Apostleship of PrayerSpirituality
Franciscan Spirituality
Francis of Assisi gives an entirely new vision and impetus to spirituality and yet his vision was only a return to the simplicity and freshness of Jesus in his spirituality: in other words, Francis gives us again the apostolic spirituality of the followers of Jesus himself. He was not a theologian but a person of simple prayer:
"My Lord Jesus Christ, I pray Thee grant me two favours before I die: the first, that during my lifetime I may feel in my own body, so far as is possible, the anguish which Thou, sweet Jesus, didst feel in the hour of Thy most bitter Passion; the second that I may feel in my heart, so far as is possible, the boundless love wherewith Thou, the Son of God, were moved, and willed to bear such agony for us sinners."
Francis of Assisi (1182 - 1226) was born as John Bernardone in the small town of Assisi, about midway between Rome and Florence, the affluent son of Pietro Bernardone, a wealthy cloth merchant who made many journeys to the fairs of France. Francis, while not living a dissolute life, certainly lived a sumptuous one, spending his father's money quite freely. From the year 1200 to 1205 Francis was a member of the local army. Francis nearly died from a fever which he contracted while on a military expedition to Apulia. Francis arose a new man: he retired to a cave from which he came home at nights pale from his interior conflicts. After an experience with the Lord, drawing him to work with lepers, Francis started to minister to them. He took the words of Jesus literally and embraced "Lady Poverty", "who had been despised since the death of her first bridegroom". Later on, we find Francis attaching great emphasis to poverty for the members of his Order. From this time onwards he, himself, started to go about dressed in rags, removing from his life style, totally, all accretions that in any way could identify him with the violence and glitter of the age in which he was living. This concept of poverty Francis built deeply in his Earlier Rule. All his experiences at this time were drawing him to follow, closely, the humility and poverty of Our Lord Jesus Christ, poverty being the essential element in his imitation of Christ.
His family tried to have the local magistrate deal with him as a madmen but the magistrate appealed to the local bishop who advised Francis to surrender all his property. Francis made a solemn renunciation of all his goods, stripped himself even of his own clothes. Now he was as free as the birds which revealed so much of God to him. Innocent III gave verbal approval to Francis's primitive Gospel rules in 1210, which was not for the foundation of an Order but for the guidance of a group of people who were willing to renounce their property and which was centred on Porziuncola Chapel at Santa Maria degli Angela near Assisi.
After a visit to the Crusades in 1219, Francis surrender the leadership of the group and his followers began the formation of the Order in 1220, receiving a tentative rule in 1221, and in 1223 Pope Honorius III approved a new, expanded rule, which the complexities of organizing such a large body of individuals required.
By this time, in 1224, Francis was worn out with labour and retired to La Verna in the Appennines to recuperate. He spent the time in fasting and contemplating Christ in his passion. One morning as the sun arose after a night of prayer, Francis, while in a vision with Our Lord, began to become aware that" this marvellous vision faded, leaving in the heart of Saint Francis a glowing flame of divine love, and in his body a wonderful image and imprint of the Passion of Christ. For in the hands and feet of Saint Francis forthwith began to appear the arks of the nails in the same manner as he had seen them in the body of Jesus Crucified, who had appeared to him in the form of a Seraph. So his hands and feet appeared to have been pierced through the centre by nails, the heads of which were in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, standing out from the flesh; and their points issued from the backs of the hands and feet, so that they seemed to have been bent back and clinched in such a fashion that a finger could easily have been thrust through the bend of outside the flesh as though through a ring; and the heads of the nails were round and black. Similarly in his right side appeared an unhealed lance wound, red and bleeding, from which blood often flowed from the holy heart of Saint Francis, staining his habit and undergarment."
Francis was greatly embarrassed by these wounds and during the rest of his life he, desiring a less ostentatious way of sharing in Christ's life, tried to hide them. He was the first confirmed Stigmatic. But for us, from this description, we can see something of the intensity and simplicity of the inner prayer of Saint Francis.
Central to Francis' spirituality was the advocacy of a conformity in life style to the life style of the poor Christ and for him it meant total renunciation of, not just material goods, but also, of the whole self in his search for unity with God: all this proved most attractive to people all around Europe because of Francis' optimism and his sheer simplicity. The love of Christ prompted, for him, the love of the poor Christ. The humanity of Jesus easily became the central point of his daily conscious living of the Christian life, and, thus, he always attempted to give good example to his followers. This example he reinforced by advice, warnings, and encouragements, but, for Francis, example was the primary mode of teaching his followers. Consequently, he did not talk about what should be done but lived what he thought should be done: thus he became a model to those around him.
He died in 1226. He was canonized in 1228.
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