is certain that their cumulative effect was to change Francis’ life for ever. His sense of mission developed gradually as each was absorbed into the fabric of his relationship with God.
Like Ignatius of Loyola, Francis’ first urge to change direction came through an episode of illness and dependence. He had taken the path of many young men of his class by seeking fame and fortune in a military campaign: Italy at that time was divided into separate city states, and Francis had joined in the battle between Assisi and Perugia, only to be wounded and captured. During that period of imprisonment, he began to experience unease and dissatisfaction with the direction his life was taking. It was not, yet, enough to provoke him to radical change, but it was the first in a series of warning bells which it eventually became impossible to ignore. Perhaps this experience of enforced simplicity, having nothing which his captors did not choose to give him, was his first indicator of the possibilities of a life of dependence on a generous God.
After a year in prison in Perugia, Francis was ransomed by his father and went home, first to convalesce and then to work in the family cloth business. It is not uncommon that families who have paid a ransom to free one of their members from imprisonment come, consciously or otherwise, to feel that they have in some way bought the person’s loyalty. This could only have served to emphasize the growing clash of values between Francis and his father. Francis was not to be bought. Ties of commerce, and even ties of affection, had to give way to the call of God, which was becoming too compelling to withstand.
As Francis’ health improved, questions again began to surface about how he might best serve God. Celano remarks that Francis was still trying to ‘avoid the divine grasp’,8 a sensation surely familiar to anyone who has struggled with the nature of vocation. Francis’ initial response was to try the life of chivalry again, intending to join a campaign to Apulia, in the south of the country. One night he dreamed of a house full of soldiers’ equipment, and assumed that this meant he would succeed in his quest for military honours. Instead, however, it became clear to him that this was not what the dream really meant. He was not to go to Apulia after all, but God would arm him instead for the struggle which would concern him most deeply for the rest of his life – his own battle to do the will of God, whatever the cost.
Francis then withdrew into a time of intense prayer and meditation. It is during this period that the tension between activity and contemplation in the Franciscan tradition first becomes apparent. On the one hand, Francis was burning to do something to indicate his eagerness to serve God in whatever capacity he was called to; on the other, he seems always to have known that only long periods of prayer and solitude would produce the answers on which he was to act.
At this time, Francis was gripped by a growing conviction that in order to serve God fully, he would have to become poor. If there was a Damascus road for Francis, it was one of the roads outside Assisi where, out riding one day, he encountered a leper. Lepers, of course, were outcasts from society; they could not live inside the town walls but had to scratch an existence as best they could from begging. Francis the rich man’s son found them physically repulsive to the point of nausea. The mountain road did not offer any possibility of escape from this direct encounter. He passed the leper, but then felt impelled to dismount from his horse, approach the man, embrace and kiss him. Some versions of the story underline the moral by claiming that when Francis looked back down the road after this meeting, there was no sign of the leper, despite the lack of side-roads. In any case, it struck Francis powerfully that in touching the leper, he was in fact embracing Christ. From that day onwards he had a special concern for lepers, whom he referred to as ‘Christian brothers’.9 Further, he saw in this man who had no possessions, status or security a mirror for his own way of service to God. Becoming a friend and brother of lepers, whether literally affected by leprosy or unwelcome to mainstream society for other reasons, put Francis himself firmly on the margins – but Franciscan living recognizes that society’s margins may well be God’s centre.
Such a seismic shift in values did not go down well with Francis’ family. His former friends and associates found