The Penitent and True Poverello

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - April 4, 2008

Yesterday, I had the joy — while leading a pilgrimage of journalists and authors to Italy — of visiting Assisi and celebrating Mass at the tomb of one of the greatest and most greatly misunderstood saints of all time, Giovanni Bernardone, known popularly by the nickname given him on account of his mother's French provenance — Francesco.

It's been said that St. Francis is the one saint on whom all religions can agree. In many ways, he's given this distinction because of his simplicity, joy, total dependence on God's providence and prayerful efforts in favor of peace. Everyone remains fascinated by him eight centuries after his life.

It was because of his magnetism, and not Pope John Paul II's, that the former Pope was able to draw the leaders of the world's major religions to Assisi in 1986 so that each, on his own, would be able to pray simultaneously for world peace.

Among Catholics, moreover, he has always had the reputation of being the most Christ-like of saints, the one who reminds others most of what it would have been like to have been around the Lord.

But just as the Lord's image has repeatedly been mutilated by those trying to redefine him according to their comfortable inclinations, so Francis' persona has been so often misrepresented that some have begun to believe that the caricature is the real poverello. Some look at him essentially as a medieval Dr. Doolittle, while others consider him the godfather of today's pantheistic environmentalist radicals, anti-business nihilists, faint-hearted doves, and "spiritual" religious indifferentists. None of these distortions comes close to describing Francis' real greatness.

Last June, Pope Benedict traveled to Assisi and spoke repeatedly about the most important and imitable characteristic of St. Francis' life — his conversion. 2007 was the octocentennial of this pivotal event, which occurred when Francis was 25 years old.

"After 25 years of a mediocre life full of dreams, spent in the pursuit of worldly pleasures and success," Pope Benedict described, Francis "opened himself to grace, came to his senses and gradually recognized Christ as the ideal of his life."

His conversion happened in several pivotal stages. The first happened at Rivotorto, where he encountered lepers whom he initially treated with revulsion before he returned to embrace, kiss and serve them as beloved brothers. If the Lord had treated him with such mercy as to heal his spiritual leprosy, Francis' conscience judged, he knew he was called to treat with love everyone else, however stomach-turning their corporeal illness might be.

The second phase in his conversion occurred soon afterward, when he was praying in the dilapidated little Church of San Damiano. Now that he had begun the exodus out of self-centeredness through his caring for the lepers, he was able finally to fix his gaze on Christ and hear his voice. The Lord Jesus spoke to him from the crucifix and said, "Francis, go and repair my house which is falling into ruins."

Francis interpreted the Lord's imperative as a mandate to repair the rundown little Church in which he was praying, and hocked fabrics from his father's store in order to buy materials to do so. The Lord, however, had a much bigger rebuilding project in mind: to his the Church as a whole, which in the 13th century was in moral decay. Even though he didn't realize it at first, he was the Lord's chosen instrument to repair the Church one person or "living stone" (1 Pet 2:5) at a time, by calling them to conversion, to holiness, and to Christ-like love just as the Lord had called him.

The third stage in his conversion, Pope Benedict continued, happened two years before Francis died, when he received in his own body the sacred stigmata of the Lord. Francis' whole adult life until then had been a journey of conversion, a "daily effort to put on Christ." This itinerary culminated with the appearance of the stigmata, which enabled him to experience fully what St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

Benedict stressds, however, that before he received the visible wounds of Christ in his body, Francis had received the wounds of Christ on his heart. He had been touched by the way his own sins had offended the Lord and had been moved with the same love for God and others that pierced Christ's heart. This was his total conversion to Christ, "to the point that he sought to be 'transformed' into him, becoming his total image."

Since conversion is, according to Pope Benedict, "the heart of the Christian message" and "the roots of human existence," Francis' life-long conversion is his most salient characteristic and chief contribution. "We know that we are always in need of conversion: we know that throughout life, we find ourselves on the ascent, often arduous but also always beautiful, of successive conversions; we know that this is how, day after day, we come closer to the Lord. And St Francis also shows us that in his life, beginning with his first deep encounter with the Crucified Christ of San Damiano, his communion with Christ developed increasingly until he became one with him in the event of the stigmata."

Each of us is called to "relive the interior journey of Francis." Each of us is called to hear the Lord's voice to repair his Church, parts of whose living stones in every generation "falling into ruins" through sin. Each of us is called to let Christ fully come alive in us through being "crucified with Christ," which means denying ourselves, picking up whatever hardships or crosses we are given, and following Christ (see Mt 16:24). It means, in short, offering our lives in love for God and for others.

"In a word," Pope Benedict summarized, "Francis was truly in love with Jesus." That love for Jesus shone throughout his converted life and still shines 800 years later. It is a love that was so strong as to rebuild the Church.

It is a love that is still powerful enough to rebuild the Church in our time, if we are able to experience that love through a conversion as profound as Francis'.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.