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SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV'D ALLAN B. WARREN III
AT THE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT, This morning I want to talk about the saint whose feast day we celebrated last Thursday and whom we shall commemorate again this afternoon when we bless the animals, Francis of Assisi.* This is a pretty easy thing to do, because everyone is interested in Francis. Doubtless, he is one of the most widely known and deeply loved figures in the history of the Western world. And yet, his popularity makes the task of speaking about him at the same time somewhat difficult, for the popular portrait of Francis, as charming, even inspiring as it is, only vaguely resembles the man. To talk about Francis truthfully one has to counterbalance what seems so light and playful with what was deeply serious. For Francis was a serious man, a very serious man. We make a great mistake if we picture him as a kind of twelfth century hippie, carelessly tripping through the Umbrian hills. It’s true – yes – that there was a certain freedom from the standards and conventions of his time to his life, and there was also that childlike, receptive quality which our Lord recommends in the Gospels. These, to be sure, characterize Francis, and these he demanded of his followers. But Francis attained his freedom and his non-conformity and his wonderful childlike joyfulness by seriously, even fiercely devoting himself to the attainment of simplicity, of humility, of real poverty of spirit, and these are not easy virtues to come by. They require enormous discipline and effort. And we make a further mistake if we picture him, as some do, as a man who was “high on life” – an unshakable optimist in the midst of a gloomy medieval world. You need only take a look at one of the many portraits of Francis by the Spanish painter Zurburan or read a chapter or two of the Fioretti, a reminiscence of his life by contemporaries, to realize that this is way off the mark. Zurbaran paints Francis contemplating a human skull – an image of mortality and death, not life – and the Fioretti relate again and again how the saint imposed upon himself penances and spiritual exercises which most of us today would find morbid and extreme. And we make perhaps the greatest mistake of all if, on the one hand, we imagine Francis to have been a kind of early social reformer because of his concern for the poor, or, on the other hand, only a nature mystic whose spiritual life had more to do with the bright sunshine, the birds and flowers than it did with the Church. It is true that wonder at the beauty and splendor of creation is part of Francis’s sensibility, but his spiritual life begins and ends with Christ, and he remained a loyal, obedient and most prayerful son of the Church until the day of his death. And it is true also that ministry to the poor and outcast was part of Francis’s concern. But Francis never believed, as most social reformers do, that everyone should be made to be rich. No. Francis believed something fundamentally different. Francis believed and most steadfastly believed that everyone . . . everyone should become poor, voluntarily become poor. Enough, though, of misapprehensions. Let’s take a brief look at Francis’s life. He was born in the year 1181, the son of a wealthy merchant in the Umbrian city of Assisi, and was baptized Giovanni – John – while his father was away in Francis on a business trip. A trip which, it seems, was very successful, for upon his return the father renamed his son to honor the country where he had made so much money – therefore Francis, from France. Ironic – isn’t it? – that the man who would later be called il poveretto, the poor man, should have been named for a venture by which his father made a killing. He grew up enjoying the privileges of a wealthy young aristocrat. Fancy clothes, fancy friends, and fancy parties. He was educated and learned not only Latin – which he didn’t like – but also French – which he loved. It seems that the young Francis was something of an adventurer, for late in 1202 he joined the army and fought for Assisi against Perugia, a neighboring city and a rival. He was taken prisoner in that war and was confined in prison for a year until his father raised the money to ransom his him. Thereafter followed a long illness which no doubt resulted from the hardship of his imprisonment. This period was decisive for Francis. Like many of the world’s great religious thinkers, the experience of a long and debilitating illness profoundly changed him. When he recovered, he was a different person altogether. The experience of illness and physical weakness opened his eyes to the truth that we have “power of ourselves to help ourselves”, as one of the collects has it. Francis began to undergo a deep religious conversion. And here, I think, we can identify one hallmark of Francis’ spirituality and the root of his love for the creation and nature. During his illness Francis came to understand and to understand deeply – in a spiritual, as well as physical sense – that truly a man has no power of himself. A man, a woman, like everything that is, is absolutely dependent upon God. Absolutely dependent upon God. And because of this dependence, humility is not just a virtue, but is in fact the true assessment of the human estate. Humility is only the recognition and realization of what and how we are. Man, humanity, is, therefore, kin by nature to all creation, simply because man, like creation, is again utterly dependent on the grace and power of God. The attainment of simplicity, then, as well as humility, should be a goal in human life, because in simplicity one has done away with all the conceit and self-delusion that blinds one to the truth of one’s nature – the truth of one’s absolute and essential dependence upon God. When Francis recovered from his illness, he rejoined the army. But he had changed, and Francis’s re-enlistment lasted only one day. Soon after, he was found wearing the robe of a hermit, repairing ruined churches around Assisi; or nursing the victims of leprosy in the town of Gubbio; or a bit later, gathering together a band of like-minded compatriots and petitioning the Pope to allow them to adopt, with his blessing and that of the Church, a brotherhood with a life of simplicity and absolute poverty. * * * * * St. Paul tells us that Christ the Lord “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (II Cor. 8:9) The thought is further elaborated in the Epistle to the Philippians: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be held on to, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:5-8) This is one way by which Paul expresses the redemptive action of God in Christ. Paul’s intention here, however, is not to expound theology, but to exhort: “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus.” Perhaps no one has followed this exhortation any more thoroughly than the poor man of Assisi, as he was known. Certainly no one has taken it with any greater seriousness. The inner movement of his life from the time of his conversion on was a constant struggle to empty himself and be filled with God. The outer dynamic, the action of his life, was to take the “form of a servant.” These two aspects of his life were never disparate, but always one. The more he put away and emptied himself of all the sham and pretence that fallen human nature is heir to and allowed his emptiness to be filled with God, the more he felt called to serve those around him, even the most repellent of his neighbors. Francis knew that from the transcendent viewpoint they were all akin: he and the leper, he and the most difficult of his brothers. And the more he poured himself out in service and sympathy, the more profound his humility, the greater was his emptiness to be filled by God. This led Francis to a deeper understanding of the continuing meaning of the Incarnation. As you know, it was Francis who invented, so to speak, the crèche at Christmas. He did this to emphasize the reality of the Incarnation and to suggest that it was not just an event in the past but rather continues and is extended into the present. God became man in Jesus and was brought forth in the world from the womb of his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. But Francis says, and I quote him, “We are all His mothers when we carry Him about in our heart and person by means of love and a clean and sincere conscience, and we give birth to Him by means of our holy actions, which should shine as an example to others.” * * * * * Early on, Francis organized his little band of followers and they called themselves the Friars Minor. They went about barefoot, with only one tunic. It was never replaced, just patched again and again. They roamed the countryside preaching and serving, trying to follow the Gospel’s counsel of simplicity. Later on, toward the end of his life, the little band had grown to an Order of many thousands, and Francis worried that worldly success and power would tempt the Friars from their original intent. And so, here and there, dictated or sometimes written down on bits of paper that he found discarded by someone else, Francis left advice to his followers. I want to conclude with one of these. Listen.
* Photographs of the blessing may be found on the website under Parish Life. |