The Encounter With Christ Series

St. Francis of Assisi, Stigmatic 2019

It was the encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ that gave us the miracle that was Saint Francis of Assisi. That personal relationship with Christ turned a hedonist into an ascetic, a wastrel into Il Poverello, a sinner into a saint. And, that, we must believe, is exactly what an encounter with, a relationship with Christ is destined to do for every one of us. It is that transformation of the person of Francis into the image of Jesus Christ that we celebrate today–his life rather than–as with most saints–his happy death. We’ll get to celebrate Francis’s entry into heaven in a few weeks.

But today we celebrate the encounter, the daily conversation between Francis and God. G.K. Chesterton wrote just after his reception into the Catholic Church what is probably the greatest book about Francis. He speaks of the encounter with Christ and tells us that in that moment, for this mystic Francis, there is nothing but God.

‘If a man saw the world upside down, with all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one effect would be to emphasize the idea of dependence… He would be thankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to be shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St. Peter saw the world so, when he was crucified head downwards…In a…cynical sense…men have said “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.” It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.” It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero…that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them.’

People love Il Poverello for many reasons, but one of them, I think, is that they like to think of Francis living in poverty because they cannot imagine themselves living in poverty. A comedian once had a skit in which he said something like, “I don’t need much” and then proceeded item after item to say “except. . .” until we realize that he felt a need for a whole raft of creature comforts. Francis looked at Our Lord and knew that much of the joy that filled the God-man, Jesus, came from the fact that He, the owner of the Universe, didn’t own anything except the clothes on His back.

Moreover, as our Epistle tells us today, he never forgot that the Lord who spoke to him in the first moments of religious fervor, spoke to him from the cross in the ruined Church of St. Damian. Christ crucified is what Francis preached, and lived. Christ giving Himself totally for the salvation of you and me. Christ, victim and priest on the altar of a Roman torture device.

And so Francis got a rare gift, and one that I suspect none of us would want from Our Lord. ‘While he was praying on the mountain of Verna, during a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (September 29), Francis is said to have had a vision on or about September 14, 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which he received the stigmata. Brother Leo, who had been with Francis at the time, left a clear and simple account of the event, the first definite account of the phenomenon of stigmata. “Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ.”’

It was a fatal gift, as were the wounds of His Savior. Despite attempts to restore his health in several cities, he was returned to the Portiuncola in Assisi, where he died that same October 3. And, of course, he died singing a psalm, which begins “I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble.” But it ends triumphantly: “Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.”

The encounter with Christ changes everything. It is the greatest relationship anyone could hope for, a relationship that Jesus wants to have with every human being. If we are willing to pay the little price for it, we can have it, but the little price we pay is our life, our ambitions, and our little list of things we think we can’t live without. St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.