The feast of St. Francis of Assisi is observed on October 4, with Franciscans celebrating the preceding day as his Transitus — Latin for passage or crossing over. This year is the 800th anniversary of that passage.
After all these centuries, St. Francis undoubtedly remains the world’s most popular saint, honored in every land, even by the secular-minded and people of other faiths. This reflects, in part, his winsome qualities and the romantic gestures that sometimes encourage sentimentality. But beneath all that, St. Francis stands as one who made the way of Jesus credible and concrete, both for those called to formal religious life and for men and women living in the ordinary world.
Jesus left no formal religious rule for his followers. The closest he came was his proclamation of the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers … Francis took this spiritual vision to heart and translated it into a way of life. In various ways, other saints before and since have done the same. But for many men and women since the time of Francis, his particular example has offered a distinctive key to the Gospel — or, as Pope Francis might have said, “a new way of seeing and interpreting reality.” Among the central features of this key: the vision of a church that is “poor and for the poor”; a resolve to take seriously Jesus’ example of self-emptying love; the way of mercy and compassion; above all, a determination to proclaim the Gospel not only with words but with one’s life.
Francis had begun his own life as the privileged son of a cloth merchant in Assisi. An experience of war and captivity, followed by debilitating illness, led him to search for some deeper meaning. He had always been a fastidious person, with an abhorrence for squalor and illness. Then one day, he encountered a leper on the road. After offering alms, he was moved by some impulse to kiss the man’s ravaged hands. From that moment, he underwent a wholesale conversion, seemingly liberated from an identity based on status, security and worldly success. His life began to take shape around an utterly new agenda, contrary to the ambitions of his family and the values of his society.
While praying before a crucifix in the dilapidated chapel of San Damiano, he heard a voice speak to him: “Francis, repair my church, which has fallen into disrepair.” At first he took this literally, rebuilding the ruined building with his bare hands. But soon he realized he was called to a wider mission — to renew the Church by recovering the radical simplicity of the Gospel, the spirit of poverty and the image of Christ in the poor. His example exerted a wide appeal among other young men of Assisi, who became the nucleus of a new order, the Friars Minor. With the arrival of Clare, they were joined by a community of women, and eventually a wider movement of followers inspired by his example. In his life and his relationship with the world, Francis represented the breakthrough of a new model of human and cosmic relationship marked by love, nonviolence and care for creation.
Across the centuries since Francis’ death in 1226, the Franciscan spirit has touched countless lives and inspired many movements of Church renewal. In our time, the most striking example may have been Jorge Bergoglio’s decision to become the first pope known as Francis. From the beginning, this represented more than a name; it signaled a mission and an agenda. One might say that Pope Francis read the Gospel through a Franciscan lens. He embraced St. Francis’ vision of an evangelizing church that steps out of itself to go to the margins and peripheries. In his outreach to Muslims and people of other faiths, he followed the example of St. Francis’ outreach to Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil in Egypt. He drew on Franciscan references in the titles of three of his documents, most notably Laudato Si’ (on care for creation) and Fratelli Tutti (on social friendship).
The elevation of ecological concerns to a central place in Catholic social teaching represented one of the clearest examples of the pope’s Franciscan agenda. St. Francis is famous for his love for creation and all creatures. Popular stories recount his preaching to the birds and his taming of the wild wolf of Gubbio. In his last years, suffering from painful afflictions that left him nearly blind, he composed his “Canticle of the Creatures,” thanking God for Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Stars, as well as Sister Water, Brother Fire and Mother Earth.
As death was approaching, St. Francis asked to be carried to the Portiuncula, one of the first chapels he had restored, and which had served as a headquarters for his order. There he wished to face his end. He composed a new verse for his Canticle, praising “Sister Bodily Death, from whom no living being can escape.”
Francis spent his last days praising God “and teaching his companions whom he loved so much to praise Christ with him.” Finally, he asked to be placed naked on the ground, where he breathed his last. His final words were: “I have done what is mine; may Christ teach you what is yours.”
Feature image: A hunter’s moon rises behind a statue of St. Francis of Assisi outside the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin. (OSV News/Sam Lucero/CNS/U.S.)
