TOR-VIAN NOTES
THE STARTING POINT
Where did it all begin for St Francis? As with the life stories of many of us, we’d have to say there were ups and downs in his early life. It started well. As the son of a prosperous cloth merchant at the end of the twelfth century in a small Italian town, he was a happy child. And as he got older he became the life of the party, leading nightly gatherings of young people in song and dance in the town square.
Things went downhill quickly for Francis when he joined the local militia in a war against the neighboring city of Perugia. He was injured in battle and taken prisoner, where he languished in a miserable dungeon for a year. After his release his youthful vigor went missing. He lost interest in the family business, and in the nightly parties. In fact he began to live in a cave.
Francis was baptized and raised Catholic, but he didn’t take it very seriously in his youth. Late in life he tells us in his Testament about the turning point of his conversion.
“The Lord granted me to begin to do penance in this way. While I was in sin it seemed very bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul and body; and afterward I lingered a little and left the world.”
The story of the second half of Francis’ life is a story of many stepping stones in a journey that would take him from feeling lost and helpless while living in a cave to becoming the spiritual father of a worldwide movement of grace. In popular culture Francis is renowned as an artist, a poet, a peacemaker, lover of animals and patron of the environment. But none of these elements explains his true greatness. The key to understanding Francis is simply this: he fell in love with Jesus, and that made all the difference.
But it’s still early in the story. There’s lots more to come.
If we give much thought to the large and diverse family of Franciscans in the world, we might wonder why St Francis would create such a complex structure. But he didn’t. Francis didn’t set out to start a religious order at all. In one of his most memorable statements he said: no one told me what to do, but the Most High himself revealed to me that I should live according to the form of the Holy Gospel.
Francis began to follow Christ by living the solitary life of a hermit. In time he attracted a following of men, and he declared: the Lord has given me brothers. Wondering what the Lord had in mind next, Francis and the little band of brothers went on pilgrimage to Rome where they received the blessing of Pope Innocent III on their movement.
When young Clare Offreduccio declared that she and some other women wanted to join the movement, Francis hastily arranged a convent for the sisters at the little church of San Damiano which he had restored.
But the number and kind of followers continued to grow. Now lay men and women, with their households, their jobs and families, were also drawn to this radical form of discipleship. Were they to abandon everything and follow him? No, Francis said: remain in your homes and villages and observe the holy gospel in your secular lives. This gave rise to what was known as the third order of St Francis. It was a large and diverse group of men and women, diocesan priests, nuns, and hermits, some living in their own homes, some in small communities. In 1447 Pope Nicholas V separated the regular third order – vowed religious – from the secular third order composed of lay members only.
Little did St Francis know what the Lord would accomplish when he began to live according to the form of the Holy Gospel. The pebble cast into the pond in the early thirteenth century continues to ripple through every sector of society today.