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Caroline Thompson is Head of Heritage and Spirituality with Mercy International Association. She shares a Spiritual Reflection on the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi:
This month the Church celebrates the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi in 1226.
It is amazing to think that Franciscan spirituality has been a part of the Christian Church for eight centuries. During that time kingdoms and empires have come and gone, world wars have been waged, natural disasters have wrought havoc, new lands have been discovered and scientific discoveries have revolutionised medicine, industry, scholarship, cosmology and theology. Yet the core principles of Francis’ understanding of the Gospel call to love of God and neighbour, especially the poor and vulnerable, to live in peace and to care for creation, still inspire and sustain people today.
Francis went from social reject and laughing stock to respected teacher and mystic, and ultimately to saint of the Church, in less than twenty years. It is in its simplicity and integrity that Franciscan spirituality continues to attract people to God’s mission today.
An invitation to reflect on the foundational principles of a Franciscan spirituality.
The call to live simply
In his final Testament, Francis reminded his friars of what was most essential. For example, every person who came and found him, wanting to live the way Francis was living, gave away their belongings to the poor. Every one of them lived simply. They agreed to work diligently. Each one was happy to live with less… In summary, Francis says, ‘we were simple and subject to each other’ (Sweeney, 2021, p.165).
How can you live more simply?
God’s presence in the natural world
Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace (Pope Francis, 2015). Francis’ actions teach that if we reverence even the smallest works of art in God’s creation, we will not desecrate the more significant ones. If we respect a worm, can we choose to harm a human? (Normile, 1996, p.82).
Where can you show greater reverence for the natural world?
Honour People everywhere
The most quoted passage in Francis’ writings is not any of the famous hard sayings of the Gospel about poverty or renunciation, seven times Francis cites the ‘golden rule’ of human relationships: whatever you would wish a person to do to you, do you also to them (Matthew 7:12). The emphasis is not on particular practices but on what will open the heart and bless life (Davis and Cotter, 2012, p.12).
When have you seen people bless life through their attentiveness to others?
Vulnerability and failure
It’s not Francis’s wonders but his failures and embarrassments that make him able to speak most poignantly, meaningfully, and relevantly to us. Too many saints levitate, bilocate, and leap tall mountains in a single bound, but fewer have obviously unachieved goals, complete disappointments, and friends who abandon them at critical moments – as Francis did (Sweeney, 2021, p.47).
Can you describe a time when you felt vulnerable in your work?
The need for peace
Violence and threats decided who ruled and who didn’t. Walls and weapons determined safety. And churches spoke a language of power that their faithful did not. But there were other sources in the Christian tradition that did not point to power and to human structures: A God who walks with God’s creations in a garden; a God who later becomes one of them to feel, see, taste, and experience human life; and a God who is a Mother as much as a Father - these were Francis’s inspirations. (Sweeney, 2021, p.123).
We live in a violent world. How can you be an apostle of peace today?
The importance of community
The notion of ‘fraternity’ is at the heart of the Franciscan way and the struggle to live a common life of love and companionship is often its greatest challenge… this quality of interpersonal living reflects the Christian understanding of God … as a communion of persons in a loving relationship of mutual self-giving (Davis and Cotter, 2012, p.34).
How do you build community in your place?
ENDS