Badass Monastics: Saint Francis of Assisi

You have probably seen Francis, even if you didn’t know it. His likeness frequents many a garden or quiet nook. He is most often depicted with a bird resting in his outstretched hand as woodland creatures gather at his feet. They are mesmerized by his aura of grace and love. He has all the charisma of Snow White or Cinderella, except he isn’t make-believe and his values probably don’t match the Disney company. The truth is, his values are hard for most of us. His faithfulness and commitment to living as Jesus lived even made other spiritual contemporaries nervous.

His Dad, Pietro di Bernardone, probably loves that his son is famous. He probably loves the Basilica in his honor and every single little statue, charm and token. He was a wealthy merchant in a time when the economy was changing and he dreamed big dreams for and with his son. In fact, he returned from a business trip realizing his wife named their sweet baby Giovanni (John) just like every other kid in Umbria, so he changed it to Francesco - something more fantastic that could remind everyone that his son is the child of an elegant French woman. His Dad was succeeding in this new economy based in currency where folks worked “In the name of God and Profit.” And at least for a while, Francis didn’t have trouble following his Father. He made friends easily, he delighted in singing the love songs of troubadours and he even joined the military. This could take him a step up the ladder, not just rich, but military leadership matters. The changing economy comes with social unrest. City-states or small republics are pushing back on feudal lords and the church and there are plenty of opportunities to go to war. He will spend a year as a POW and upon his return he will consider joining the Pope’s army…that’s right - the Pope has an army and that’s because the Pope has a lot of land and when you have a lot of stuff well, you have a lot of needs to ‘protect it' and your interests.

But, along the way to serving the Vatican’s military ambitions, he has a vision or an urging that turns him right around and places this question of serving God in his being. He becomes depressed. His friends will say nothing delights him and he spends time in a Grotto (which is just a really nice way of saying ‘cave’). He isolates, he separates and probably makes his family equally worried and annoyed. He spends time with beggars and lepers and even kisses their wounds as he cleans them. Suddenly he feels what he calls sweetness, what was bitter becomes sweetness. He spends time in an old church called San Domiano, which is falling apart, and senses another urging to repair this sacred space. So he gets serious, serious enough to sell some things…things which belong to his Dad… and he gets to work. He does this more than once…selling things that may not technically be his to sell…to raise money for efforts close to his heart. One Cleric will not accept the money out of fear of the gruff business man, Pietro.

Francis is in love, in love with poverty. His friends notice his delight and he says he has married Lady Poverty. What was bitterness turns to sweetness. He finds delight in his poverty and his passions. Of course not everyone finds this delightful. He is mocked publicly and his father had imagined perhaps a beautiful wife, not lady poverty. He educated Francis for taking over the family business, not for the life of a poor lay servant of the Church. People think he is mad, his Father tries to contain him, stop him, keep him home…anything but running around like a wild wilderness man singing love songs of God and nature. The conflict comes to a head before a Bishop. Pietro has demanded the church stop Francis, but rather than stopping, Francis denounced his Father, strips down bare to return anything that might belong to him and there, completely vulnerable, he names God as his father. Saying, “Our Father” means something deeper. The Bishop, moved by the moment, embraces the young Francis and finds him the simple tunic belonging to a shepherd or farmer.

Francis, newly liberated from his family and focused on his life of poverty and building the church, is soon joined by others who gave away all they had to the poor and joined him in poverty. “They were content with a single cowl, patched inside and out, with a staff and underwear. We had no wish to have anymore than that…we were uneducated and subject to everyone. I worked with my hands and I want to continue to do so, and I wish all the other brothers to do honest work. When we get no pay, let us take refuge at the table of the Lord and beg for alms from door to door.”

Francis was succeeding. His community was growing, more men joined him and then one day a young woman named Clair joined him. She started a community of women that would later be the “Poor Clairs.” And married people came to create a third order. All of them committed to a life of poverty, giving everything they had away. Francis had been gifted with some humble space from another monastic community, but he needed the Pope’s permission to establish an order. Pope Innocent III was anything but and the opposite of Francis. He was a cannon lawyer and a savvy son of wealth. Rather than proclaiming the Sun his brother and the Moon his sister, Innocent saw the Sun and moon as metaphors for power. Papal power was the Sun and Royal power the moon, which receives its brightness from the Sun. He didn’t consider himself equal to God, but he was pretty sure his role made him a little higher than the mere mortals around him. He had worked to reform the church, but I suspect folks like Francis imagined he could have done more.

Francis approaches this all-powerful Pope knowing that he has dismissed other lay orders that embarrassed poverty, intact dismissed is an understatement, he sent an army or crusaders to disband the Cathars in Southern France after theological discussions failed. Francis asks anyway and confirmed that he was not objecting to the churches leadership or clerical authority. One Cardinal speaks up for Francis, “This man merely wishes us to let him live according to the Gospel. Now if we tell him that this surpasses human strength then we are declaring that it is impossible to follow the Gospel, and blaspheming Christ, the author of the Gospel.”

Francis leaves the Pope with permission to form his order. And they grow. Folks start to respect him and ask him to settle disputes between communities. He even tries to move the church to different kinds of crusade, he visits with Sultans and leaders in the holy land hoping to broker peace. As he is more respected, his orders grow, more folks join and more folks offer money to fuel the work. As they grow, folks receive his preachers more easily, but the members lessen their intensity and commitment. They wanted books and Francis believed that was a slippery slope to wanting more books and eventually a university chair. Folks gave them coins and Francis wanted nothing to do with them, preferring folks to pay the brothers in eggs, milk and bread.

Francis felt the commitment to poverty lessen. He lamented brothers making his words a mockery, and this worried him enough to write in his will that the orders would not own property, neither individually nor communally. Of course, within two years of his death, the Religious leaders ruled that the will was non-binding and the order began to hold property, at last…at first in trust (only violating the spirit of the Will). Soon the Pope would announce a tremendous building project in honor of Francis. His most loyal friends and companions would object, but they would not win the day. The Church would name him a saint and relax his expectations at the same time.

Being a Saint is complicated. When a man like Francis asks too much of us and challenges our norms, we can either be converted and change or we can label him insane, radical, heretic, communist, socialist or anything else that makes us feel better about dismissing his voice. Or if you are the church, you have a third option, name them a saint and give them a halo. We make them so holy we can not be expected to follow. We can be inspired safely and keep everything that makes us so comfortable. The Church does this with Francis and Teresa. We do it not just as a church, but as a country. We celebrate the birth of MLK every year with a beautifully crafted dinner and we replay his speech about dreams and we sing songs. But changing structural poverty, repatriating and rewriting the red-lines, increasing wages and finding education, recreating our justices system, ending police brutality and naming Black Lives Matter…well that’s too hard. A beautiful lunch and a holiday? That we can do. We have seen it most recently with Susan B. Anthony. Our President will pardon Susan B. Anthony, but he could never apologize for calling his opponents “nasty women.” It is easier to pardon a woman long gone than readily expand voting and enfranchise the marginalized. It is easier to pardon Anthony than to close the gaps in wages and opportunities.

We name people as saints and heroes, we honor them with holidays and monuments and ceremonies. And then we don’t really have to change. Their stories can warm our hearts without really forcing us to let them break open wide. May we have the courage to be uncomfortable. May we have the courage to look beyond the halos and the holidays to the hopes of these sacred souls that inspire us to God’s all-loving dream. May we have the courage to grow. May it be so, Amen.