Parents these days often complain that their teenage sons or daughters cause them worry. It may be a small consolation for them to know that parents have always had these problems regarding the growing pain of their young. This was certainly the case with two Italian parents – Peter and Pica Bernardone. They had three children but their problem child was Francis.
He was born of a French mother and Italian father in the year 1182 in Assisi. Since the boy had a bright personality, his father saw him as the natural one to take over his clothing business in later years. Like many a father, Peter had Francis’s career all carefully planned for his son. Francis would one day be a big name in the trade and a credit for his family.
At the age of 20, Francis gave his parents plenty of headaches. He was spoilt by his father. With money in his pocket he was assured of friends. He spent far too much money on food, wines and social outings. He did not know what he wanted. Until one day he entered military service. A soldier’s life in those days had a touch of glamour about it. He could become a knight. But he turned to be a poor soldier and was taken prisoner of war. This gave him time to think seriously of his future. Gradually, he withdrew from his drinking parties. He made a pilgrimage to Rome and there he gave his own cloths in exchange for dressing in the beggar’s rags. It was his first experience of feeling poor. But it was not his last.
The following year was not easy. The crucifix in San Damiano chapel asked him to “go and repair my Church”. Francis took the command literally and set about repairing churches. He pulled his burrow around the streets of Assisi asking people to donate bricks. Children threw mud at him and people ridiculed the merchant’s son. Francis learned from experience that the life of a poor man is hard and people can be so terribly cruel.
It was not long before other men sought to join Francis. They wanted to live the same sort of life. The Franciscan Order was born and a new era was beginning in the history of the Church.
The climax came when suddenly he saw before him a leper. This living corpse was wondering along the roads having been expelled from the city and dumped in the leper’s colony. Francis could toss the man a few coins and walk away. But then it dawned a new vision. In the person of the leper, God was holding out his hand to him. He walked closer to the leper, pressed some money into his hand then grasped it and kissed it. It was the hand of God that gave the strength to deep revolution into deep love.
Francis will never be the type to serve on a committee for aid to the victims of leprosy. What he gives is not a handful of money but himself. What moves him is the suffering of men standing before him at that moment. He gives help where help is needed, even if only to an animal.
One cannot dispute the importance of organisations. But hundreds of well-meaning organisations have long been forgotten while the act of Francis still speaks to us. He did more than raise a disfigured leper from the depths of his humiliation to the level of a fellow man. Kissing his hand was a mark of respect, which gave the leper status in the eyes of others. From this moment, Francis became the friend of the outcast. This was also the inheritance or the testament dictated to his friars on his deathbed.
His ideal gave poor men the status of human beings. Up to then, the poor of this earth had been kept in their place. Everywhere they looked they saw the familiar sign No Trespassing or Private Property. It was always a question of look but do not touch. This was intolerable to Francis, who saw all men as children of one father. Gradually, there grew up around Francis a group of poor friars who, in education and culture, rivalled the wealthy, wrote poetry and books and taught at the universities. It is clear that no one can ever again equate “poor” with “inferior” or “undereducated”.
Our western world is beginning to win the battle against poverty on the home front. In many western countries, “charity” organisations disappear for want of material need. We might say there are no longer people who beg but nations. And help is not received in the sort of climate Francis advocated. His approach to his fellow men does not have any chance of success in the world of today.
It cannot be denied that much is done for people in need but more is accomplished by private initiative than by international cooperation. Humanitarianism is being shattered by the grinding structures of world power and the individual is helpless in the face of this mighty robot. We see those who use the battle against global poverty to further their own status and career. The path of the convention speaker towards self-satisfaction is blocked by power, greed and egoism. It is not difficult to make a moving plea for famine victims in some far off land one minute and the next minute turn a blind eye to the needs of the men across the street or under a tent in an asylum seekers’ open centre.
Where “humanitarianism” is proudly worn as a badge of honour in our days, it pays to remember how Francis was not concerned about mankind in general. In the dead of winter, he gave his cloak to a beggar using a few words that where touching in their sincerity: “Brother, may the Lord give you peace.”
In our culture, Francis’s concept of poverty is unworkable. In our thoughts, we have a passionate desire to help mankind but, in reality, we find it impossible to spend one day in the same room with any poor emarginated creature.
Even among Francis’s followers in his lifetime there was criticism that led to conflict between radical and applied poverty. We truly need Francis’s original and unfussiness-like idealism. Francis realised that the gospel has to be lived radically if it is to be lived at all. This is the man who came to know and to love, the man who found enough courage to give up everything in pursuit of his vision.
Near sunset today, his feast day, all of us gaze at the light that radiates from Assisi to allow the spirit of his vision settle about our shoulders like a cloak. Francis’s recipe for peace and justice is just applicable to ourselves today.