St. Francis of Assisi

In the high-spirited atmosphere of late twelfth-century Assisi, a young man named Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, known to his friends as Francesco, lived a life of carefree luxury. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Francis was the king of Assisi’s youth, spending his father’s wealth on fine clothes and banquets, dreaming of the glory of knighthood. However, the providence of God had a different sort of warfare in mind for the young troubadour. After a brief and sobering experience of war against the rival city of Perugia, Francis was taken prisoner and spent a year in a dark cell, followed by a long, debilitating illness. During these months of isolation, the vanity of his former life began to crumble, replaced by a deep, aching hunger for something eternal. Upon his recovery, he attempted one last journey toward military glory, but a dream in Spoleto turned him back home, where he began to seek solitude in the caves and crumbling chapels surrounding his native town. The definitive shift occurred when Francis encountered a leper on the road. Despite his natural horror, he dismounted, kissed the man, and gave him all his money, discovering in that moment that what had previously seemed bitter had been turned into sweetness for both soul and body. Shortly thereafter, while praying before an ancient Byzantine crucifix in the derelict church of San Damiano, he heard the voice of Christ speaking from the wood: Francis, go and repair My house, which, as thou seest, is falling into ruin. Initially taking the command literally, he began to haul stones to mend the walls, but the call soon revealed its deeper, spiritual meaning. His radical change of heart led to a dramatic public confrontation with his father in the bishop’s piazza, where Francis stripped himself of his rich garments, returning even his clothes to his father to declare that he now had only one Father—the Father who is in heaven. Clad in a rough tunic and girded with a cord, he embraced Lady Poverty as his bride, seeking to follow the Gospel without compromise. His joy and sincerity soon attracted a band of brothers, the first friars, with whom he traveled to Rome to seek the blessing of Pope Innocent III. Though the Pope was initially skeptical of such radical poverty, a dream of Francis propping up the collapsing Lateran Basilica moved him to approve the new Order of Friars Minor. Francis’s life became a living icon of the Gospel, marked by a profound kinship with all of creation and a tireless zeal for peace. He even traveled to Egypt during the Crusades to preach the Gospel to the Sultan, seeking martyrdom through love rather than conquest. As his life drew toward its close, his physical body failing and his eyes nearly blind, he composed the Canticle of the Sun, praising God through Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and even Sister Death. In 1224, on the heights of Mount La Verna, he received the Stigmata, the physical wounds of Christ’s passion, becoming the first recorded saint to be so configured to his Lord. He died two years later, lying on the bare earth of the Portiuncula, having taught the world that true riches are found only in the poverty of the Cross.