Perhaps, you recall reading a piece on this site, describing the book, The New Friars, by Scott A. Bessenecker, in which he introduced us to his brother, Chris. Together, they decided to visit a Franciscan monastery, to see how the Franciscan life is lived today, and were disappointed with the lack of true poverty they found there.

To have seen one’s highest dreams disappear beneath lived mediocrity is to face a kind of death of the spirit, the death Francis experienced so long ago.

Francis, who had begun his order in stark poverty, lived to see it grow to two thousand followers, then five thousand, too large a number to be sustained with simple poverty and humility.

In his brief, but inspiring biography of St. Francis, Carlo Carrettto, offers us what Messaggero di. S. Antonio described on the jacket “as one of the most poetic, spiritual, and most instructive books I have read in a long time.”

(I, Francis, by Carlo Carretto, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545, $15.00, www.maryknoll.org/orbis)

Francis began gradually to realize God was asking him to begin to tend to his Church, not merely a chapel. Jesus said to him, “Repair it.”

Francis, although serious, could spread a bit of merriment around by repeating stories that would bring smiles, if not outright laughter, to his friends. One was about Brother Juniper.

One day, he had received a good dressing down from the superior for having given away some silver bells which adorned the altar, without having permission to do so. And Brother Juniper thought to himself: “My, How the Guardian shouted just now. I’ll wager he weakened his voice.” So he went to the kitchen and made some butter porridge.

Then, in the middle of the night, he went tap-tapping on the general’s cell, and when the general opened up, there was Brother Juniper, candle in one hand, and a bowl of hot porridge in the other.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the Friar Guardian.

And Brother Juniper replied “Well, Father, today when you shouted at me for my faults, I could hear your voice getting feeble, getting too tired, so I thought I would make you this poor porridge. It will moisturize your throat and chest.”

At a brand-new scolding from the superior, who told him to go to the devil for arousing him, Brother Juniper replied, “That’s all right, Father. Then you hold the candle, and I’ll eat the porridge.”

It was May, 1210, when Francis and his eleven men set off to Rome to speak with Pope Innocent III about their desire to live the life of Lady Poverty.

With gentleness, the Pope told the little band of merry men: “Little children, your life appears to us to be too harsh. We have no doubt that you, who have such fervor, are able to live such poverty, but we fear for those who come after you.”

Francis and his men cared for the sick in the hospital while the Pope talked over the matter with the cardinals.

When the little band was again called before the Pope, he looked tired and worried, but when he rose to speak, it was to give Francis permission to lead his men in religious poverty, the Gospel, the whole Gospel.Yet, on the return to Assisi, Francis couldn’t sleep.

He had found no sign of poverty in the Vatican; rather, he had found a holy and sinful Church. He said,

“I felt to the bottom of my being, the loyalty I wanted to bear the Church, and at the same time, I felt the contradictions of a shameless wealth, of an involvement with power politics, which weakened the message. I began to see the way and told the men:

We must take the last place. If we take the last place, no one will envy us; no one will be scandalized at us; no one will fear us.”

The more the years passed, the more I sought darkness. At first, I thought the pain in my eyes was from diabetes, but then I understood it was as if winter had taken over my life. In the darkness, I kept repeating, “My God and my all.”

There was good reason for his darkness, thinking:

My spiritual family is divided. I felt unable to do anything for my brothers and sisters any longer. I felt that I had been wrong about everything, that time had smashed my dream.

I wanted huts, and the houses around me became more and more like fortresses. I had so desired to live like the sparrows, without amassing anything. And now the pantries were getting bigger and bigger.

I had sought and loved companions like Juniper, Masseo, Leo, Egidio, true sheep of God, simple as water. And now, more and more, it was cultured and cunning men and women who entered our Order.

At the Pentecost Chapter, held in May of the year 1221, the very triumph of our numbers increased my uneasiness. We were more than five thousand.

I continued to go from house to house but no longer felt capable of leading the order. Fortunately, I was thrust aside and Fra Elias was elected General.

I would preach a little, then flee to a solitary hermitage, only to return at once to the street. The place I held most dear for prayer was Mount della Verna, covered with woods, given to the Order by Count Orlando, for prayer.

That was where I wanted to spend Saint Michael’s Fast, up there in one of those enormous clefts in the rock, which had always enthralled me, and which were said to have been produced at the moment of Christ’s Passion when the Gospel says the rocks split.

I cast myself from myself and found myself to be on the way of Jesus’ Calvary, and I prayed:

May the burning and tender night of your love,
I beseech You,O Lord, ravish my soul,
and carry it far from all that is of this earth.
that I may die for love of your love,
as You deigned to die
for love of my love.

Amen

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