Francis
of Assisi without any doubt is one of the greatest and best-known in the
catalogue of saints in that the Church has. As such, it follows that he is one
of the most represented. One of the most frequent mental images that most could
have of him probably would be him in harmony with nature, a poor man garbed in
simple brown (or grey, as it really was at the start), surrounded by a variety
of animals, a man very much in touch with nature. It is for this reason that he
ahs been linked with ecology and in fact, if I am not mistaken, has been dubbed
as the Patron of Ecology. This is totally true: the figure of the Poverello of Assisi was very much linked
to the beauty of nature. In fact, perhaps his most famous utterance would be
his Canticle to the Sun.
For
many, however, the figure of the saint seems to find a dead-end there. Every 4th
of October is an occasion for animals to be blessed, and the church, at least,
becomes a veritable menagerie of animals, a type of impromptu animal show. But
the message of the Poor Man of Assisi was not about the love of animals nor of
nature per se. The feast that we
celebrate this day ought to allow us to grow deeper in our estimation of the
figure of Francis and his message, which certainly goes far beyond the birds
and the flowers of the field.
If
Francis delighted in the beauty of creation, it was because he delighted in the
contemplation of the beauty of God. For him, creation was but a mirror which
allowed him a glimpse of that glory which our human eyes are not capable of
seeing, both because of the limits that our human nature has set, and also
because of sin has made us incapable of being receptive of all this beauty.
Everything in nature referred him to its Creator, and to the love which the
Creator has lavished on his creatures, most especially man. His Canticle of the Sun is not done in
praise of nature, but in praise of its Creator who, through the perfection and
beauty of nature, has showered his love upon us. Without this important
reference to God, even the beauty of nature loses its meaning, and it becomes a
force to be feared, if not to be idolized.
But
for Francis, there is an even greater transparency of God: far and above
nature, he sees the beauty and the goodness of the invisible God in the human
face of Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. Much of Franciscan spirituality
and devotion is centered on the humanity of Christ, on the mystery of the
Incarnation of the Word of God. It was Francis who came up with the first
manger scene, which nowadays we place almost everywhere. It was Francis who
popularized the devotion of the Stations of the Cross. He was a man in love
with God, a God who was so in love with man that he himself chose to become
one. Our devotion to St. Francis leads us deep into the contemplation of the
mystery of God’s love, in which he came down among us, taking our own nature.
This
love for the sacred humanity of Christ would lead him to yearn to share in his
Passion. This is another detail of his spirituality. The love of God, shown in
nature, then in the mystery of the Incarnation, finds its supreme expression in
the Cross. Francis’ love for the Crucified was such that the Lord gave him the
special grace to bear his wounds physically: the stigmata. He is the first known person in history after Christ to
bear the wounds of the Savior. Next to him is his spiritual son, St. Pío of
Pietrelcina, another Franciscan (a capuchin, to be exact). Love finds its
fullest expression whenever it seeks to replicate the love of the Savior on the
Cross, a love that causes one to leave everything, to take up one’s cross and
to follow Christ (cf. Lk. 9:23). For Francis, this was the greatest treasure:
Christ. In him the words of the Apostle Paul find an echo when the Apostle says
“I consider everything as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord. For his sake I have accepted loss of all things and I consider them as
rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (cf. Philippians 3:8).
Christ
then, was the underlying secret of his joy in what the world considers as
poverty. His possession of God, if it could be expressed thus, was at the very
heart of another element of his spirituality. St. Francis shows us that perfect
joy is only achieved in having Christ, in establishing a deep friendship with
him in prayer and in the attentive reading of the Word of God, in the union
achieved through the sacraments, and in sharing him in a life of charity. This is
the greatest treasure, this poverty which at the same time is richness beyond
compare.
The contemplation
of God, fulfilled in the Crucified, leaving everything in order to have Christ
as one’s sole possession, and a life of charity towards one’s neighbor as a
necessary expression of this perfect joy that comes in having found Christ:
this is what is at the heart of Francis of Assisi’s message. May his
intercession make it ours as well.
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