St. Francis was born in the Umbrian city of Assisi about the year 1182. His parents were Pietro di Bernardone, a wealthy cloth merchant, and his French-born wife, Pica. Francis was one of the privileged young men of Assisi, attracted to adventure and frivolity as well as tales of romance. He passed his time among his friends, carousing and writing songs. When he was about twenty, he donned a knight’s armor and went off, filled with dreams of glory, to join a war with the neighboring city-state of Perugia. But the face of war-up close-was far from glorious. After surviving the carnage, and several additional months as a prisoner of war, he returned home, sick and broken. In the place of his previous gaiety he felt only a desperate emptiness, a feeling that there must be more to life than the success his parents envision him. He took to wandering the outskirts of town, where for the first time he noticed the poor and the sick and the squalor in which they lived. What he saw repulsed him.
Francis had always been a fastidious person, keenly alert to beauty and appalled by ugliness. But then one day, as he was out riding, he came upon a leper by the side of the road. The poor man’s face was horribly deformed, and he stank of disease. Nevertheless, Francis dismounted and, still careful to remain at arm’s length, offered him a few coins. Then, moved by some divine impulse, he bend down and kissed the poor man’s ravaged hands. It was a turning point. From that encounter Francis’s life began to take shape around an utterly new agenda, contrary to the values of his family and the world. In kissing the leper, he was not only dispensing with his fear of death and disease, but letting go of a whole identity based on status, security and worldly success.
While praying before a crucifix in the dilapidated chapel of San Damiano, Francis heard the voice speak to him: “Francis, repair my church, which has fallen into disrepair, as you can see.” At first inclined to take this assignment literally, he set about physically restoring the ruined building. Only later did he understand his mission in a wider, more spiritual sense. His vocation was to recall the Church to the radical simplicity of the Gospel, to the spirit of poverty, and the image of Christ in his poor.
To pay for his program of church repair, Francis took to divesting his father’s warehouse. Pietro di Bernardone, understandably enraged, had his son arrested and brought to trial before the bishop in the public marketplace. Francis admitted his fault and restored his father’s money. And then, in an extraordinary gesture, he stripped off his rich garments and handed them also to his sorrowing father, saying, “Hitherto I have called you father on earth; but now I say, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.'” The bishop hastily covered him with his own cloak, but the transformation was accomplished. Francis had become the Poverello, the little poor man.
The spectacle that Francis presented – the rich boy who now camped out in the open air, serving the sick, working with his hands, and bearing witness to the Gospel – attracted ridicule from the respectable citizens of Assisi. But, gradually, it held a subversive appeal. Before long a dozen other young men had joined him. Renouncing their property and their family ties, they flocked to Francis, becoming before long the nucleus of a new religious order, the Friars Minor.
The little community continued to grow. Francis and his companions lived outdoors or in primitive shelters. They worked alongside peasants in the fields in exchange for their daily bread. When there was no work, they begged or went hungry. Otherwise, they tended the sick, comforted the sorrowful, and preached the Gospel to those who would listen, an audience, in the case of Francis, that extended to flocks of birds as well as other creatures.
Francis left relatively few writings, but his life – literally the embodiment of his message – give rise to numerous legends and parables. Many of them reflect the joy and freedom that became hallmarks of his spirituality, along with his constant tendency to turn the values of the world on their head. Where others saw security, he only saw captivity; what for others represented success was for him a source of strife, an “obstacle to the love of God and one’s neighbor.” He esteemed Sister Poverty as his wife, “the fairest bride in the world.” He encouraged his brothers to welcome ridicule and persecution as a means of conforming to the folly of the cross. He taught that unmerited suffering borne patiently for love of Christ was the path to “perfect joy.”
But behind such “foolishness” Francis could not disguise the serious challenge he posed to the Church and the society of his time. Centuries before the expression became common in the Church, Francis represented a “preferential option for the poor.” Even in Francis’s lifetime, the Franciscans themselves were divided about how literally to accept his call to radical material poverty. In an age of crusades and other expressions of “sacred violence,” Francis also espoused a radical commitment to nonviolence. He rejected all violence as an offense against the Gospel commandment of love and a desecration of God’s image in all human beings.
Francis had a vivid sense of the sacramentality of creation. All things, whether living or inanimate, reflected their Creator’s love and were thus due reverence and wonder. In this spirit, he composed his famous “Canticle of the Creatures,” singing the praises of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and even Sister Death. His gratefulness exceeded his powers of description. Addressing his Creator, he wrote: “You are love, charity; You are wisdom, You are humility, You are patience. You are beauty, You are meekness, You are security, You are inner peace. You are joy, You are our hope, and joy….Great and wonderful Lord, All-powerful God, Merciful Savior.”
Altogether his life and his relationship with the world – including animals, the elements, the poor and sick, women as well as men, princes, prelates and even sultan of Egypt, represented the breakthrough of a new model of human and cosmic community.
But ultimately, Francis attempted to do no more than to live out the teachings of Christ and the spirit of the Gospel. His identification with Christ was so intense that in 1224, while praying in his hermitage, he received the “stigmata,” the physical marks of Christ’s passion, on his hands and feet. His last years were marked at once by excruciating physical suffering and spiritual joy. “Welcome, Sister Death!” he exclaimed at last. At his request, he was laid naked on the bare ground. As the friars gathered around him, he gave each his blessing in turn:
I have done my part, may Christ teach you to do yours.
Francis died on October 3, 1226. He was canonized only two years later. His feast day is observed on October 4.
St. Joseph was born to a poor family in the small Italian town of Cupertino. His early life offered no evidence of any special gifts. He was considered slow-witted and easily distracted. He made several unsuccessful attempts to become a Franciscan before winning acceptance as a servant by the Conventual Franciscans at Tortella. There he received the habit of a tertiary, and was set to work in the stables. Though he remained a poor student—he could barely read and write—he won respect for his humility and deep faith. He was admitted as a novice, and eventually (by a stroke of luck in his examination), he was ordained as a priest.
From this point, Joseph began to display extraordinary spiritual gifts. At the thought of any holy mystery, he would be transported into a state of ecstasy. On such occasions, he would be visibly transported into the air. These levitations were documented by many reputable witnesses. While his reputation began to attract wide attention, his fits of “giddiness” aroused the suspicion of Church officials, who charged that he was “feigning holiness” and setting himself up as a “new messiah.”
Joseph was repeatedly called before the Inquisition and even brought to meet with the pope. He was cleared of any charges. Nevertheless, he was ordered not to say Mass in public, and ultimately he was assigned to a series of secluded friaries, forbidden to have any dealings with the outside world.
Joseph died on 18 September , 1663 He was canonized in 1767.
They feel as though they were taken into a wonderful gallery, shining with never- ending beauty, where in a glass, with a single look, they apprehend the marvelous vision which God is pleased to show them.
—St. Joseph of Cupertino, when asked what the souls in ecstasy behold
Dante Alighieri, one of the great literary geniuses of all time, was also a man of action, committed to social justice and the affairs of his native Florence. But he was at the same time a man of deep faith, a visionary and a prophet, who judged the world and the Church by the light of the Gospel and the radiance of eternity. All these factors combined in The Divine Comedy to create an artistic, as well as spiritual, masterpiece.
Florence in Dante’s time was bitterly divided between rival factions, one favoring the temporal power of the pope and the other committed to the autonomy of the city. Influenced by the radical Spiritual Franciscans, Dante opposed the papal claims to temporal power – particularly the worldly statecraft of the reigning pontiff, Boniface VIII – and urged a return to the evangelical ideas of poverty and simplicity. When the political tide turned against him, he was forced to flee Florence. His enemies invented charges of corruption and he was sentenced, in absentia, to be burned at the stake should he ever return. As a result, he spent the last twenty years of his life in exile. As he later wrote, “I have been truly a ship without sail or rudder, carried to many ports and straits and shores by the dry wind blown by grievous poverty.”
In these years, Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, the record of an imaginative pilgrimage from the depths of hell, up the mount of purgatory, and finally to the ethereal rapture of paradise. The poet’s journey involves his own progressive conversion, preparing him to endure the increasingly rarefied atmosphere along his spiritual path until he is drawn into the presence of “the love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”
There is conflicting evidence about whether Dante himself was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. There is no doubt that his spiritual vision was deeply shaped by the Franciscan movement. St. Francis himself makes a significant appearance in Paradiso, the third volume of the Comedy, where he models the poverty and humility that Dante, the pilgrim, must learn to adopt. (Dante also contrasts the saintliness of Francis with the corruption and compromises that, he believed, had overtaken his order.)
Dante died in Ravenna in 1321, far from the city he loved. He was buried in the Franciscan church.
The short life of St. Rose was set against the background of turbulent ecclesial and political conflicts in which, even as a child, she played a significant role. From her earliest years she had displayed remarkable spiritual gifts, including, at the age of nine, a vision of Our Lady, who instructed her to enter the Third Order of St. Francis.
In 1247, Rose’s hometown of Viterbo was occupied by the forces of Emperor Frederick II, who was attempting to conquer the Papal states. Though only twelve, Rose took to the streets. Dressed in the simple tunic of the Third Order and carrying a crucifix, she called on growing crowds to defend the pope and to rise up and expel the usurpers. Not surprisingly, her actions incurred the wrath of imperial party. Though denounced as an enemy of the emperor, she escaped the punishment of death. Instead, she and her parents were merely banished. Rose responded by prophesying – correctly, as it turned out – the emperor’s imminent death. When, after a matter of weeks, this prophecy was fulfilled, the papal party was restored to power and Rose and her family were able to return home.
Rose spent her remaining years in prayer and seclusion in her parents’ home. Though she wished to enter the Poor Clares, she was turned away for lack of dowry.
She died in March 1252 at the age of seventeen; she was canonized in 1457.
Bernard, one of the wealthiest young men of Assisi, became intrigued by reports about one of his peers—Francesco di Bernardone, previously known as something of a dandy and carouser—who had recently aroused wonder, as well as ridicule, by his ostentatious embrace of poverty. His curiosity piqued, Bernard invited Francis to dine with him and spend the night in his home.
During the course of the night, he was so moved by the sound of his guest’s ardent prayers that he confronted Francis the next day and asked his help in discerning God’s will. Opening the missal at random, Francis alighted on the text, “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all you own, and give it to the poor.” A second time he opened the book and found, “Take nothing for your journey.” On a third attempt, he found, “If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself.” “This is the advice that the Lord has given us,” Francis proclaimed. “Go and do as you have heard.” Taking these instructions to heart, Bernard disposed of his property and adopted Francis’s way of life.
Becoming one of Francis’s most trusted companions, Bernard accompanied him on many journeys. He established a house in Bologna and undertook a special mission to the shrine at Santiago de Compostela. When Francis was on his deathbed in 1226, “like the patriarch Jacob, with his devoted sons standing around him, grieving and weeping over the departure of so beloved a father,” he asked, “Where is my firstborn son?” Placing his hand on Bernard, he bestowed a special blessing, and enjoined him to “be the head of all your Brothers.”
Bernard himself died around 1241 and was buried near his spiritual father in the Basilica of Saint Francis. His last words were, “I find this in my soul: not for a thousand worlds equal to this one would I want not to have served Our Lord Jesus Christ…. My dearest brothers, I beg you to love one another.”
