Blessing of the Animals

The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi St. Francis is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.

—Pope Francis

October 4 is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the best known and most loved of all Catholic saints. St. Francis was canonized just two years after his death, in 1228. Pope Francis chose him as his namesake at the start of his papacy in 2013. St. Francis lived several lives. Born in 1182 in Umbria, Italy, he was the privileged son of a wealthy cloth merchant. As a teenager, he wore fine clothes, traveled with his father on business trips, and got drunk with his friends. He lived a worldly twelfth-century life. At the age of twenty-one, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, his world began to change. At the height of the Crusades, he went off to become a knight. In a battle between Assisi and Perugia, Francis was captured and imprisoned. He was held in a dark cell for a year before his father was able to obtain his ransom. After his release, he became ill and experienced a spiritual crisis and conversion. He spent long days praying alone in a tiny abandoned church outside the city walls. Francis’s life embodies what G. K. Chesterton once said: “There are saints indeed in my religion, but a saint only means a man who really knows he is a sinner.”

Prior to his conversion, Francis had always been repulsed by lepers and the poor and had gone out of his way to avoid them. At the time, lepers were so feared that they were forced to carry a bell wherever they went, announcing that they were unclean. One day, when riding on his horse, Francis saw a leper. Moved by God, he gave the man his cloak and kissed his face. Francis wrote in his “Testament” shortly before his death, “God allowed me to begin my repentance in this way: when I lived in sin, seeing lepers was a very bitter experience for me. God himself guided me into their midst and among them I performed acts of charity. What appeared bitter to me became sweetness of the soul and body.”

After this encounter, in prayer before a crucifix, Francis heard a voice telling him, “Repair my church which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” At first, he took this calling literally and began repairing the village church. Later he came to understand this to be a calling to repair the Church in the broadest sense. Francis sought to imitate Jesus, who chose to live in solidarity with mankind— the poor and violent sinners— even to the point of death on a cross. Francis rejected his formerly materialistic ways and began to give away his possessions, indeed, his very life, in service of God and neighbor.

This troubled Francis’s father, because Francis was set to inherit his father’s cloth business. To prevent everything he had worked for from being given away, his father took Francis to court. At the trial, in a wild and transgressive act, Francis stripped off his clothes until he was naked, and returned them to his father, declaring that from this point forward he would serve only his Father in heaven. He was then covered with a peasant’s cloak, which he marked with a cross. Francis set out to live a life of prophetic Christian witness. The Franciscan rule was simple: “To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.”

Some thought Francis was crazy, others beat him, and still others threw dirt on him, but Francis’s kindness and cheerfulness also attracted followers. By 1208, twelve people had renounced their possessions and come to share in his way of life. They would become the first Franciscans. They owned nothing, not even shoes, and spent their days preaching, praying, repairing churches, helping poor farmers, and tending to lepers and outcasts. They accepted food in exchange for their labor but stored nothing. Franciscans embraced that belief that freedom from disordered attachments, even an excessive attachment to one’s own life, was the path to deep and abiding joy. As Jesus says, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it” (Luke 17: 33). In 1210, Pope Innocent III formally recognized Francis’s order, after meeting with Francis, and having a dream in which he saw him holding up the church of St. John Lateran, the parish church of all Christians. Francis was tonsured by Cardinal Colonna and made a deacon.

Musick, Melissa; Keating, Anna (2016-02-23). The Catholic Catalogue: A Field Guide to the Daily Acts That Make Up a Catholic Life (p. 282). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.