We’re continuing with Donald Spoto’s excellent biography, Reluctant Saint, about St. Francis of Assisi, with the writer’s thoughts on conversion, which he suggests for most pilgrims is not a matter of a moment’s sudden revelation of the need to change, as with St. Paul.

“In fact,” says Spoto, “sometimes the most significant shifts in consciousness and life direction begin with a long-standing conviction that one’s direction has been lost, that existence itself has no purpose. To connect is to embark on a process, in religious terms, this involves a decision to commit the whole of life to God...”

Spoto goes on to say: “When we renounce our fear of life and give up trying to have it under our control – that is, when we acknowledge our contingency and utter dependence on God – God comes to us and turns us around Himself – We can ask, we can seek, but essentially we must wait.”

After considering what he would need to repair San Domiano, Francis raced home, gathered up some bolts of cloth from the shop, mounted a horse, and rode to the nearby town of Foligno. There, he sold the cloth, the horse and even his fine clothes, and brought the money to a priest sitting near San Domiano.

“I beg you,” Francis said, as he handed him the coins, “buy some oil and keep the lamp burning before the image of the Crucifix. When the money runs out, I will again give you as much as you need.”

The priest knew Peter would be furious with Francis. Furthermore, he wondered if the young man were either drunk or mad.

Fear of his father’s wrath prompted Francis to hide in an underground chamber on one of his father’s properties for almost two weeks, sustaining himself with wild berries and handouts from passersby. Eventually, Peter discovered the fugitive – dirty, pale, sickly and frightened. The father brought him back to town, and tried in vain to talk sense into the lad.

In his anger and frustration, Peter dragged Francis to the San Giorgio trivium, the place for adjudicating public disputes, where the father gave his son a public thrashing. In vain, for a week following the humiliation, Peter begged Francis to reconsider his plans.

Then, Peter locked Francis in a dark, airless storage room, where light came in only when bread and soup were carried to him. According to Celano, when Peter was called away on business, Pica released her son, who ran away to hide in a cave.

There, he found no comfort in prayer, and often wept in fear. In February, he persuaded the priest to allow him to sweep the church and to begin repairs. When Peter returned and saw him there, working in the cold, he was “touched with sorrow and was deeply disturbed by the sudden turn of events.” Yet, he stubbornly demanded that Francis return the money from the stolen goods, to which the son replied that Peter would have to retrieve it from the bishop.

As a consequence, the father brought criminal proceedings against Francis for rebellion, larceny, and public humiliation – offenses punishable by banishment and imprisonment.

It was nine o’clock on a cold, windy morning in early March when a great crowd gathered in the Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore. Bishop Guido appeared, wearing a mitre of silk fabric and a blue velvet mantle fastened with gold clasps, in the company of canons, acolytes, the public assessor and notaries.

A cleaned-up Francis strode into court, with a trimmed beard and an elegant outfit his mother had given him. Guido turned to Francis and told him to give the money back to his father. With that, Francis rose and approached the bishop. “My lord,” he began, raising his voice, “I will gladly give back to my father not only the money acquired from his things, but even all my clothes.” Then, he slipped through a side door and appeared a few minutes laater, stark naked, carrying his clothes with a cash-purse on top of them.

Francis turned to the crowd and said, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Until now, I have called Peter Bernardone my father. But because I have proposed to serve God, I return to him the money on account of which he was so upset, and also all the clothing which is his, and I want only to say from now on, ‘Our Father, Who are in Heaven,’ not ‘My father, Peter Bernardone.’”

The bishop stepped forward and covered Francis with his ample cloak. Later, he would provide him with a tunic.

From that day, Francis’ parents disappeared into the obscurity of history. As of now, we have no record of their later lives, nor deaths.

Although Francis was determined to leave all things to follow Christ, for many of us, I suggest his complete renunciation of his father appears to have been unjust. However, we want to remember that this was the future saint’s final effort to choose his Lord, even as it was the father’s final effort to prevent the son’s leap into social ostracism. It wasn’t easy for Francis to embark on his saintly journey, nor for his father to find himself excluded from the companionship for which every parent of every age hungers. Perhaps, we will find in eternity that the parents, also, gained sainthood.

What shocked the people of Assisi was Francis’ complete break with the family, its security and support. In 1206, he was throwing in his lot with the poorest of the poor. Spoto tells us: “From that day forward, he would take his place with the disenfranchised, with the poor and with the Christ whom he had seen on the Crucifix at San Domiano.”

Bishop Guido suggested that Francis make a pilgrimage to Rome, which he did in the spring of 1206, and gave away the small purse of money the bishop had given him.

He made his way north of Rome on foot, and came upon a colony of lepers. He had nothing to give, so he knelt before one of the lepers, embraced and comforted him. No doubt this influenced his caring for lepers upon his return to Umbria. He begged for food for them, carried them to a nearby brook or stream to wash their sores.

When he was dying, Francis began to dictate his final Testament with these words: “The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance in this way, for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter to see lepers, but, then the Lord Himself led me among them, and I showed mercy to them.”

On page 69, Spoto offers an important insight into Francis’ spirituality that echoes somewhat the need for the same in our time. Contrary to many, the saint refused to reject the Church because of corrupt churchmen, telling us: “He simply made a radical effort to practice the Gospel uncompromisingly at a time when the institution seemed hopelessly wayward.

“Sinful though it was, he was entirely devoted to it, for it was the guardian and repository of a tradition that had to be kept alive. One might say that he took it (the Church) seriously, but not too seriously; it was the footsteps of Christ that he sought to follow, not the lead of any churchman, cleric or saint.”

In the summer of 1209, Francis stood before Pope Innocent III, who was filled with ambition for power and wealth and glory, and begged him for the privilege of founding an order whose members would serve the poor in poverty and obscurity.

Both men achieved their ambitions, but today it is Pope Innocent III who lies buried in oblivion, while Francis is known and loved in small villages and magnificent cities.

A story found in the eighth chapter of Johannes Jorgensen’s biography, St. Francis of Assisi,” reveals the saint’s concern to be seen by his followers as one of them. Even during the early days of the order’s foundation, some cardinals requested that a Friar live with them to give edification. Francis was assigned to Cardinal Hugolin’s residence, though he continued to go out and beg for his bread as was the custom for the Friars Minor.

It wasn’t long, however, before Francis began to worry about how the acceptance of the cardinal’s invitation was registering with the Friars far from Rome.

He said, “... even if I can accept it (the cardinal’s hospitality), then my Brothers will hear of it, who wander in foreign lands and suffer hunger and many troubles, and my other Brothers who live in hermitages and in poor little huts will hear of it, too, and then they will complain about me, perhaps and say, ‘We have to suffer while he is in comfort!’ For I am given to the Brothers for a good example, and it is of more edification to them if I am with them in their poor little houses, and they will bear their lot more patiently when they see that I have no better lot then theirs.”

On a bitterly cold December day, Francis said farewell to the cardinal and set out to join his brothers in Fonte Colombo, his heart at peace once more.

With unflinching honesty, Spoto guides the reader through the beginning of Francis’ band of followers, whom he never solicited, but never refused to welcome, and the final days of the saint’s life, filled with physical pain and spiritual confusion, when all his hopes for strict poverty appeared to have been compromised by the community, which had grown beyond his sphere of influence, beyond his ability to maintain simplicity of life when the members registered in the thousands.

Francis’ life, which began in 1182, ended at the age of 44 in 1226, when he left to those who would listen the example of whole-hearted following of Christ, and a reminder that actions, not words, are the mortar that unites the people of God and gives them hope.

Peace to all. And grace. And eternal joy. Amen.

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