If you ask someone what a saint is, they might say, “Someone who is holy.” I like the definition given by a little boy in a Sunday school class who thought about the images of saints in the stained-glass windows of his church. He defined a saint as “somebody the light shines through.”
If you ask people who the most famous saint is, most people would probably say St. Francis. He may well have lived a more Christ-like life than any other person in history. I have read that in the Library of Congress there are more books about this saint than any other person in history.
There is so much to learn about Francis. Perhaps this more proximate model of Christ may be the only hope for humankind if we are to survive all the threats facing us in the coming decades.
He was born in 1181 or 1182 and died in 1226. Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. When he was born, his mother named him Giovanni, but his father, who was away from Assisi at the time of the birth, renamed him Francesco, perhaps because of his many business dealings in France.
As a child and youth, Francis lived a pampered life. He wore only the finest clothing and was a walking ad for his father’s cloth business. He had a lot of friends and was a playboy who loved to sing. Like most young men of his time, he had certain noble and romantic ideas about war. When Assisi went to war against neighboring Perugia, he joined other young men to fight in the war, but quickly realized there was nothing noble or romantic about war. He was captured and spent a year in jail before his father ransomed him. Once he was back at home, he became very ill. He considered one more venture into war but decided against it. He became disillusioned and was searching for a purpose to his life. He even started to pray.
In his childhood and youth he was totally disgusted with lepers. Today we would say that he had a phobia of lepers. Francis would never even come close to a leper. They offended every sensitivity the Italian dandy had. Lepers lived in communities known as lazarets because they were not allowed a place in everyday society. There were some 20,000 lazarets across Europe.
One day he was out riding his horse, and at the bend of the road he suddenly found himself facing a leper. His first reaction was to turn back. But something came over him (I would say it was God) and instead of fleeing, he quickly jumped off his horse, embraced the leper, and filled the man’s hands with money. But then he did something which years later he said marked the turning point in his life—he kissed the leper. And as he embraced and kissed the leper, he realized that he was embracing and kissing the leper within himself.
But it did not stop there. He rode to a lazaret situated about two miles from Assisi and asked for the inmates to gather around him. He begged them to forgive him for all the neglect and disdain he had showed them over the years. He stayed with them for some time and then returned periodically when he would distribute money. Every time Francis visited, he kissed each of them before he left. He moved close to them once he had left his family and all the comforts of home, and continued to minister to them. They became his salvation.
So what happened in Francis’ encounter with this leper? I think God had been at work in him as he prayed and struggled with what he now saw as the futility of his former life. But there at the bend of the road he allowed the gospel to enter his heart at the deepest level. He let God’s love flow through him to the leper; and as that love moved through him, it profoundly healed him. Francis himself referred to this as the moment of his conversion.
There is a saying attributed to St. Francis. I doubt if he really said it. Over the centuries Francis attracted a lot of legends and sayings. But it doesn’t matter whether he said it. What matters is that the saying captures what I believe to be the secret of his whole new life in Christ. So whether he said it or not, it is true. The saying goes like this:
“I am who I am in the heart of God—nothing more—and nothing less. And so is everyone else.” I first heard this about twenty-five years ago, and I still marvel at how much good theology is in those words. Francis became so close to God that he entered God’s own heart and there he found amazing grace, unconditional love, profound peace, and exquisite joy. But he discovered something else. Every time he came into God’s heart he found everyone else there too. He experienced God’s unconditional, indiscriminate, self-giving, and everlasting love.
When we think of prayer, we often think of asking God to come into our hearts, and that is valid. But we need to remember that from a Jewish perspective, the heart is not the seat of the emotions. (They had the “bowels” for that!) No, the heart is the seat of the will. It’s where we decide how to live life. It’s where we determine our priorities and values. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In other words, what you value is who you are. (Let that sentence simmer in your mind for a few minutes.) So, again, it is fair to ask Jesus to come into our hearts. We even have a hymn that expresses that prayer.
But there is an additional way for us to pray, and that is to go into God’s heart where we also encounter everything and everyone else, too. When we go into God’s heart, we see as God sees, hear as God hears, and love as God loves. Until we can pray in this way, our prayers are truncated and immature. Maybe we can now understand why over the years I have used those four adjectives to describe God’s love: unconditional, indiscriminate, sacrificial, and everlasting. “Unconditional” means that nothing you do or don’t do, and nothing you are or are not will ever change God’s love for you. God’s eternal nature is love. God cannot not love.
“Indiscriminate” means that God does not love any other person or creature more than God loves you, and God does not love you more than any other person or creature. When you think about that, so much falls into place in terms of how we are called to live together on this earth. The radical truth is that God makes the sun shine on the just and the unjust, and how many sermons have you heard that say the exact opposite?
The third adjective is “sacrificial”. I still use that word when I explain it, but the word sacrificial has some unfortunate connotations connected to the doctrine of atonement. So I try to use the term “self-giving” instead. A parent understands this kind of love. When you love your child, that love is costly. When your child hurts, you hurt. When your children make mistakes in life that take them down the wrong road, you hurt for them. All authentic love is costly and self-giving. The cross is the symbol of God’ self-giving love for us.
And God’s love is “everlasting.” It never ends. When the last star has flickered into oblivion, God’s love will still be there.
This love shaped the life of St. Francis. It not only gave him joy and peace; it also bestowed upon him radical freedom. He realized that with that eternal love he need not fear anything or anyone. He did not have to play any of the games so cherished and practiced by the world. Like Jesus, he did not have to worry about winning or losing the world’s games of greed, arrogance, violence, competition—the games of getting, keeping, protecting, defending, climbing the ladder as you step on and over others. He didn’t have to win or lose. Like Jesus, Francis realized he didn’t even have to play the games!
When Jesus went into the wilderness, he was deciding whether to play the games of greed, arrogance, violence and using others. And though they were a real temptation for him, he said “No!” This makes no sense to many people. Francis made no sense to most people. The world doesn’t know what to do with people who will not play its games. That’s why they become violent. That’s why the Romans killed Jesus. (Francis wasn’t killed, but he died heartbroken because his order had essentially been taken away from him. Some of the Franciscans made rules and regulations and began to turn to the greedy way of the world.)
And this love was also the source of his humility. For Francis humility was not a virtue to be achieved through pain and struggle. Humility was the natural result of a heart overflowing with thanksgiving and joy for a love which included even him and everyone else. G. K. Chesterton in his book St Francis of Assisi wrote that as Francis approached people,
he saw only the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. He not only loved but respected all people. What gave him his extraordinary personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown, burning eyes without being certain that
Francis was really interested in him; in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some clerical document. . . We may say that St Francis, in the bare and barren simplicity of his life, had clung to one rag of luxury: the manners of a court. But whereas in a court there is one king and a hundred courtiers, in this story there was one courtier, moving among a hundred kings. For he treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings.
That love was also the source for his reverence for all of God’s creatures. He saw/sensed/felt the whole world connected in God’s heart, so he could talk about Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and even Sister Death. He was given a marvelous sacramental vision as he saw the image of God, multiplied but never monotonous, evident throughout all creation.
What made Francis so special (and what also made him so threatening) was that he actually believed when Jesus said, “Follow me,” our Lord meant it. He tried to live a Christ-like life. He was aware of his failings/his sin/ his weaknesses, but having been touched by this divine love and being in love with God, he actually believed he was called to follow his Lord. It was because of that faithful and joyful following that “He walked the world like the pardon of God.” (Chesterton)
Years ago Susan and I attended the Peace Week activities at North Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana. The featured speaker was Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. After his presentation, there was a time for questions. One student asked Arun Gandhi what part God played in his own dedication and activities as he continued his grandfather’s strategies to change the world. I will never forget Arun’s answer. He said, “Unlike my grandfather, I am indifferent to the question of God. I use the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount because they work.” As Susan and I made our way home that evening, I thought about what the Mahatma’s grandson had said. Over the years I have heard so many Christians in churches (and more than a few theologians) say that the teachings of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount are not practical and will not work. But here was a man who was agnostic if not atheist in his understanding of God. And yet he followed Jesus’ teachings because they worked. He gave several examples of how those teachings had worked in India and the United States as he continued his grandfather’s legacy. He admitted that following Jesus’ teachings required courage and sometimes heartache and suffering. But he said that nonviolent love and dedication to truth were the only paths to true freedom, justice, peace, and transformation. Like his grandfather, he did not embrace the lethal assumption that ends justify means. He knew that only when ends and means are the same can there be authentic and lasting liberation, justice, and healing.
I have spent years studying the teachings of Jesus and the life of St. Francis. But here I am in my 70th year, and I am painfully aware that I have at best followed Jesus at a safe distance. My discipleship, when it’s there at all, is compromised. I can talk a good line, but I repeatedly fail in living the gospel/good news of God’s unconditional, indiscriminate, self-giving, everlasting love. Too often I value my comfort and security more than I value my discipleship. Because you see, I know deep down if I take Jesus seriously (not nearly as seriously as Francis but a lot more seriously than I have at this point in my life), I will radically change. But also deep down I know that if I don’t let this love transform me from the inside out, I will miss out on the greatest joys and most profound experiences God and I can have together.
Maybe like me there’s a part of you (perhaps a very large part) which needs to hear and feel the gospel for the first time. Maybe there are anxious, fearful, wounded, or angry parts of you that have never really heard the good news of God’s everlasting, self-giving, unconditional and indiscriminate love. I invite you to go into God’s heart and invite God into your heart – every chamber of it. Do you know how I know that you have those dark places that need to hear the gospel? Because I have them, and I think we are more alike than we are different. Let’s allow God heal every part of us, so that we can truly become instruments of God’s peace and (as Francis himself put it) “joyful troubadours of the Great King.”
