FRANCIS
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FRANCIS
evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or
for animals.
Hardly less engaging than his boundless sense of fellow-feeling was Francis's downright sincerity and artless simplicity. " Dearly beloved," he once began a sermon following upon a severe illness, "I have to confess to God and you that during this Lent I have eaten cakes made with lard." And when the guard- ian insisted for the sake of warmth upon Francis hav- ing a fox skin sewn under his worn-out tunic, the saint consented only upon condition that another skin of the same size be sewn outside. For it was his singular study never to hide from men that which was known to God. " What a man is in the sight of God," he was wont to repeat, "so much he is and no more" — a saying which passed into the "Imitation", and has been often quoted. Another winning trait of Francis which inspires the deepest affection was his unswerv- ing directness of purpose and unfaltering following after an ideal. "His dearest desire so long as he lived", Celano tells us, "was ever to seek among wise and simple, perfect and imperfect, tlie means to walk in the way of truth." To Francis love was the truest of all truths ; hence his deep sense of personal respon- sibility towards his fellows. The love of Christ and Him Crucified permeated the whole life and character of Francis, and he placed the chief hope of redemption and redress for a suffering humanity in the literal imi- tation of his Divine Master. The saint imitated the example of Christ as literally as it was in him to do so; barefoot, and in absolute poverty, he proclaimed the reign of love. This heroic imitation of Christ's pov- erty was perhaps the distinctive mark of Francis's vocation, and he was undoubtedly, as Bossuet ex- presses it, the most ardent, enthusiastic, and desper- ate lover of poverty the world has yet seen. After money Francis most detested discord and divisions. Peace, therefore, became his watchword, and the pathetic reconciliation he effected in his last days be- tween the Bishop and Potesta of Assisi is but one in- stance out of many of his power to quell the storms of passion and restore tranquillity to hearts torn asunder by civil strife. The duty of a servant of God, Francis declared, was to lift up the hearts of men and move them to spiritual gladness. Hence it was not "from monastic stalls or with the careful irresponsibility of the enclosed student" that the saint and his followers addressed the people: "they dwelt among them and grappled with the evils of the system under which the people groaned". They worked in return for their fare, doing for the lowest the most menial labour, and speaking to the poorest words of hope such as the world had not heard for many a day. In this wise Francis bridged the chasm between an aristocratic clergy and the common people, and though he taught no new doctrine, he so far repopularized the old one given on the Mount that the Gospel took on a new life and called forth a new love.
Such in briefest outline are some of the salient fea- tures which render the figure of Francis one of such supreme attraction that all manner of men feel them- selves drawn towards him, with a sense of personal attachment. Few, however, of those who feel the charm of Francis's personality may follow the saint to his lonely height of rapt communion with Ciod. For, however engaging a "minstrel of the Lord", Francis was none the less a profound mystic in the truest sense of the word. The whole world was to him one luminous ladder, mounting upon the rungs of which he approached and beheld C!od. It is very mislead- ing, however, to portray Francis as living "at a height where dogma ceases to exist", and still further from the truth to represent the trend of his teaching as one in which orthodoxy was made subservient to" humani- tarianism". A very cursory in(|uiry into Francis's religious belief suffices to show that it embraced the entire Catholic dogma, nothing more or less. If then
the saint's sermons were on the whole moral rather
than doctrinal, it was because he preached to meet the
wants of his day, and those whom he addressed had
not strayed from dogmatic truth; they were still
"hearers", if not "doers", of the Word. For this
reason Francis set aside all questions more theoretical
than practical, and returned to the Gospel. Again, to
see in Francis only the loving friend of all God's crea-
tures, the joyous singer of nature, is to overlook alto-
gether that aspect of his work which is the explanation
of all the rest — its supernatural side. Few lives have
been more wholly imbued with the supernatural, as
even Renan admits. Nowhere, perhaps, can there be
found a keener insight into the innermost world of
spirit, yet so closely were the supernatural and the
natural blended in Francis, that his very asceticism
was often clothed in the guise of romance, as witness
his w-ooing the Lady Poverty, in a sense that almost
ceased to be figurative. For Francis's singularly
vivid imagination was impregnate with the imagery of
the chansons de geste, and owing to his markedly
dramatic tendency, he delighted in suiting his action
to his thought. So, too, the saint's native turn for the
picturesque led him to unite religion and nature. He
found in all created things, however trivial, some re-
flection of the Divine perfection, and he loved to ad-
mire in them the beauty, power, wisdom, and good-
ness of their Creator. And so it came to pass that he
saw sermons even in stones, and good in everything.
Moreover, Francis's simple, childlike nature fastened
on the thought, that if all are from one Father then
all are real kin. Hence his custom of claiming
brotherhood with all manner of animate and inani-
mate objects. The personification, therefore, of the
elements in the "Canticle of the Sun" is something
more than a mere literary figure. Francis's love of
creatures was not simply the offspring of a soft or sen-
timental disposition; it arose rather from that deep
and abiding sense of the presence of God, which under-
lay all he said and did. Even so, Francis's habitual
cheerfulness was not that of a careless nature, or of
one untouched by sorrow. None witnessed Francis's
hidden struggles, his long agonies of tears, or his secret
wrestlings in prayer. And if we meet him making
dumb-show of music, by playing a couple of sticks
like a violin to give vent to his glee, we also find him
heart-sore with foreboding at the dire dissensions in
the order, which threatened to make shipwreck of his
ideal. Nor were temptations or other weakening
maladies of the soul wanting to the saint at any time.
Francis's lightsomeness had its source in that entire
surrender of everything present and passing, in which
he had found the interior liberty of the children of
God ; it drew its strength from his intimate union with
Jesus in the Holy Communion. The mystery of the
Holy Eucharist, being an extension of the Passion,
held a preponderant place in the life of Francis, and he
had nothing more at heart than all that concerned the
cultus of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence we not only
hear of Francis conjuring the clergy to show befitting
respect for everything connected with the Sacrifice of
the Mass, but we also see him sweeping out poor
churches, questing sacred vessels for them, and provid-
ing them with altar-breads made by himself. So great,
indeed, was Francis's reverence for the priesthood,
because of its relation to the Adorable Sacrament, that
in his humility he never dared to aspire to that dignity.
Humility was, no doubt, the saint's ruling virtue.
The idol of an enthusiastic popular devotion, he ever
truly believed himself less than the least. Equally
admirable was Francis's prompt and docile obedience
to the voice of grace within him, even in the early ilays
of his ill-delineil aiul)ition, when the spirit of interpre-
tation fiiilcd him. Later on, the saint, with as clear a
sen.sc i)f his message as any prophet ever had, yielded
ungrudging submission to what constituted ecclesias-
tical authority. No reformer, moreover, was ever
