There is a reason why the Jesuit Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio, upon being elected pope, took the name of Francis of Assisi as his “guide and inspiration.” As his many writings inform us, Pope Francis consciously followed in the wake of his saintly namesake in many of his papacy’s aims. As he wrote at the beginning of the encyclical Laudato Si’, “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.”
The Conversion of a Saint
We have traced Eros and Agape in this series on the History of Love. Now we come to St. Francis, who was a lover par excellence. In a General Audience in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on Francis’ life. In his early years, Francis was profligate; he lived life lustfully and spent the riches of his wealthy father without restraint. But after a series of visions, he came to renounce such a life of sensual love and began devoting himself to the poor and the sick. He embraced poverty, physical illness, and constant mortification. Benedict wrote that Christ called on Francis, an apparently insignificant man obsessed with poverty, to renew His Church, to renew the love for God that the Church in the twelfth century was missing.
St. Francis’ agape love grew over time, a product of his intense humility and love for Christ. He imitated Christ’s love for all: humans, animals, and all of creation. “He loved, and was deeply loved for his joy,” Pope Francis wrote, “his generous self-giving, his openheartedness. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself.”
St. Bonaventure, a disciple of St. Francis and author of his autobiography, wrote of the special grace that embraced Francis in his care for all life. He attested how Francis looked upon everything with love, just as Christ, the Logos, does. Bonaventure wrote:
When he bethought him of the first beginning of all things, he was filled with a yet more overflowing charity, and would call the dumb animals, howsoever small, by the names of brother and sister forasmuch as he recognised in them the same origin as in himself. Yet he loved with an especial warmth and tenderness those creatures that do set forth by the likeness of their nature the holy gentleness of Christ, and in the interpretation of Scripture are a type of Him. Ofttimes he would buy back lambs that were being taken to be killed, in remembrance of that most gentle Lamb Who brooked to be brought unto the slaughter for the redemption of sinners.
St. Francis’ feast day is October 4th, when parishes all over the world encourage the faithful to bring their animal friends to be blessed by a priest. I brought my beloved pet Ted, who was dying, to the parish of St. Benedict in 2023. The priest said a special prayer for him, blessing him and putting Ted in God’s hands. This was the way of St. Francis, to feel empathy for all creatures, even those otherwise insignificant, those hurting, hungry, lost, scared, or dying. God loves these too, and Francis knew that it is the obligation of Christians to cast their individual charity and love on all creatures. The command to love others is not restricted to only humans.
St. Francis and the Wolf
The Little Flowers of St. Francis, a book of stories about St. Francis from the Late Middle Ages, tells of St. Francis and the wolf in the Italian town of Agobio. A wolf was terrorizing the town, killing flocks and even people. Francis, loving both the people of the town and the wolf as well, went out to meet the wolf.
The wolf approached as if he would attack, but Francis made the sign of the cross and said, “Come hither, brother wolf: I command thee in the name of Christ that thou do no harm, nor to me nor to any one.”
The wolf acquiesced, laying at his feet as Francis continued to admonish him that he had sinned against God’s creation by killing humans, but that he, a child of God, was deserving forgiveness, as long as he no longer sinned against the villagers. In return, the villagers would feed him and treat him as he deserved, as a child of God.
The story is apocryphal, of course, yet parable-like, filled with truth as to the way humans ought to treat all furry, feathered, scaly, and slithery creatures, as creations of our loving God.
Canticle to the Sun
When St. Francis was close to death, he wrote the wonderful Canticle to the Sun, in which he poetically and lovingly empathized with all creation, sensing in himself the love that God has in creating all things—material, immaterial, living, and dead.
Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures,
Especially to my worshipful brother sun,
The which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give;
And beautiful is he and radiant with splendor great;
Of Thee, most High, signification gives.
Besides the sun, Francis praised sister moon, the stars, brother wind, sister water, brother fire, mother earth, and:
Praised be my Lord for our sister, the bodily death,
From the which no living man can flee.
Francis recognized that God creates only good—that even death is part of God’s plan of eternal beauty, goodness, and love.
Francis’ Reminder to Love Creation
Pope Francis wrote that Francis “communed with all creation, even preaching to the flowers, inviting them,” in the words of Francis’ disciple and biographer Thomas of Celano, “to praise the Lord, just as if they were endowed with reason.”
Pope Francis commented on St. Francis’ unique understanding of creation, using “the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world,” which is rare in the twenty-first century, and in previous centuries of industrialization. Humanity often falls into viewing creation as an object to control rather than a gift to steward and love.
Pope Benedict, in Deus Caritas Est, raised up St. Francis and others who gave their lives to Christ:
In his encounter “face to face” with the God who is Love, the monk senses the impelling need to transform his whole life into service of neighbour, in addition to service of God. This explains the great emphasis on hospitality, refuge and care of the infirm in the vicinity of the monasteries.
Another of St. Francis’ disciples, St. Anthony of Padua, was so inspired by his teacher that he sought to martyr himself at the hands of the Saracens. After failing, he visited Assisi and received this letter from St. Francis: “To Brother Anthony, … Francis sends his greetings. It is my pleasure that thou teach theology to the brethren, provided, however, that as the Rule prescribes, the spirit of prayer and devotion may not be extinguished. Farewell.” As Pope Benedict wrote, Anthony learned from Francis that “charity is the soul of faith, it gives it life; without love, faith dies.”
May we all live our lives in imitation of St. Francis, who prayed to God: “I beseech Thee, O Lord, that the fiery and sweet strength of Thy love may absorb my soul from all things that are under heaven, that I may die for love of Thy love as Thou didst deign to die for love of my love.”
In the next installment of the History of Love series, we will examine how Franciscan missionaries in America embraced these teachings.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the History of Love, pursuing the meaning of love and our understanding of it throughout time.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
