June 2015 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

Looking To St Francis

The Man From Assisi

And His Message of Hope for Today

1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”.

In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.[1]

Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si

An old friend, Joe Stoutzenberger, and a priest from the Camden diocese, Fr. John Bohrer, recently wrote a book on the life of St. Francis. Joe and Fr. John have been peacemakers since way back in the 1960s when CPF was just beginning, and the war in Vietnam was a huge issue. One might protest, not another book on St. Francis. I found this book to be refreshingly simple and profoundly insightful. Francis “lived the life of the Gospels as no one has ever done” with intensity and passion.

All the following descriptions and brief meditations are totally captured from this book, not always with quotation marks.

Francis was born in 1182 in Italy. As a youth he was the leader of a wild gang of young men, drinking and marauding. Francis was also enamored with Knighthood and the glamour of war, and fought for Assisi against a neighboring city-state, Perugia. On the losing side, he was imprisoned for a year until his father obtained his release by paying a sizeable ransom. His imprisonment had a profound impact on his life; a transformation whose impact is still alive and well in Pope Francis. Francis rejected money, his father’s successful mercantile business, and the glory of war. He embraced simplicity of life among the poorest of the poor. Francis’ life was incarnated beginning and ending with Jesus, crib to cross. The flesh included all of creation, all creatures, birds, fish, wild animals, all of mother earth. Faith was "a matter of the heart,” not intellectualizing his voyage to belief. Francis was a mystic - hours, days, weeks in prayer and solitude. The cross was paramount. “Francis experienced Jesus on the cross as a source of great joy - not morbid, masochistic joy, but the profound and meaningful joy of connecting our sufferings, which are inevitable, to God in Christ Jesus crucified...”

“Francis embraced poverty. He experienced poverty not as a diminishment to life’s pleasures but as an opening experience to life… The goods of the earth are meant for everyone.” This call to repentance is not just about sorrow but the experience of joy, celebration of life, friendship, and love. Dorothy Day, another lover of the poor, named her book, The Duty of Delight. Somehow these giants of our faith set aside the idolatry of self absorption, a habit we are all familiar with. Francis loved music, walking from town to town as a troubadour, barefoot, preaching the Gospel, “a spirit of gaiety - liveliness never left him”. His greeting - “May the Lord give you peace.” He always traveled with a companion, and began to attract followers. He literally embraced lepers, outcasts. “Friendship was the cement that held together the Church built by Jesus who told his companions ‘I have called you friends’.”

Francis was deeply concerned with the issue of war. Popes offered a plenary indulgence, full confession and forgiveness of all sins, heaven assured, for Crusaders who died fighting to capture the Holy Land. From the 11th century till Francis’ time, thousands of Christian warriors died; beheaded as were their

Muslim enemies. Francis with a companion visited Egypt, the site of the 5th crusade. He pleaded with the Christian soldiers to stop brutalizing Muslim prisoners. He visited the reigning Sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil. They apparently enjoyed each other’s company; the Sultan presented Francis with bountiful gifts at his departure.

Pope Francis echoes St. Francis in seeing systemic inequality as a form of violence, real as war. Pope John XXIII, a third order Franciscan, was the first Pope in centuries to speak of the need to end wars, his encyclical, Pacem In Terris, written in 1963.

St. Francis had a love affair with Lady Poverty. For us middle classers, it doesn’t seem an option. But perhaps St. Francis can sensitive us to the modern outcasts, the poor, enlarge our hearts. I can personally attest to Franciscan hospitality, helping at St. Francis Inn in Kensington for many years, where around 300 people are offered a full hot meal 7 days a week. Volunteers come from all over to experience the joy that pervades the Inn. How they pull this off every day is a mystery to me.

Treat yourself to Looking to St. Francis The Man From Assisi and His Message of Hope for Today. (the Word among us press.) www.wau.org

Joe Bradley

Joe is a member of CPF