A saint for our times 

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi. Unlike many famous and powerful people in history, St. Francis, the poverello, “the little poor one,” has not been forgotten. He remains one of the most beloved and admired saints who ever lived. But the world he lived in couldn’t be more different than the one we inhabit. Yet this saint speaks to our hearts and speaks to our times like few others.  

The stories surrounding St. Francis are enchanting. The wolf of Gubbio, the Canticle of the Creatures, the birds, the Christmas crèche at Greccio, the stigmata he received on Mount La Verne.  

Living in a complex world where so much is beyond our control, we take comfort in a saint who could tame a man-eating wolf. We instinctively turn to the saint who protected the people of Gubbio to protect us from all that threatens.  

So too, living in a world marked by environmental degradation, we take inspiration from St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures, a masterpiece in its own right, a celebration of our kinship with the beauty and goodness of creation. It was from this canticle that Pope Francis was inspired to write his landmark encyclical on the care and protection of our common home. And who but Francis of Assisi preached a sermon to birds? He took the Lord at his word to preach the Gospel to every creature. Francis loved the God who created the world and still more wonderfully restored it in Christ. 

Every Christmas season, when consumerism obscures the true meaning of this great feast, St. Francis of Assisi’s original Christmas crèche pulls us back from the brink. He created the crèche in a cave to make the event of Christ’s birth accessible to the people of Greccio. And he does the same for us, every Christmas. When we kneel in reverent prayer before the newborn Savior, we are drawn away from the world’s “sound and fury” and drawn into the peace Jesus came to bring.  

When we imagine that the Christ who suffered and died for us is only a remote figure of history, St. Francis dramatizes how truly present he is to each of us. While engaging in a 40-day Lenten fast atop Mount La Verne, he had a vision of a six-winged seraph on a cross. When the vision ended, St. Francis bore the wounds of Christ in his own body. While at first he tried to conceal his wounds, he came to regard them, not as a burden, but a joy. St. Francis rejoiced to share in the poverty, the chastity, the obedience and the sufferings of Christ. 

These are beautiful stories. They inspire us. They enthrall us. But that is not enough. If we remember St. Francis only sentimentally, we will misunderstand him. At the heart of his amazing life is a fundamental and inescapable truth: he was a radical disciple of Jesus Christ. Indeed, his life truly began when his heart was broken open by God’s grace. That enabled him to throw off the trappings of worldly success and to follow Christ without holding anything back. Indeed, the saint emerged because the sinner was willing to be converted. That remains the enduring power of his witness. St. Francis reminds us that holiness begins when we stop managing our lives and start surrendering them. 

And what does that mean? It means not clinging to what we own. Trusting in God. Stop concentrating on our comfort. Loving the poor. Seeing Christ in others. When we are conquered by the love of Christ, then we too will know the perfect joy of St. Francis.  

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