SPIRITUAL GUARDIAN’S INSIGHTS: DEVOTION TO THE MOST HOLY EUCHARIST: THE HEART OF THE SPIRITUALITY OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

By Rev. Fr. Joseph Tuscan, OFM Cap., CFP Spiritual Guardian

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THE HEART OF A FATHER

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Pietro di Bernardone dei Moriconi was a gregarious and generous man, a very ambitious and successful businessman. He was part of the “new money" demographic of the high Middle Ages known as the merchant class. He was born into the lower classes of society; the surfs or “minores” as they were referred to in the Italy of his day, but he was determined to elevate himself and his family’s social status. He was domineering and driven but not abusive or wicked. He loved beautiful things like the fine cloth he purchased for his business during his frequent trips to France. He married a very refined and religiously pious French lady named Pica di Bourlemont, also called “Giovanna” about whom little is known except that she was a noblewoman originally from Provence.

Giovanni was the first born of several siblings, though the exact number is not known; some sources suggest the number seven and identify one brother as being named “Angelo.” Giovanni was the first child and first son, a privileged and favored position to be sure. He was born and baptized during one of the many absences of his father who was in France to purchase cloth. Pietro returned home filled with joy; the birth of his first child, his successful business trip and his love for all things French caused him to refer to his newborn son as “Francesco.”

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This was the father of St. Francis of Assisi, a “good man" characteristic of his era but driven by worldly ambition. He wanted to break the “glass ceiling" of the social structure of his time and become a “lord" or “majore". Personal wealth was not enough to accomplish this ambition in the social framework of the high Middle-Ages. Such a change of status needed to be granted by imperial and ecclesiastical authority. The only way for Pietro to achieve his ambition was for him or one of his sons to be victorious in battle. Then his family would be granted a title and therefore status as “majores.”

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THE HEART OF A SON

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Giovanni “Francesco” Bernardone loved his earthly father; he had no reason not to. Francesco was the heir to the family business and hopefully the one Pietro could rely upon to achieve his ultimate ambition of becoming a noble family: “Majores.” Francesco willingly united himself with his father’s ambition, embracing his status as firstborn helping in the promotion of his family not only by working in the family business but also by using the family fortune to promote their status. Francesco became a leader among the young men in his town through his charismatic personality and the use of his father’s fortune to pay for entertainment. Pietro was supportive of his son in such activities, seeing the use of his money as an investment in his own ambition.

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Assisi was engaged in a battle with the neighboring and much larger town of Perugia. Pietro saw his opportunity. Outfitting his son in the finest armor he could afford, he sent Francesco off to win the longed-for family status. Medieval combat was largely hand-to-hand. Nothing in Francesco's past prepared him to witness the taking of human life in such a gruesome way. Francesco fell prisoner to Perugia and wound up in a medieval prison cell waiting for his father to pay the ransom for his release. Haunted by the trauma of medieval combat and poor health caused by the primitive conditions of his confinement, Francesco was at a crossroads in his life. It was during his confinement that he had a mystical dream that would be the start of his conversion to Jesus Christ as the center and focus of the remainder his life.

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Francesco was ransomed by his father and returned home, but he was a changed man. His health slowly returned, but he had completely lost any interest in his father’s business and ambition for which he had done everything to promote. A growing divide with his father escalated, culminating in a public confrontation in front of the bishop of Assisi (pictured in the famous fresco by Giotto illustrating this article - Giotto, by the way, lived our original Rule of 1221) in which his father publicly disowned him. Francesco suffered his earthly father's rejection, but from that point on he rejected any worldly ambition and embraced completely “Our Father who art in heaven.”

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THE HEART OF A SAINT

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Having embraced the life of a “minore", Francesco approached life now as a penitent for the superficiality of his past worldly ambition and materialistic excesses which had led to such suffering and tragedy. He realized that the “Most High God" was love poured out. Unlike his earthly father’s worldly ambition for upward mobility, the Most High God “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.” (Philippians 2: 7-8).

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Francesco’s mouth would water when he pronounced the Holy Name of Jesus and his hunger would only subside in the reception of Holy Communion which became now the center of his life and apostolic zeal. He was offered ordination as a priest, but he felt unworthy. He did, however, accept ordination as a deacon. Though we have no historical record of his ordination as a deacon, it is widely acknowledged that he served in this capacity. Francesco cherished this servant role at the altar and all things connected to it; the obligation to pray the Divine Office (he also prayed the little office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and another office of the Passion which he composed and prayed every day), the commitment to clerical continence, obedience to the bishop and especially the “Lord pope.” In every aspect of his life Francesco sought, and demanded of his brothers, that they be “Catholics” seeking only; “The Spirit of the Lord and His Holy operation.” Their living of poverty was to be modeled on the “Most High" who once made Himself poor in the Child at Bethlehem and eternally poor and ever present to humanity in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

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There is a famous text that is usually called “the Prayer of Saint Francis,” this beautiful text was not written by St. Francis. The prayer in its present form did not exist before 1912:

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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life

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“The first occurrence of this text was in French, in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell), published by a Catholic organization in Paris named La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The League of the Holy Mass). The author’s name was not given, although it may have been the founder of La Ligue, Father Esther Bouquerel. The prayer was widely published during both World War I and World War II…. The second half of the prayer bears a strong resemblance to this famous saying of Giles of Assisi (c. 1190 – 1262), one of St. Francis’s closest companions:

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Blessed is he who loves and does not therefore desire to be loved;

Blessed is he who fears and does not therefore desire to be feared;

Blessed is he who serves and does not therefore desire to be served;

Blessed is he who behaves well toward others and does not desire that others behave well toward him;

And because these are great things, the foolish do not rise to them.

 

Around 1918, Franciscan Father Étienne Benoît reprinted the text as: “Prayer for Peace” in French, without attribution, on the back of a mass-produced holy card depicting Saint Francis of Assisi on the front of the card. The prayer was circulating in the United States by at least the month of January in 1927, when its first known English version (slightly abridged from the 1912 French original) appeared in the Quaker magazine Friends’ Intelligencer, under the misattributed and misspelled title “A prayer of St. Francis of Assisi”.

The saint’s namesake American archbishop and military vicar Francis Cardinal Spellman distributed millions of copies of the “Prayer of St. Francis” during World War II, and the next year it was read into the Congressional Record by Senator Albert W. Hawkes. As a friar later summarized the relationship between the prayer and St. Francis: “One can safely say that although he is not the author, it resembles him and would not have displeased him.” (Wikipedia: The Prayer of St. Francis)

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References:

• Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Rev. Fr. Augustine Thompson, OP)

• St. Francis of Assisi: A Meditation on His Life and Writings (Dr. Joshua C. Benson, Ph.D.)

• Francesco: A Story of Saint Francis of Assisi (Mrs. Madeline Pecora Nugent, CFP)

• “The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis” (Christian Renoux)

• “Spoiler alert: St. Francis of Assisi did not write the ‘Prayer of St. Francis’ — and it’s only about 100 years old” October 5, 2018 (Deacon Greg Kandra)

• Wikipedia: The Prayer of St. Francis