Francis of Assisi – A Saint Who Loved Wholeheartedly

By Monica Weedon, Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood.

For me, Francis of Assisi was someone who exuded joy and gratitude for the gift of life it all its many aspects – both in its beauty and goodness and in its brokenness and suffering.

It was his sense of joy that first attracted me to Francis’s particular spirituality. I had grown up with a ‘fearful’ and rather ‘serious’ image of God, so when I encountered Francis and his pure joy and love of this God it resonated deeply within me. It spoke to me about another way of being in relationship with God, others and creation - not one based in fear and judgement but one rooted in love and joy. However, as I grew to know Francis better, I learned that this joy was deeply embedded in a passionate love of the Crucified Christ. It was this Christ that Francis saw and loved in the most poor and despised people of his time, particularly the lepers.

As a young man Francis had an abhorrence of lepers but after encountering, and embracing, a leper on a road outside Assisi, Francis knew with a deep certainty he was to embrace the Gospel life and serve Christ in the most vulnerable and poor.

Towards the end of his life, he wrote:

 “When I was in sin, it seemed too bitter to look on lepers, and the Lord himself led me among them and I showed them mercy.  And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of mind and body.”

(The Testament of St Francis)

Francis was a soul who experienced and praised God through seeing all creatures and creation as his brothers and sisters, by being ‘God’s Fool’, preaching to birds, befriending a wild wolf and exuberantly dancing with a fiddle made of two sticks to praise God -  but also through a deep love which overflowed in compassion and care of those who were suffering in any way. Francis’s first form of evangelisation was in being brother to all in creation and to those most feared and despised by society and it was in this way that Francis met the Crucified Christ in a deeply intimate way.

I think the two following reflections on Francis illustrate this wholistic way of living the Gospel beautifully….

It was written of Francis by St Bonaventure that:

“In beautiful things St Francis saw Beauty itself, and through God’s vestiges imprinted on creation, he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable.”

 (Major Legend of St Francis – St Bonaventure)

In 1223, while praying on the mountain of La Verna, Francis prayed the following:
“My Lord Jesus Christ, I pray you grant me two graces before I die: the first is that during my life I may feel in my soul and in my body as much as is possible the pain which you, dear Jesus, sustained in the hour of your most bitter passion. The second is that I may feel in my heart, as much as possible, the excessive love with which you,

 O Son of God, were inflamed with for us.”

(3rd Consideration of the Holy Stigmata from the Little Flowers of St Francis)

God’s response to this prayer was to physically mark Francis with the image of Christ Crucified – his hands, feet and side were pierced and bled. These wounds remained with Francis for the rest of his life. In his Letter to the Whole Order Francis had written: 

“Hold back nothing of yourself for yourself,

so that He who gives Himself totally to you,

may receive you totally.”

On the mountain of La Verna Francis did indeed hold back nothing of himself, and he became totally one with Christ – his Beloved.

Another gift that St Francis left us is some of his final words to his followers:

"I have done what is mine to do; may Christ teach you what is yours."

(The Second Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano)

Francis didn’t expect his followers to be carbon copies of him – he simply asks us to listen and discern what Christ is asking of each of us today, in our own context and circumstances.

In whatever way that is, I believe that Francis’s spirit and wisdom is as relevant and needed in our world today as it was in his own 800 years ago– a world both broken and beautiful.