Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 37

Before these soul mysteries materialists and devotees often meet and are of one mind in demanding precision in those things which can the least endure it.

The believer asks in what spot on the Verna Francis received the stigmata; whether the seraph which appeared to him was Jesus or a celestial spirit; what words were spoken as he imprinted them upon him;[13] and he no more understands that hour when Francis swooned with woe and love than the materialist, who asks to see with his eyes and touch with his hands the gaping wound.

Let us try to avoid these extremes. Let us hear what the doc.u.ments give us, and not seek to do them violence, to wrest from them what they do not tell, what they cannot tell.

They show us Francis distressed for the future of the Order, and with an infinite desire for new spiritual progress.

He was consumed with the fever of saints, that need of immolation which wrung from St. Theresa the pa.s.sionate cry, "Either to suffer or to die!"

He was bitterly reproaching himself with not having been found worthy of martyrdom, not having been able to give himself for Him who gave himself for us.

We touch here upon one of the most powerful and mysterious elements of the Christian life. We may very easily not understand it, but we may not for all that deny it. It is the root of true mysticism.[14] The really new thing that Jesus brought into the world was that, feeling himself in perfect union with the heavenly Father, he called all men to unite themselves to him and through him to G.o.d: "I am the vine, and ye are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him brings forth much fruit, for apart from me ye can do nothing."

The Christ not only preached this union, he made it felt. On the evening of his last day he inst.i.tuted its sacrament, and there is probably no sect which denies that communion is at once the symbol, the principle, and the end of the religious life. For eighteen centuries Christians who differ on everything else cannot but look with one accord to him who in the upper chamber inst.i.tuted the rite of the new times.

The night before he died he took the bread and brake it and distributed it to them, saying, "TAKE AND EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY."

Jesus, while presenting union with himself as the very foundation of the new life,[15] took care to point out to his brethren that this union was before all things a sharing in his work, in his struggles, and his sufferings: "Let him that would be my disciple take up his cross and follow me."

St. Paul entered so perfectly into the Master's thought in this respect that he uttered a few years later this cry of a mysticism that has never been equalled: "I have been crucified with Christ, yet I live ... or rather, it is not I who live, but Christ who liveth in me." This utterance is not an isolated exclamation with him, it is the very centre of his religious consciousness, and he goes so far as to say, at the risk of scandalizing many a Christian: "I fill up in my body that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ, for his body's sake, which is the Church."

Perhaps it has not been useless to enter into these thoughts, to show to what point Francis during the last years of his life, where he renews in his body the pa.s.sion of Christ, is allied to the apostolic tradition.

In the solitudes of the Verna, as formerly at St. Damian, Jesus presented himself to him under his form of the Crucified One, the man of sorrows.[16]

That this intercourse has been described to us in a poetic and inexact form is nothing surprising. It is the contrary that would be surprising.

In the paroxysms of divine love there are _ineffabilia_ which, far from being able to relate them or make them understood, we can hardly recall to our own minds.

Francis on the Verna was even more absorbed than usual in his ardent desire to suffer for Jesus and with him. His days went by divided between exercises of piety in the humble sanctuary on the mountain-top and meditation in the depths of the forest. It even happened to him to forget the services, and to remain several days alone in some cave of the rock, going over in his heart the memories of Golgotha. At other times he would remain for long hours at the foot of the altar, reading and re-reading the Gospel, and entreating G.o.d to show him the way in which he ought to walk.[17]

The book almost always opened of itself to the story of the Pa.s.sion, and this simple coincidence, though easy enough to explain, was enough of itself to excite him.

The vision of the Crucified One took the fuller possession of his faculties as the day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross drew near (September 14th), a festival now relegated to the background, but in the thirteenth century celebrated with a fervor and zeal very natural for a solemnity which might be considered the patronal festival of the Crusades.

Francis doubled his fastings and prayers, "quite transformed into Jesus by love and compa.s.sion," says one of the legends. He pa.s.sed the night before the festival alone in prayer, not far from the hermitage. In the morning he had a vision. In the rays of the rising sun, which after the chill of night came to revive his body, he suddenly perceived a strange form.

A seraph, with outspread wings, flew toward him from the edge of the horizon, and bathed his soul in raptures unutterable. In the centre of the vision appeared a cross, and the seraph was nailed upon it. When the vision disappeared, he felt sharp sufferings mingling with the ecstasy of the first moments. Stirred to the very depths of his being, he was anxiously seeking the meaning of it all, when he perceived upon his body the stigmata of the Crucified.[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The pa.s.ses that give access to the Casentino have all about one thousand metres of alt.i.tude. Until the most recent years there was no road properly so called.

[2] In France Mount Aiguille, one of the seven wonders of Dauphiny, presents the same aspect and the same geological formation. St. Odile also recalls the Verna, but is very much smaller.

[3] The summit has an alt.i.tude of 1269 metres. In Italian they call it the _Verna_, in Latin _Alvernus_. The etymology, which has tested the acuteness of the learned, appears to be very simple; the verb _vernare_, used by Dante, signifies make cold, freeze.

[4] Name of the highest point on the plateau. Hardly three-quarters of an hour from the monastery, and not two hours and a half, as these worthy anchorites believed. This is said for the benefit of tourists ... and pilgrims.

[5] The forest has been preserved as a relic. Alexander IV.

fulminated excommunication against whomever should cut down the firs of Verna. As to the birds, it is enough to pa.s.s a day at the monastery to be amazed at their number and variety. M. C.

Beni has begun at Stia (in Casentino) an ornithological collection which already includes more than five hundred and fifty varieties.

[6] 1 Cel., 91; Bon., 188; _Fior. i., consid._

[7] _Fior. i., consid.;_ _Conform._, 176b, 1.

[8] Cel., 2, 15; Bon., 100. _Fior. i., consid._

[9] Bon., 118. _Fior. i., consid._

[10] 2 Cel., 100.

[11] _Fior. ii., consid._

[12] The ruins of the castle of Chiusi are three quarters of an hour from Verna.

[13] _Fior. iv. and v. consid._ These two considerations appear to be the result of a reworking of the primitive doc.u.ment. The latter no doubt included the three former, which the continuer has interpolated and lengthened. Cf. _Conform._, 231a, 1; _Spec._, 91b, 92a, 97; A. SS., pp. 860 ff.

[14] In current language we often include under the word mysticism all the tendencies--often far from Christian--which give predominance in the religious life to vague poetic elements, impulses of the heart. The name of mystic ought to be applied only to those Christians to whom _immediate_ relations with Jesus form the basis of the religious life. In this sense St. Paul (whose theologico-philosophical system is one of the most powerful efforts of the human mind to explain sin and redemption) is at the same time the prince of mystics.

[15] He did not desire to inst.i.tute a religion, for he felt the vanity of observances and dogmas. (The apostles continued to frequent the Jewish temple. Acts, ii., 46; iii., 1; v., 25; xxi., 26.) He desired to inoculate the world with a new life.

[16] 2 Cel., 3, 29; cf. 1 Cel., 115; 3 Soc., 13 and 14; 2 Cel., 1, 6; 2 Cel., 3, 123 and 131; Bon., 57; 124; 203; 204; 224; 225; 309; 310; 311; _Conform._, 229b ff.

[17] 1 Cel., 91-94; Bon., 189, 190.

[18] See the annotations of Brother Leo upon the autograph of St. Francis (Crit. Study, p. 357) and 1 Cel., 94, 95; Bon., 191, 192, 193 (3 Soc., 69, 70); _Fior. iii. consid._ Cf. _Auct. vit.

sec._; A. SS. p. 649. It is to be noted that Thomas of Celano (1 Cel., 95), as well as all the primitive doc.u.ments, describe the stigmata as being fleshy excrescences, recalling in form and color the nails with which the limbs of Jesus were pierced. No one speaks of those gaping, sanguineous wounds which were imagined later. Only the mark at the side was a wound, whence at times exuded a little blood. Finally, Thomas of Celano says that after the seraphic vision _began to appear, coeperunt apparere signa clavorum_. Vide Appendix: Study of the Stigmata.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN

Autumn, 1224-Autumn, 1225

The morning after St. Michael's Day (September 30, 1224) Francis quitted Verna and went to Portiuncula. He was too much exhausted to think of making the journey on foot, and Count Orlando put a horse at his disposal.

We can imagine the emotion with which he bade adieu to the mountain on which had been unfolded the drama of love and pain which had consummated the union of his entire being with the Crucified One.

Amor, amor, Gesu desideroso, Amor voglio morire, Te abrazando Amor, dolce Gesu, meo sposo, Amor, amor, la morte te domando, Amor, amor, Gesu si pietoso Tu me te dai in te transformato Pensa ch'io vo spasmando Non so o io me sia Gesu speranza mia Ormai va, dormi in amore.

So sang Giacopone dei Todi in the raptures of a like love.[1]