Hi, I'm David Bercot, and today I want to talk about one of my favorite characters in Christian history, Francis of Assisi. I've often said that the essence of Christianity is an obedient love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ. And since the days of the apostles, very few Christians have had such an obedient love-faith relationship with Jesus, as did Francis of Assisi. Now, many of the persons throughout Christian history that have been given the name " saints " we know extremely little about. People like St.
Nicholas or St. George or St. Valentine. Often nothing was written about these people until centuries after they were dead. And so, what has been written is primarily just myth. We know very little about the real person. But it's quite different with Francis of Assisi, and that's because he was very famous during his lifetime. And so we have a number of chroniclers who knew him personally, who wrote about him having been with him as one of his fellow companions.
Now, Francis was born in the year 1181, which was during the period often known as the High Middle Ages. This was the time of the Crusades. It's often been called the Age of Faith, and yet at the same time, it was a period of moral decay for the Roman Catholic Church. Now, during Francis ' lifetime, just about everyone in Europe had been baptized as an infant, but very few of those persons had a real relationship with Christ.
Many of the clergy were totally ignorant of the Scriptures, and a large number of them lived immoral lives. Since the Church did not allow them to marry, often they took on concubines. Now the bishops and cardinals and popes of those days usually were not spiritual men who had rose through the ranks. Rather, most of them came from the nobility. If a wealthy or prominent family had several sons, well, maybe one would be the prince of a certain kingdom.
One would become a bishop or cardinal, perhaps even pope, depending upon the family. And these bishops and the pope, they lived in grand palaces. Many of them had concubines and many illegitimate children. Likewise, often the priors or abbots of the various monasteries were again from the nobility. They gave up, quote, " a life in the world " to then live in relative luxury inside a monastery, and again, they were the ones who ruled over the other monks because they were of the nobility.
And that wasn't true of all of the abbots, nor of all of the bishops. A common person could rise up to, in fact, eventually become pope, but that was not the normal practice. Now to help you put Francis of Assisi into a place in time that you can associate with, the Third Crusade, this is the one that featured Richard the Lionhearted from England, et cetera. That was in the year 1189, when Francis was eight years old. The Magna Carta was signed in the year 1215 during the lifetime of Francis.
Francis died nearly a century before the birth of John Wycliffe. And of course, the Reformation didn't start until the year 1517, nearly 300 years after the death of Francis. Francis was born in a small town, the town of Assisi, which is situated on top of a hill in the Italian region known as Umbria, which is about 100 miles north-northeast of Rome. Francis ' father, Pietro, or Peter, was away on a business trip to France at the time that Francis was born. Pietro was a wealthy cloth merchant.
He didn't belong to the nobility, but he did belong to the upper middle class and was quite wealthy. Francis ' mother, Pika, had him baptized while her husband was away, and gave him the name Giovanni, or John, naming him after John the Baptist. But when Francis ' father, Pietro, returned from his trip from France, he decided to have his firstborn son named Francesco, in English Frances, which means Frenchmen, because Pietro had been in France at the time of his birth. Now, Francis was a somewhat sickly young boy.
He was never robust in health. But he grew up like the other middle-class boys in Italy, dreaming of riches and of knighthood. This was the great age of chivalry. He lived a rather rich idle life. As he became a teenager, he was known for his amiable disposition, he was generous, fun-loving, and he was generally the leader of the other youth. He liked to wear fancy clothes in recognition of his station in life, and he was usually the one organizing the festivities for the other young men.
They would go out and Francis would order these sumptuous feasts, and they would drink and laugh and make merry, and then they would leave the restaurant or in where they were at and go through the streets of Assisi, singing at the top of their voices in merriment, waking a lot of the people up. And Francis was known for his sweet singing voice. Now, he had been a rather poor student in school, but he did receive a basic education. He could read Latin, and his father taught him French.
So he could read and write three languages: Italian, French, and Latin. Now, at that time in history, in Italy, when you reached the age of 16, you were considered an adult. So, when Francis became an adult at age 16, he began working in his father's cloth shop. And he was good with customers. He was a good talker, very cheerful, amiable, as I've said.
When he wasn't working in the shop, he loved to wander through the meadows and the woods that were around Assisi, and his father, being wealthy, had purchased a number of farms. And Francis would often take his friends riding through these farms. One day when Francis and his friends were riding through one of his father's farms, they came upon a leper on the road. Lepers in that day and age were kept apart from the rest of society.
They lived in little colonies outside of any of the cities, and people feared them like the plague. Francis in particular had a loathing of lepers, and as soon as they saw this leper, they just turned their horses around and went back as fast as they could the other direction. In the year 1200, when Francis was 19, his town of Assisi declared war on the nearby town of Perugia. Now, you need to understand that in the days of Francis, there was no nation of Italy.
Instead, Italy was a geographic region comprised of numerous city-states. Some of these city-states, like Genoa or Venice, were extremely powerful. Many of the city-states in Italy were actually owned by the Roman Catholic Church and governed by the Pope through his emissaries. Others were governed by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and many were independent of anybody outside. Now, the town of Assisi was governed by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but Perugia was a papal city, governed by the pope.
And there were numerous things beyond that that caused conflict between the two cities. Now, for two years, not much happened in this small war, a few skirmishes, and things like that. But in the year 1202, when Francis was 21, the men of Assisi decided to mount an attack on Perugia. Now, Francis had always dreamed of being a knight, and here at last was his chance. Again, this was the High Middle Ages, and knighthood was put forth as the shining example of what a man should be.
Not only that, for someone like Francis, who did not belong to the nobility, knighthood was a way to acquire nobility. See, all of the nobles were automatically knights, that is, the men. But for someone outside of the nobility, they could have knighthood conferred upon them through military heroism. And then once they were made a knight, then they were considered part of the nobility. So Francis was all excited about this, his family was.
Francis ' father paid to have Francis splendidly outfitted with a breastplate and a cape, a sword, a shield, his own horse, all of that. Unfortunately, once the forces of Assisi reached Perugia, they were thoroughly routed by the army at Perugia, and they all began to flee back to Assisi, and they were chased down, and hundreds of the men slaughtered. Francis lost a lot of his boyhood friends that way.
Now, if someone appeared to be wealthy, which meant usually they were riding a horse and they had fancy clothes on and all of this, instead of killing them, the men of Perugia took them as captives to hold them for ransom. And since Francis was on a horse and decked out like one of the nobility, he was taken captive instead of being slaughtered.
Well, the men were stuck in an underground dungeon along the city wall while negotiations went on with Assisi to end the war, and as far as how much ransom would be paid for the different people. During this time in the dungeon, Francis spent a year there. He contracted tuberculosis. Now, they didn't know it was tuberculosis back then, but from the symptoms, that's what most medical personnel would feel it was today.
Finally, after a year, his family was able to obtain his release, paying a rather high ransom, and Francis came home to Assisi. Well, at first, he wasn't at all the same Francis. He was much more thoughtful, a little less cheerful, more pensive. He would spend a lot of time out in the woods and meadows by himself. But slowly, little by little, his old nature came back and he resumed his place as the King of the Revelers there in Assisi.
He worked in his father's shop and really had no greater values in life than money and having a good time. Well, in the year 1205, when Francis was 24, the Pope declared another crusade. This was the Fourth Crusade. And it was supposed to be against Egypt, who now controlled the city of Jerusalem. Well, Francis wanted to go on the crusade. Maybe this would be his chance to become a knight. He was still all excited about those ideals. And so his father had a suit of armor custom-made for him.
In fact, I would imagine most suits of armor were custom-made, because they had to fit your joints just right, or you would not have been able to move in them. Now, a suit of armor was a very costly thing. That's why most of the men in the medieval battles were not clothed in suits of armor. In fact, just one suit of armor costs as much as a large farm would cost. But again, Pietro was a wealthy man, and he was willing to do this for his son. So Francis got his suit of armor made. He got in it.
He joined with some of the other men from Assisi and other towns who were going on this crusade, and he left Assisi on a horse, a bunch of people waving and giving him a grand farewell. Unfortunately, he didn't get very far. The first night they reached the nearby city of Spoleto in Italy, and Francis came down sick. During that night, he had a dream. Now, I'm always a bit skeptical when I read or hear about somebody having a dream and God is speaking to them in a dream.
Not because I doubt God's power to do that, but so many of the persons I've known who've had dreams and that sort of thing, don't bear the fruit that would make me think God had really communicated with him. But in the case of Francis, it's quite different. The fruit was there, and in fact, it's very hard to understand his life unless a person accepts the fact that God did speak to him directly a few times, either in dreams or in visions. While he was sleeping that night in Spoleto, Francis had a dream.
And in this dream, a voice from heaven asked Francis what he was planning to do. So Francis explained what he was doing going on this crusade and what he hoped to accomplish and all of that. But then the voice asked him, " Now who can do more for you? The master or the servant? " Well, Francis replied, " The Master. " The voice then asked, " So why are you abandoning the master in order to follow the servant? " Francis then replied, " Well, what would you have me do then?
" The voice answered, " Return to Assisi, and you will be told what to do. " When Francis awoke, he realized he had heard from God through this dream. And he didn't even, for an instant, question what God wanted him to do. Instead, he told the other man he wasn't going to go on the Crusade after all, that he was going to go back to Assisi.
So while they all rode off to the coast to get on a ship, to join other armies who would all get on ships to go to the Middle East, Francis, all by himself, got on his horse, and journeyed back to Assisi. Of course, now this suit of armor that had cost so much was of no use to him. He didn't really want to ride back into town with a suit of armor on. So he stopped at another town, and he sold it.
I'm sure getting only a fraction of what it had cost, since a used suit of armor would not be of a lot of value except to someone who would be about the same height and weight as Francis. Well, you can imagine the reception when Francis returned to Assisi. Here, the whole town had given him this hero send-off, and then two or three days later, here he comes back into town. No armor, no explanation other than, well, God told me to come back to Assisi. Francis ' father was absolutely mortified.
It's not hard to picture the scene. Francis saying, " But Dad, I had a dream. God told me to come back to Assisi. " And the father's saying, " Yeah, right! " Grabbing him by the ear and yanking him into the cloth shop and saying, " Well, I will make a cloth merchant out of you if it's the last thing I do. You're obviously good for nothing else. " Meanwhile, Francis waited to hear again from God. He knew God had told him to go back to Assisi, but why? What did he have in mind for Francis? Francis really had no idea.
But one night, when Francis was 25 years old, he and his friends were out feasting, and in the late hours of the night, as usual, they left the tavern and started going down the city streets singing. Well, his friends were laughing and singing, and they got several blocks when they suddenly realized, wait a minute, Francis isn't with us. They turned around and couldn't see him. So the men went back to the inn where they had been, and they saw Francis just standing there like a statue.
Well, his friends came up to him and touched him. " Francis, are you okay? " And he just stood there, didn't say a thing. Finally, one of the friends says, " Oh, I know what it is. Francis is in love. Are you in love, Francis? " And Francis looked at him and said, " Yes, that's it. I'm in love. " And then he just walked right past them and went to his home.
Well, one day when Francis was wandering in the fields and woods outside of Assisi, he came upon this small country church at San Damiano, which was in great need of repair. Well, he went inside the church. No one was there, and he just looked around, stared at the paintings on the wall, at the figure of Christ on the cross, and he prayed. And suddenly he heard a voice. And the voice said, " Francis, Francis! Repair my church, because as you can see, it's in ruins. " Well, the little country church was in ruins.
The walls were half falling down. And so Francis assumed, well, this voice means I'm supposed to repair this church. He wasn't sure how he was going to do that, but now he took off his fancy clothes when he got home and changed into a drab gray robe and started going around in that. He would journey out in the countryside, and one day on one of his journeys on the road, he came upon this leper. Well, up to then he had always detested lepers and would just flee the other way as quickly as he could when he saw one.
But this time he was moved with love. This poor creature, his fellow human, his brother, who was inflicted with disease. And he went up to him and kissed him right on the lips and hugged him. This was an extremely hard test for him, but instead of feeling this repulsion that he thought he would, he was just filled with this great joy at having done that, having been able to accept this fellow human as his brother. Well, a day later, he went back to the shop. His father was on one of his trips as was very frequent.
And he took a bolt of expensive scarlet cloth and disappeared from the store with it. He went to a nearby town and he sold a bolt of cloth for a considerable sum of money. And then he journeyed to the little church at San Damiano. He found the priest there and he gave him this sack of gold coins. Even though this was outside of Assisi, Francis' reputation had spread to the countryside. Everybody thought he was a little bit nutty. And the priest was very leery. Where did he get all of this money?
And so he told Francis, I don't want the money. And so Francis just threw the bag onto a windowsill there in the corner. But he asked the priest if he could have sanctuary there at the church, and the priest allowed him to do that. Well, when Pietro got back from his trip, he was furious when he heard what had happened. I doubt Francis thought he was stealing by taking this bolt of cloth from the family store, but to Pietro, that's exactly what it was. And he had had enough of this lackadaisical son.
First wanted to be a knight, then a crusader. Now he wants to be a holy man. What's going to be next? And so he and others began searching for Francis. Francis found a little cellar under the church where he hid out for a whole month. But finally he was discovered and taken back to Assisi. Well, when he got back to town, being half dragged by some of the men his father had recruited, everybody in town started laughing. People began throwing mud and rocks at Francis and calling him the crazy one.
Pietro was totally humiliated. Here he was among the wealthiest merchants in town, hoping to climb up the social ladder. And instead, because of these antics of Francis, now people were laughing at his family. Well, he marched Francis right back into the family house and locked him up in a small room, only bringing him food and drink occasionally. Well, when he left for his next trip, Francis pleaded with his mother to let him out. And at first she said no, but finally his pleas wore her down.
And so she unlocked the door, she gave him some new clothes to put on, and Francis took off and he found refuge again at San Damiano. Well, when Pietro got back from his trip, that was just about it. He'd hoped maybe by locking Francis up that he would come to his senses, would become a good merchant son again, and maybe something worthwhile could become of his life. But when he heard he had got out of the room and had disappeared back to the little church again in the country, he decided that was it.
I'm gonna just disinherit Francis. He'll bring no more mockery on the family name. So he sent a group of men to go and get Francis and to bring him to court to formally disinherit him. Well, because Francis was under the protection of the church, it fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop. So Pietro and Francis went before the bishop, and there in the ecclesiastical court, Pietro said, " I want to formally disinherit my son. He will no longer carry the family name. He is no longer a son of mine.
" Well, the bishop then turned to Francis. Francis, first of all, gave his father the pouch of money that had never been spent, that had still been there at the church in San Damiano. And then to everybody's surprise, right there in court, he took off all of these fancy clothes that his mother had given him when he escaped, handed them to his father. His father just stood there looking sort of dumb, being handed this man's clothes.
And the bishop immediately covered Francis with his cope, and Francis said, " I accept your disinheritance. From now on, I will have only one father, my father in heaven. " And so Pietro left, and after that, Francis was no longer his son. Well, the bishop found some worn-out clothes in a rubbish pile and gave those to Francis. And Francis left the town of Assisi and headed back to San Damiano. He decided to take a fork in the road that would take him through some woods.
Now you might think this would have been a sad, very dark day for Francis just having been disinherited by his father. But instead, he felt totally free. He was rejoicing, singing at the top of his voice, skipping and laughing as he was going through the woods until he met up with a band of robbers. They suddenly jumped out from behind the bushes and trees and pounced on him. Well, to their frustration, they found he had absolutely nothing on him, just this old robe he was wearing.
So they gave him a thorough beating and dumped him in a ditch there by the road. And they melted back into the woods, but as they were going, they suddenly heard this laughing and singing again. Francis got up out of the ditch and just started laughing and praising God and singing. I'm sure the robbers thought this fella must be stark raving mad. Well, instead of going to San Damiano, Francis journeyed on to where there was a leper colony.
And he spent several months there just ministering to the lepers, cleaning their wounds, bringing them food, serving them in any way that he could, kissing them and loving them as dear brothers. But one day he thought about that voice he had heard. " Francis, repair my church for as you can see it is in ruins. " He thought, " Oh yes, I am supposed to repair the church there at San Damiano. " But how was he going to repair this church? He owned nothing. The money had gone back to his father.
He had no resources whatsoever. Well, the only thing he knew to do was to beg for stones and rocks to fix the church. So he went back to Assisi, which must have taken enormous courage. As Jesus said, a prophet is not honored in his hometown. Of course, seeing this wealthy man's son going about in this ragged clothing and begging for stones, oh, just became the subject of all sorts of gossip. People laughed, threw things at him, insulted him.
At the same time, even though it wasn't an age of godliness, it was an age of religiosity. And somebody begging for stones to repair a church, people finally thought, well, maybe they should do this. Francis was so earnest in his request that here, little by little, people would give him a rock here, give him one there, and he would collect these rocks, put them in a sack, haul them back to San Damiano, and began repairing the walls.
He would do this day after day, gathered rocks in Assisi, come back to San Damiano, work on the walls. But of course, what was he going to eat? He worked all day, so in the evening, he'd come back to town and begged for food. This was a customary thing in the Middle Ages. People were used to that. And even though they didn't like beggars, on the other hand, they knew as Christians, or as professing Christians, this is something they should do. And so beggars usually got some kind of food.
It was usually the leftover stuff the family didn't want, but normally they didn't starve. This is what Francis had to live on now. Well, his very first evening out, one of the households gave him some food, and when he looked into his bowl, oh yuck! It looked horrible. He almost vomited even looking at it. But that's all the food he got that night. So he found a little corner to sit down on the pavement.
He thought about the passage of Paul, give thanks in everything, and what Paul had said about whatever is put before you eat without asking questions. I don't think this was the application Paul had in mind, but he gave it that application. So he prayed to God and gave thanks and asked God to help him to enjoy the meal. And he reported later that after praying with a grateful heart, when he tasted it to him, it tasted delicious.
Well, eventually, Francis finished repairing San Damiano, then he went around to other little country churches that needed repairing and began working on them. Of course, all of this brought tremendous humiliation on Pietro. Every time he would see Francis in town in his tattered clothing, begging for rocks or for food, he was mortified. He just felt so much anger at Francis. When he would see him in the streets, he would actually curse him. But Francis would just smile and go on with his work.
Well, one day, as he was journeying through the countryside, he came upon a small chapel in the woods called La Portiuncula, meaning little door. It was a tiny little chapel only 10 feet wide by 23 feet long. And he decided he would live as a hermit there, spending his days in prayer, singing, and either repairing churches or serving the lepers. Well, eventually a priest began visiting there and every morning the priest would conduct services. Well, one day was actually the Feast Day of Saint Matthew.
The priest was reading the passage from Matthew chapter 10, saying, " Provide neither gold nor silver nor copper in your money belts, nor bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals nor staffs, for a worker is worthy of his food. " As you go preach, saying, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand. " But when Francis heard those words, he felt like God was talking directly to him. This is what God wanted him to do, and he decided he would follow it literally.
He now began thinking, " Maybe this voice that told him to repair his church wasn't talking about the physical church there at San Damiano, but maybe the worldwide church, the people. " Francis had been a man of the town. He knew what daily life was like. He saw how everybody was chasing wealth and power. They weren't interested in serving Christ. They were interested in serving themselves. And he believed God wanted him to try to bring reform in his church, to repair his church, to repair the hearts of people.
Well, he realized he couldn't control the behavior of other people, but he could control and change his own behavior through the power of God. Of course, the magnitude of the problem, the magnitude of the task, must have seemed overwhelming. Francis decided he wouldn't worry about the results. He would obey God in faith and leave the results up to God. If nobody else, he would let God change him and mold him in the footprints of Jesus Christ. So he returned to Assisi, and he began preaching in the streets.
Well, again, at first, most people laughed at him and mocked him. But he preached so earnestly, and he spoke directly from his heart. And little by little, people began listening to him. Now, Francis didn't preach theology. He never had much interest in theology. He never questioned the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but theology wasn't his concern. It was this obedient love relationship with Jesus Christ.
And it's hard to explain exactly what was different about Francis ' message, but indeed it was different from what people were hearing from the church. He talked about God's love, but he also talked about the need to convert, the need to repent. Well, pretty soon the reputation of this crazy beggarman from Assisi began traveling throughout the nearby countryside. A certain man named Bernard, who was a wealthy man, and he was a doctor at the University of Bologna there in Italy.
He thought he would see what was really happening with this person called Francis. So he went to Assisi and heard Francis preach. He did this on several occasions. And he thought, " I want to get to know this man. Is this man genuine or is this another one of these religious phonies? " So he invited Francis to come over to his home to eat with him, which Francis accepted. In over a period of weeks, Bernard had him at his house a number of times.
He began thinking, " You know, this man seems to be genuine, but I want to test him even further. " So one night when Francis was sleeping over at his house, the two of them were in the same room, Bernard pretended that he had fallen asleep. He began snoring, but really awake, just to watch to see what Francis did. I have to admit, if someone gave me this test, I'm afraid I would fail it because I would be asleep too.
But instead, once Francis thought that Bernard was asleep, he got out of his bed, knelt down, and he began praying. And all he said was, " God, God, from the depths of his heart, those were the only audible words he uttered, just God. " But he prayed all night long. Bernard stayed up all night long, watching him through one half-opened eye. And by the time it was morning, Bernard was convinced this is truly a man of God. And so he told Francis, " I want to join you. I want to live the way that you do.
What should I do? " Well, Francis said, " The place to begin is to totally surrender your life to Christ and give everything you have to the poor. " Very similar to what Jesus told the rich young ruler, but this rich young man decided to do exactly what Francis said. But then what after that? Well, Francis didn't know. He said, " Let's go to the nearest church and find the gospel lectionary and open it up and see if God will speak to us through the pages of Scripture.
" Well, on their way to the church, Bernard ran into one of his friends, Peter of Catania, and he told Peter what he was going to do. And of course, Peter was aware of all of this. Bernard had filled him in a lot, and Peter had heard Francis preach before, and Peter said, " Well, I will join you too. " So the three men went to the church. They attended the morning services there, and then after the services, they asked the priest if they could look at the Gospel Lectionary.
The Lectionary is sort of like a one-year Bible that would have a reading for each day of the year. But instead of going through the whole Bible in one year, generally the lectionaries were based on a three-year cycle. Anyway, they decided, " We'll do this. " And this isn't something I would particularly endorse, but it seemed to have been God's answer on this occasion. They said, " We'll just open at random to three different places in the Gospels, and whatever we find there, we'll do what it says.
" So, they got the book, they opened it up at random, put their fingers down on a place there, and they looked at it, and it said this: " If you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. " Of course, those were the words to the rich young ruler from Matthew 19:21.
Well, this definitely seemed to be an answer from God, so they closed the gospel lectionary, and then they opened it again, and they close their eyes and put their hand down on another place. And here it said this: " Take nothing for your journey. No staff, no bag, nor bread, nor money. " From Luke 9:3. This seemed to definitely be God giving them instructions, so they closed the lectionary, close their eyes, open it again, put their hand down on another place, and look to see what it would say.
And it said this: " If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. " Well, that's it. They felt like they had their directions from God, and they were going to literally do exactly what Jesus said there in those passages. So first of all, Bernard and Peter got rid of all of their possessions, giving them all to the poor. Francis did not want people giving their possessions to him, it was to go to the poor.
Then they all exchanged their rich clothing for tattered rags, whatever they could find. And the three men began going about from town to town, village to village, preaching the kingdom of God. They found a little quiet place by a river where they built some very rude huts, and they decided they would live there. When they weren't out preaching, they would spend their days in prayer, in meditation, or going and serving the lepers. In a few months, more and more brothers joined the movement.
Now, Francis did not want to start a religious order. There are already a number of religious orders, many monasteries and convents throughout Europe. And Francis knew that so many of the people there weren't even godly. And then often it was a big joke. I'm going to give up all my possessions, which they would do, but they could give them to the monastery. And the monasteries had great wealth.
I know in England, something like a third of the land was owned by the monasteries, and they couldn't be taxed since they were owned by the church. So often the monks ate better than the normal people did. They had all of this farmland. They accepted gold and all kinds of things from people who wanted to give it to them. And while the common monk or nun didn't live like kings and queens, they often lived as comfortable or more comfortably than the average person in their day.
Francis didn't want to have any of that. He didn't want people taking vows. He wanted to form a voluntary brotherhood. Well, the brothers prayed about this, gave a lot of thought and discussion to it, and with their input, Francis drew up a rule of life that they would live by. They decided that the robes or tunics that they would wear would be brown, the color of sparrows. And what they wore weren't the nice brown tunics that you see today that Franciscans would wear.
They're usually old sacks that they formed into robes, often full of patches. Francis required absolute poverty for anyone who wanted to join the Brotherhood. They could own no property whatsoever other than their robe and a cord for the belt. They didn't even wear sandals, but rather they went about barefoot. They had to work. If they knew a trade, then they were to do that to provide for the necessities of life.
But if they had no trade, then just whatever work they could do, sweeping for somebody, cutting hay, washing clothes. Anything people wanted done, particularly lowly tasks that most people didn't want to do. They could accept no money of any kind ever for any work, only food or provisions for living. In addition, Francis required absolute chastity. Not only could they not be alone with women, they weren't to talk about women or romantic love or ever look upon a woman with lust.
They would be known as the Lesser Brothers. Two by two, they would go out through all of the villages and preach the kingdom of God. And if God would allow it, they'd go throughout the whole world with this same message. Francis didn't want any of the silly things they did in monasteries, people whipping themselves, and stuff like that. And no sadness or melancholy whatsoever. He felt those were straight from Satan, but rather it would be a brotherhood of joy, happiness, and love.
I'd like to read to you some excerpts from the original rule of life that Francis and the brothers live by. Now, this is not the same thing as the rule of life that the Franciscans live by now. This was their original rule. Here are some excerpts.
One, the rule in life of these brothers is this, namely, to live in obedience, in chastity and without anything of their own, and to follow the teaching and the footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says, " If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, then come, follow me. " And if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Again, whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself cannot be my disciple. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. If anyone wishing by divine guidance to accept this life comes to our brothers, let him be received by them with kindness.
Let him sell all his belongings, and be conscientious in giving everything to the poor. Let all the brothers wear poor clothes, and with the blessing of God, they can patch them with sackcloth and other pieces. For our Lord says in the gospel, those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury are in royal palaces.
Let all the brothers strive to follow the humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let them remember that we should have nothing else in the world, except as the Apostle says, " If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. " They must rejoice when they live among people considered of little value and looked down upon, among the poor and the powerless, the sick and the lepers, and the beggars by the wayside. Let them not be ashamed.
Let all the brothers be careful not to slander or engage in disputes. Let them strive instead to keep silence whenever God gives them the grace. Let them not quarrel among themselves or with others, but strive to respond humbly, saying, " We are worthless slaves. " Let them love one another as the Lord says, " This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. " And each one should confidently make known his need to the others, so that he might find what he needs and minister it to him.
And each one should love and care for his brother and all those things in which God will give him grace as a mother loves and cares for her son. If any of the brothers shall fall ill, wherever he may be, the other brothers should not leave him behind, unless one of the brothers or several of them, if that be necessary, are assigned to serve him as they would wish to be served themselves. But in case of grave necessity, they can entrust him to some person capable of taking care of him in his illness.
I beg the sick brother, " Give thanks to the Creator for everything, and whatever the Lord wills for him, he should desire to be that, whether healthy or sick. " When the brothers travel throughout the world, let them take nothing for the journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money. Whatever house they enter, let them first say, " Peace to this house. " They may eat and drink whatever is provided for, as long as they remain in that house. Let them not resist an evildoer.
But if anyone strikes them on the right cheek, let them turn the other also. If anyone wants to take their coat, let them give their cloak as well. Let them give to everyone who begs from them. And if anyone takes away their goods, let them not ask for them back. Wherever they may be, let all my brothers remember that they have given themselves and abandoned their bodies to the Lord Jesus Christ. For love of Him, they must make themselves vulnerable to their enemies, both visible and invisible.
Because the Lord says, " Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it in eternal life. " Now what's interesting about this rule of life is that this wasn't some dreamy ideal. This is what they actually lived. And it worked because Francis set the example. He didn't just point out the way to them. He led the way. They could follow his example. Now, ever since the days of the apostles, there had always been ascetics in the Church.
There had been thousands of men and women who lived with little or no possessions. But often they were miserable, contagious people who were anything but joyful and loving. However, Francis and his brothers were different in many ways. One was their indescribable happiness. Everywhere they went, people took note of them because of their joy. He and his brothers were revolutionaries without any weapons other than faith and love.
And unlike the monks who retreated from the world behind cloistered walls, Francis and his brothers boldly attacked the world. They wanted people everywhere, in every country on earth, to hear the plain gospel of Jesus Christ. So when Francis preached on the street corners, he spoke differently than the priests. People could sense that he was speaking to them totally out of love. And they could also sense that this man believes everything that he's saying.
Most importantly, as I've said before, Francis lived everything he taught. The saying has been attributed to him, " Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. " Well, regardless of whether or not that's a correct quote from Francis, it's definitely the motto that he lived by. He was intoxicated with his love for Christ and for his fellow man. And this intoxication was contagious. He got on the street corners and preached about God's love for us.
But he also preached a no-nonsense message of repentance. " Throw your gold in the devil's face, " he would tell people, " before it drags you down to hell. " If you have a mistress, get rid of her now before it's too late. If you are someone's mistress, break off the relationship now. Don't put it off even one day. Francis always spoke with fervent conviction, and yet also with great tenderness. Sometimes he would reach a point when he was totally out of words. He didn't know what to say.
And he would just stand there with tears streaming down his face. And people knew that even though he preached such a strict message, that he did it out of love, he really did care about them. Now, today, the Greenpeace type of people view Francis as a big hero, and they think that they would really be drawn to him if he were alive today. But I think the truth of the matter is that they would be quite offended by his strict teachings against immorality and love of the world.
In fact, I don't think they would like him very much at all. Well, one day some of the brothers came to Francis and told him that the bishop in a nearby city wouldn't let them preach. And then others chimed in, that they had faced the same obstacle in other places. So Francis replied, " You say that the bishops won't let you preach. " Well then, convert the bishops by your example of obedience and holiness. Then they will ask you to convert their flocks.
But eventually the problem of bishops forbidding them to preach became the biggest obstacle facing Francis and his brothers, just as it had been for Peter Waldo 30 years before. So in the year 1209, when Francis was 29, he decided that he and his brothers would walk to Rome in order to talk to the Pope himself and try to get permission from him. Now the Pope at this time was Innocent III. The name is certainly a misnomer because he wasn't particularly innocent.
When Francis and his brothers reach Rome, they ran into his bishop from Assisi who happened to be there, and he was quite surprised to see them there. Asked him, " What brings you to Rome? " So Francis told him, " We want to get an audience with the pope and get permission from him to preach no matter where we go throughout Europe. " Well, the Bishop said, " I don't have much influence with the Pope, but I tell you what, I have a friend. His name is John. He's a cardinal.
And he does have the connections to get you an audience with the Pope. So the bishop arranged for the brothers to meet with this cardinal. And he listened to them as they explained their rule of life and what they were doing. But then he told them that, " I'm sorry, but your rule of life is impractical. It's never going to work in the real world. " And your teachings are much too difficult to live by. In fact, they border on heresy.
So Francis replied very firmly and politely, " Now are you saying that it's impractical to live by Jesus ' teachings? " Well, you know, the cardinal said, " Well, no, I can't really say that. " Well, Francis said, " Are you saying it's heresy to obey Christ literally? " Well, again, the cardinal kind of hem hopped around and said, " No, no, that's certainly not heresy. I can't say that. " Well, in the end, he said, " I tell you what, let me get you an audience with the pope, and you explain your situation to him.
" So he did that very thing, and Francis and his band of men, they went into the papal chamber and talked to the pope himself. And the pope listened very politely, but very skeptically. And when they got finished talking, he looked them over. It was Francis in this band of dirty ragamuffins, looking like they just climbed out of some ghetto for the poor. And he told them this: " This is what you need to do. Offer your rule to pigs. Preach to them and roll in the mud with them.
" Well then, as Francis and his brother stood there somewhat aghast, the pope ordered some of his men to show them out the door. Well, for most people, that would have been the end of the matter. I'm sure it would have been for me. But Francis was different. And here all these years he had been teaching the brothers to obey the clergy and everything, unless it violated their conscience. So he told them, " Well, I guess what we need to do is go find some pigs and preach to them.
" So they wandered about until they found a pen of pigs behind someone's house. And Francis got up on the railing and began preaching to them about the need to repent from their gluttony and who knows what else. In fact, pretty soon, he and his brothers all jumped into the pig pen with the pigs, got themselves all muddy, and gave them a good preaching about the need to repent. Meanwhile, that night, the pope had a dream. In his dream, he saw a church building, probably St.
Peter's, that was starting to crumble and fall. And as it was about to fall to the ground, suddenly this poor man reached up with an arm and stopped it and held it aloft. Well, when he woke up, he wasn't sure about the meaning of the dream, but it really bothered him. Well then later that day, Francis and his brothers returned, all covered with mud and manure and say, " Well, we've done just what you asked us to do.
We went out, we found some pigs, and we preached to them, we explained our rule of life to them as you ordered us to do. " And Francis didn't say this sarcastically. He said it with such earnestness and sincerity the pope could hardly get mad. And suddenly it hit him. The dream. Could this be the man? Is God telling me that this man can perhaps save the church from crumbling?
And so with a sudden change of heart, he gave Francis and his brothers permission to preach anywhere throughout any of the lands in the world, and that if anyone tried to forbid them, they could just tell him we have permission from the Pope himself. Francis and his brothers were now free to preach the gospel of the kingdom anywhere in the world.
When I ended last night, I had just finished sharing about how the Pope had granted Francis and his brothers the right to preach the gospel of the kingdom anywhere in the world. Now, having obtained the permission of the Pope, the evangelism of Francis and his brothers just literally exploded. They went everywhere throughout Europe, two by two, beginning with the cities right there in Italy. Before long, some of the brothers were preaching throughout Germany in the north.
Others went all the way over to Spain and were preaching the gospel there. Still others went down into Morocco and tried to convert the Muslims, and some of them were actually put to death there died as martyrs. In most towns, when Francis or his brother showed up, people left their work, came out of their houses, and gathered around to hear him preach. On the subject of poverty, Francis would tell people, " You can be a poor man, but still lust for wealth. You can be poor in possessions, but full of pride.
You can be physically poor, but hungry for power. " He said, " The world is full of such people, and they're not the poor in spirit. " " The truly poor person, " he said, " the one who is poor in spirit, not only has nothing, but he wants only what God is willing to give him and nothing more. " One day, Francis asked Bernard to return to the city of Bologna, where he used to live, and to preach to the people there. Now, although the brothers usually went out in pairs, Francis sent Bernard by himself to Bologna.
When Bernard reached there, he went directly to the plaza at the center of town, and he began to preach. Well, pretty soon, people began shouting " crazy madman, " making it impossible for him to even finish what he was going to say. So he finally just sat down on the pavement, and he smiled at everybody who came by with his eyes full of joy. Before long, people began throwing dirt at him and then began hitting him with rocks.
Finally, some of the men came over to him and roughed him up a bit and told him to get out of their city. But he didn't move. He just smiled. That night he found a place to sleep out in the open, and then the next morning he returned to the town square, and he underwent the same treatment. Well, this continued on for several days. Finally, a man came up to him and asked him who he was, and why was he there? A crowd gathered around to listen.
Well, Bernard pulled out from beneath his tunic, a copy of the rule of the Brotherhood, and he gave it to the man. Now it turned out that this man, whose name was Nicholas, was one of the most respected men in Bologna, a learned doctor of the law. And that's why the people who had gathered around were quite curious as to what he would say about this stranger preaching from the Plaza.
Well, after reading the rule of life, Nicholas remarked out loud to everybody, " This is the most sublime rule of life I've ever heard of. " And right then and there, he offered Bernard the use of a house where Bernard could start a Brotherhood chapter right there in Bologna. In fact, years later, this same Nicholas himself entered the Franciscan Brotherhood. Now I want to talk a little bit about daily life in the Brotherhood.
When the Brotherhood began, the men lived in a couple of huts made out of mud and sticks, and covered with leafy branches. Their community was a place of delight for the soul, but quite a trial for the body. Yet the joy that reigned among them defies human explanation. They sang, they prayed, they listened to Francis teach, and they laughed together. Francis absolutely forbid any sadness. He felt that melancholy and gloominess came straight from Satan, and he would not allow it among his brotherhood.
Now, as I've mentioned, the brothers had to always show respect to the clergy and to government officials, in fact, to everybody. They were never allowed to raise their voices, and the topics of discussion among the brotherhood at their meals or at other times when they were together could not be news about events in the world.
It couldn't be gossip or anything else other than talking about the life of Christ, or the lives of His apostles, or various holy men through the ages, or perhaps talk about how to better imitate Christ, how to walk in Christ's footsteps. That's what they had to talk about, not about what was happening in the world. Now to us, this sounds like an extremely hard life. But ironically, much of the attraction of Francis ' rule of life came from its very austerity.
I mean, people didn't want to renounce a life of ease in the world, only to regain it again behind the walls of a monastery, sort of a fake poverty. The people who listened to Francis, they wanted to go all the way. Let's totally let go of everything in the world, not only our possessions, but our interest in the things of this world, and live a life here on earth, that will be very similar to our life in heaven, a life that focuses only on spiritual things, a life centered on Jesus Christ.
Before long, the bishop at Assisi invited Francis to come and preach there on Sunday morning in the cathedral, the same cathedral where he had begun his journey just four years earlier. Francis didn't feel comfortable preaching from the pulpit. He felt like he would be in prison there. So they constructed a wooden platform for him to stand on rather than preaching from the pulpit, because Francis needed to pace back and forth, move around when he spoke. Nearly the whole town turned out to hear him.
They were quite stunned when they heard his words, when they realized that this was the same man who just four years earlier had been the king of partygoers. And of course, he knew most of them, and he knew the sins in which they lived. So when he preached, he told them that greed had driven Christ out of their lives. Gold had become their idol in the place of Jesus Christ. He told them that their hatred for their political enemies was rotting their very souls.
He told them the only answer to the predicament that they were in was to be converted and to surrender their hearts to Christ if they really wanted to experience true joy in this life and eternal life in the world to come. And as he reminded them, life in their age was very short and very unpredictable. They dare not put off the decision to surrender their lives to Christ. As he preached, pretty soon groans and laments came from the crowd who had come to the cathedral to hear him.
Several persons decided right then and there to join the Brotherhood, including the son of the highest ranking noble family in Assisi. Unfortunately, we don't know if Francis ' parents were still living at that point in time, and if so, what their response was to His preaching. The record tells us nothing further about them. Now, as I think I mentioned earlier, Francis and his brothers were living in these crude huts alongside the river Torto.
Well, one day some vagabonds came to the little community where the brothers lived and announced that they had decided to live there and that the brothers would have to just find some other place to live. Now these vagabonds had no authority to run Francis and the brothers out, but Francis believed that Christ would have them turn the other cheek and to give to Him who asks. So they obeyed the vagabonds, they left, and they began searching for another place to live.
Well, the Benedictines offered to let Francis and his brother settle at the place called La Portiuncula, where Francis had lived as a hermit before Brother Bernard had joined him. So the brothers went there, they built a thatched cottage in a matter of a few days, situated beneath the oaks, where they had their common meals and worship. And then they began to build tiny, simple huts for each of the brothers to live in.
The genius of Francis's brotherhood is that it combined active spiritual life, such as preaching and ministering to lepers, together with a contemplative life of meditation, so that the inner man was strong. You see, some of the medieval religious societies, they focused only on contemplation. They would isolate themselves and spend their days in meditation without really doing anything active. They didn't preach to others, they didn't minister to others.
Other Christians tried to just focus on the active life without nourishing the inner man. Francis ' brotherhood focused on both, nourishing the soul and then going out and living Christianity, preaching it, ministering it, showering people with Christ's love. Meanwhile, Francis himself was in poor health. He had never had a very strong constitution. He wasn't a large, rugged kind of individual.
And he had never fully recovered from the tuberculosis that he had contracted in the dungeon of Perugia, where he had gone off in battle. Yet God gave him physical strength to carry on, but only just enough strength to carry on. Nothing more. Now I want to tell you a bit about a woman named Clare. When Francis was preaching at the Cathedral of San Rufino, a nearby town, one of the persons in the crowd who was listening to him was a 17-year-old girl named Clare.
Now, her parents were wanting to arrange a marriage for her, a marriage that she didn't want. Instead, after hearing Francis preach, she decided she wanted to live like Francis and his brothers. Now she came from a very wealthy family, I should mention. Well, she sent a message to Francis saying that she would like to meet him in secret with a chaperone, of course, so that she could obtain his advice. And she said in the message that her parents must not know anything about it.
Well, Francis agreed to meet with her. They met at night, she came with one of her aunts, and Francis came with one of the older brothers of his brotherhood, so that nothing improper could possibly happen or even be implied. Well, she poured her heart out to Francis, and Francis listened very attentively, and then he told her, " I want you to do this. When you return to your home, change out of your fine clothing, and instead clothe yourself in an old cloth sack.
Something that would be modest, but was the clothing of beggars. Then he told her he wanted her to go about San Rufino, the town where she lived, begging for her bread. Now, in truth, Francis was testing her. He really didn't think that a young woman of her breeding would actually do it. But the next day, Clare fashioned a tunic out of a sack. She put on a white veil, she snuck out of her home, and did just what Francis had asked of her. Well, she had several more meetings with Francis over the next few months.
Finally, it was agreed that Francis would start a sisterhood, with her as the first member. The sisters, of course, couldn't live with the brothers, and they weren't to travel around preaching like the brothers did. Instead, they would live out Francis ' ideals inside a community of sisters. Francis initially arranged for them to stay at a Benedictine convent that was not far away from where Francis and his brothers lived.
So on the night of Palm Sunday, the year was 1212, Clare and her cousin, Pacifica, crept out of their house in the middle of the night, and they met with Francis and the Brotherhood to be accepted as members of the new Franciscan sisterhood. They then all went together to the Benedictine Convent where they were given refuge. Well, as you can imagine, the next morning, when Clare's parents found out that she was missing, they were extremely upset and began looking everywhere for her.
Well, they eventually learned that she was at this convent. So one of Clare's uncles, together with an armed band of men, they went to the convent to demand that Clare return home. Well, Clare ran to the chapel in the convent and seized hold of the altarcloth, saying that she would never again return home. Eventually her uncle could see that she was never going to give in, so he and the others left.
Within a few months, the Bishop of Assisi allowed Clare and the growing sisterhood to use the property at the Church of San Damiano, where they could build an actual convent of their own. And they came to be known as the Poor Clares. Now, up to this point, the only persons who could join the movement were single people. Originally just men and now women also could join. But what about the people who are married?
Or people who had obligations to their parents or to their family members that wouldn't permit them to join the Brotherhood and totally leave everything in the world? Were they to be left out? Well, Francis didn't want that to happen. He was trying to reach everybody, and he realized everyone isn't in a position to live this kind of life. So he started something very new for medieval Catholics. He started a brotherhood for married people called the Brothers and Sisters of Repentance.
These brothers and sisters of repentance were devised by Francis as sort of a middle state between the Brotherhood community and the world. Now, unfortunately, we don't know what their original rule of life was, but we do know that his plan worked. In fact, the brothers and sisters of repentance are still around today. Nearly 800 years later, today they're known as the Franciscan tertiary, or the Third Order. Now let me address the subject of Francis and Animals.
Francis is particularly remembered by the world today because of his love for God's creation, his love of the universe, the earth, the animals, and even the plants that grow here. He saw how all of God's creation was in perfect harmony and obedience to the Creator. That man alone was the one in rebellion. When he heard birds twittering, he didn't view it as just merely singing, but he felt that they were praising God with their voices.
And all of the reports that we have about Francis indicate that the animals did sense something special about him. After all, even today, there are people who have special rapport with animals. There are people who can take a dog and train it when others have tried and given it up as hopeless. And Francis was one of these people who had a special gift, a special rapport with animals. So that quite often they were drawn to him instead of being afraid. Now, there are so many legends about Francis and animals.
I hardly know where the truth ends and the legends begin. But I don't think there's any question about the fact that he did have a special relationship with animals, and that he did love and care for God's creation. And in this, I think he set a very good example for those of us who would call ourselves Bible-believing Christians today. Because for some strange reason, we Bible-believing Christians are often the ones today who are the least concerned about the environment, about God's creation.
Now, obviously, we don't want to start worshiping the earth or talking to trees or something like that. And of course, the environment is not the all-consuming subject of our interest. But we should be setting the example in caring for God's creation and respecting it. I mean, after all, if I built a beautiful house for you and gave it to you to live in, I know I would be very disappointed if you trashed the place and did nothing to maintain it.
And my guess is that God feels the same way about His earth and about all of the creation that He made for our benefit. I think He wants us to respect it and to take care of it. He wants us to show appreciation for the earthly gift that He's given to us. Now I want to share with you some of Francis's teachings. Now Francis didn't leave us a lot of writings, but the few things he did leave are rich with meaning. Let me share just a few excerpts. What he had to say about knowing ourselves.
He said, " Blessed is the servant who esteems himself no better when he is praised and exalted by people than when he is considered worthless, simple, and despicable. " For what a man is before God, that he is, and nothing more. Now, in our intellect, we all know that to be true, but it's very hard to be able to believe this and know this at every minute of our life. Most of us have two personas about us.
There's the public one, the one that's seen at church when we're with Christian friends in that, and the person who we are when we're all alone, the person that God sees, and for nearly all of us, there is a difference between our public person and our private person. Our Christian associates see a better side of us than what God sees, who sees us even when we're alone. Now for a perfect human like Jesus, there was no difference between his private and his public. Those two persons were exactly one and the same.
And perhaps since the days of the apostles, perhaps no fallen human has come as close to having those two personas become very close to being the same as Francis, because he never had a minute to himself. He was always under observation of what he was doing. And he had that rare ability to always know in his mind that all that mattered is what God was thinking of him.
He was the same person when he was praised and viewed as a saint towards the end of his life, as he was at the beginning of his ministry when he was viewed as a stupid fool, and people laughed at him. His response was always the same. Let me read to you another passage, quoting from the Sermon on the Mount, he said, " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
" He went on to say, " The servant of God could not know how much patience and humility he has within himself, as long as everything goes well for him. " But when the time comes in which those who should do him justice do quite the opposite to him, he has only as much patience and humility as he has on that occasion, and nothing more. You know, we all like to look at ourselves in light of how we behave under the best of circumstances.
But Francis is saying, " No, the real measure of us is how we behave under the worst circumstances. How much love do we have for our enemy? " We don't know until we're really treated rottenly by our enemy. How much patience do we have? We don't know until the trial comes that tries our patience. Are we willing to turn the other cheek? It's easy to write about it and hold that forth as an ideology. But the true test is what we do when somebody does wrong us.
So we shouldn't be applauding ourselves by the way that we act under the best of circumstances, under the way things are perhaps the majority of the time, but how we behave under the worst of circumstances. Let me read to you another passage, one that had a profound effect on me personally, years ago when I first read it. Francis said, " Let us pay attention, all my brothers, to what the Lord says. " He says, " Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.
" For our Lord Jesus Christ, whose footprints we must follow, called His betrayer a friend, and gave Himself willingly to those who crucified Him. Our friends, then, are all those persons who unjustly afflict upon us trials and ordeals, shame and injuries, sorrows and torments, martyrdom and death. We must love them greatly, for we will possess eternal life because of what they bring upon us.
You know, most of us think of our best friends as those who are there in the time of need, who come to our aid when the chips are down. And certainly in a human sense, those are our best friends. But you know what Francis says is quite insightful. Because the good things our earthly friends do for us, the ones that we view as our best friends, normally isn't going to bring any reward in heaven for us, anything eternal. But the ones who treat us wrongly, who repay good with evil, who lie about us, who slander us.
By turning the other cheek and loving those persons, Jesus says our reward in heaven is great. So those people are really our best friends because they're doing something for us to give us an eternal reward. I mean, what better thing could anybody do for us? Now, they're not intending to do that, but because of their actions, if we respond in the way of Christ, our reward is great. Now I want to read to you what Francis taught about true joy. This is one of his more well-known passages.
It's something he dictated to one of the brothers. I'll read to you. It says, " One day, Francis called Brother Leo and said, " Brother Leo write. " He answered, " I'm ready. " Francis said, " Write what true joy is. " Suppose a messenger comes and says that all the masters in Paris have come into the Brotherhood. Is that true joy? Write, no, this is not true joy. Suppose that all the rulers beyond the mountains have entered the Brotherhood, as well as the archbishops and bishops?
Or that the king of France and the King of England have entered the Brotherhood? Is this true joy? Write, no, this is not true joy either. Again, suppose that my brothers have gone to the non-believers and converted all of them to the faith. And suppose again that I have so much grace from God that I'm able to heal the sick and perform many miracles. Is that true joy? Francis said, " I tell you that true joy does not consist in any of those things. " So what then is true joy?
Well, imagine that I return from Perugia and arrive here in the dead of night. And it's wintertime, muddy and so cold that icicles have formed on the edges of my robe. And they keep striking my legs and blood flows from such wounds. And so all covered with mud and cold, I come to the gate, and after I've knocked and called for some time, a brother comes and asks, " Who are you? " I answer, " I'm Brother Francis. " And he says, " Go away. This is not a proper hour for traveling about. You cannot come in.
" And when I insist, the answer is, " Go away! You are a simple and stupid person. We have so many people here already, and we don't have any need of you. You're certainly not going to come at this hour of the night. " And suppose I stand again at the door and say, " For the love of God, take me in tonight. " And he answers, " I will not. Go someplace else and ask there.
" Francis said, " I tell you this, if I have patience and do not become upset, there would be true joy in this and true virtue in the salvation of the soul. " Now, when I first read that passage about 20 years ago, I have to admit, I didn't get it. I thought Francis was saying that suffering and asceticism were some kind of great accomplishment, sort of a masochism here that he's saying is real joy. But after a number of years, I eventually realized what it was that he was saying.
We tend to get our greatest joy or happiness when everything is going well, not only in an earthly sense, but in a spiritual sense. If we're converting people and thousands are joining our ministry, perhaps we even have miraculous gifts, these are the things that we tend to get joy from. But Francis said, the real joy and something that's open to every one of us is being able to love your enemy. Being able to take evil and accept it gladly and joyfully as from God.
That's what we should really rejoice about if we're able to do those things. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, there will be people saying, " Hey, we prophesied in Your Name. We did powerful works in Your Name. " They had all these things that they were so happy about. And they thought for certain this indicated that they had God smiling down upon them. He says, " I never knew you. Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness.
" But if we're able to return love for hate, to endure suffering with forbearance, to respond as Christ would in all situations, that's what should give us total joy. Because then it means the Holy Spirit truly is living within us. People can do miraculous things or things that seem miraculous without the Holy Spirit. But nobody lives a Christ life without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And here is where joy and salvation reside. In the year 1217, when Francis was 36, the Pope called for another crusade.
This was the Fifth Crusade, and its purpose was to take back Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by conquering the powerful Muslim kingdom in Egypt. Because this kingdom in Egypt now controlled most of the so-called Holy Land, including Jerusalem. The first object of the Crusaders was to capture the key port city of Damietta in Egypt, which is near the mouth of the Nile. But when Francis heard about the crusade, he said to his brothers, " We shouldn't be killing the Muslims. We should be converting them.
" So he decided that he would travel to Egypt with the Crusaders, along with a few of his brothers, so that they could preach the gospel to the Muslims and hopefully convert them. And so he and his brothers obtain passage on a ship, and they sail across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt. Now, when Francis and his brothers arrived, the first convoy of Crusaders were already laying siege to the Muslim city of Damietta.
Well, after spending one day in the camp of the Crusaders, Francis quickly realized that these Crusaders needed conversion just as much as the Muslims did. So he and his brothers began preaching to them the real gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, finally, after being there several weeks, Francis and one of his brothers crept out of the Crusaders camp during the middle of the night, and they hurried over to the walls of Damietta. And when they reached the walls, they cried out at the top of their voices, " Sultan!
Sultan! " Well, they were quickly arrested by some of the Sultan's soldiers. And they at once said that they had a message for the Sultan. Well, of course, everyone assumed that either the Crusaders were surrendering, or that Francis and the other man with him were bringing some kind of message from the leader of the Crusades. Now, the Sultan was a very refined and educated man. His name was Malik, and he was about the same age as Francis. He was a man who was passionately fond of religious poetry.
He was a student of the various sciences. Not only that, he was on good terms with Venice. Venice and Egypt were conducting trade all of the time. He was a peace-loving man, and he could speak Latin, so he and Francis could converse perfectly. Well, rather than being upset that Francis and his companion had come over to the palace without really any message from the Crusaders, the Sultan was quite interested in talking with this unusual fellow who would do this.
So Francis spent the evening with him talking about the God of love that he, Francis, served. The sultan listened very politely. In fact, he was fascinated with Francis and with the message he brought. However, sadly, in the end, the Sultan told Francis, " I perhaps would convert to your religion, for it is a beautiful one. " However, I cannot. Both of us would be massacred. However, he then offered lavish gifts for Francis to take back with him, but Francis refused to accept them.
Now he explained to the Sultan that he wasn't refusing them because the Sultan was a Muslim. No, he explained that he and his brothers didn't accept gifts from anybody, even Christians, except simply food and necessities. With that, Francis and his companion returned to the Crusaders ' camp. But the Sultan gave him a letter of safe passage that not only cleared them to go back to the camp, but allowed them to travel anywhere throughout the Sultan's Empire.
So, feeling like he had accomplished all he could there in Egypt, Francis and the brothers who were with them traveled to Acre, which is in Palestine near Jerusalem, and they spent several months there witnessing to Muslims and to professing Christians alike. Finally, he and the other brothers returned to Italy. So I'm going to ask you the question, what do you think? In the final analysis, did Francis ' witnessing to the Sultan accomplish anything?
At first glance, it might seem no, but you have to remember that Francis was always more interested in being faithful than in the results that he got. He had accomplished his mission. He had witnessed and witnessed at length to the Sultan. The fact that the Sultan rejected the offer of salvation was not the fault of Francis. So Francis was satisfied. He had accomplished the mission he felt God would have him do. Nevertheless, even in human terms, his visit may have borne some real fruit.
I say that because about 10 years later, the Sultan ended up handing Jerusalem over to Frederick II, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. But he wasn't forced to do so. The Crusade had been unsuccessful, and the Crusaders had left. There was no battle, no siege. He just gave it to the Emperor Frederick II. Perhaps this was because of the message that Francis had preached to him, and perhaps because of this, thousands and thousands of lives were saved.
However, when Francis returned to Italy, he was hit with the hardest test of his life. The Brotherhood now encompassed thousands and thousands of people, and the church felt that it needed better organization. So in Francis's absence, without ever discussing with him, the Pope took it upon himself to change the brotherhood into a formal religious order. And one of the brothers named Elias had been put in charge of the order instead of Francis. This was the hardest test that Francis had yet faced.
Should he submit to the church, as he had taught the brothers always to do? Or should he fight Rome on this? Here he had built up this wonderful brotherhood based on a strict interpretation of the gospel, and yet the church had taken it away from him and remolded it into an image that the church thought was more " practical. " What was Francis to do? Well, although it caused him great anguish, Francis decided to obediently accept this change.
After all, humility and submission are the things that he had been preaching from the very beginning. Perhaps this was at last the test of whether or not he would have perfect joy. Would he submit to an action that he felt was very wrong? Well, as I said, he did decide to submit. He passed this test. He didn't let it ruin his life or ruin his joy. And yet it was very difficult for him. The Brotherhood was no more. It was now a religious order. And he wasn't the leader of this Order of the Franciscans.
Brother Elias was. This new order was allowed to own property, and the friars were permitted to hold positions of authority in the church. Many of them became heads of universities or bishops. In fact, the Church was now training the brothers in theology, something that Francis had never wanted. They were in effect ruining the very thing that he had created. But Francis left it into Christ's hands whether he would intervene and change anything.
And yet a brief letter that Francis wrote to one of the bishops is extremely telling. That is, if you read a little bit between the lines, we still have this letter. It reads simply, " Brother Francis sends his wishes of health to Brother Anthony, my bishop. " It pleases me that you teach sacred theology to the brothers, as long as in the words of the rule, you do not extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion with study of this kind. That was the end of the letter.
I think if we read between the lines, Francis is actually protesting this innovation. But he protests with very humble words and language that shows he's not going to fight the Church on this. But he does wish that the Church would reconsider. Because indeed, study of theology inevitably does extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion with most believers. The reality was that Francis was now simply a figurehead in the order. Now he still had considerable moral influence among the brothers.
He was still the hero, the person who was recognized as a saint, even though he was still living. But that was all. He didn't control the day-to-day matters. He didn't make the decisions anymore. Now I want to talk briefly about what is called the stigmata. As I've mentioned before, there are all sorts of stories about miracles and Francis of Assisi. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if God did work genuine miracles through him.
On the other hand, I also know that the medieval mind was very quick to imagine and invent miracles for people that it viewed as saints. So I really don't know what to believe. The greatest miracle associated with Francis is that God could take a person like him with a rich upbringing who wanted a life just full of ease and pleasure and changed him into such a different and wonderful person. Now, if there were additional miracles beyond that, praise God, but his very life was a miracle in itself.
There is, however, one purported miraculous event associated with Francis, known as the stigmata, that I do briefly want to touch on. Toward the end of his life, several of the Franciscan brothers noticed that Francis had wounds on his hands and feet, similar to the wounds that Christ would have suffered from the crucifixion. And these wounds became known as the stigmata, or marks. Now, Francis himself never talked about these wounds, and these wounds never healed. They caused him suffering until the day he died.
In fact, Francis covered them up so that the public wouldn't even see them. Now, one of the Franciscan brothers has reported that Francis was miraculously struck with these wounds during a time of intense prayer. Since Francis had walked so closely in the footsteps of Jesus, perhaps Christ gave Francis these wounds so that he could also enter into Christ's suffering in some special way. But I don't know. I do think we can rule out that the wounds were self-inflicted.
For him to have done that would have gone against everything that Francis taught and practiced. Plus, as I said, he never exhibited the wounds to any others, and he never made any claims about them. Now, one medical doctor in modern times has stated that he thinks the wounds or marks were a result of the type of malaria that Francis suffered from during the last years of his life. Maybe so. Maybe not. All I can say is that the stigmata remain a mystery to this very day.
Now I want to talk about Francis ' final years. Although he was deeply hurt and frustrated by the Church taking the Brotherhood away from him, Francis didn't let this stop him from his work. He humbly continued with his ministry of preaching in various towns throughout Italy. But his poor body, which had never been strong, was totally worn out. He was also apparently suffering from malaria.
On top of that, Francis had contracted some sort of eye disease when he was in the Mid East, which eventually caused him to go blind. Yet none of these things dampened his joy. In fact, it was during this period, just a year before his death, when everything had gone wrong. The brotherhood had been taken away from him. He was nearly blind. His body hurt everywhere. It was during this time that he wrote his famous hymn, The Canticle of Creation.
Our present-day hymn, all creatures of our God and King, is an adaptation of that canticle. Francis even composed a melody for it, and he taught this joyful song to the brothers and sisters in the community and encouraged them to sing it every morning and evening. Shortly before Francis died, his hometown of Assisi was about to enter into another war with the neighboring city of Perugia, just as they had done when Francis was a youth.
Although he had to be carried, Francis met with the leaders of the two cities, and he was able to convince them to settle their differences peacefully without any war. So Francis was not only non-resistant, he also was a true peacemaker. In October of the year 1226, when Francis was 45 years old, his doctors told him that he had only a few days to live. He smiled, stretched out his arms, and joyfully said, " Welcome, Sister Death. " He died at La Portiuncula a few days later.
His very first convert, Bernard, was at his side when he died. The brothers reported that that evening, at his death, the larks all began to whirl around and sing at the top of their voices. Yet in human memory, at no other time have any humans heard the song of these larks in the evening. That's because these types of larks normally only sing in the early hours of the morning. Before closing, I want to talk just a minute about some of the lessons we can learn from the life of Francis.
Francis ' life story is always inspiring and challenging to hear. He set a model for all of us, whether we're Catholics, Anabaptists, evangelicals, or whatever type of Christian we may call ourselves. Now, I know for many of us, it's hard to concede that a Roman Catholic can be a genuine Christian. Yet it's hard to deny it when we look at the life of Francis. So I think the first lesson we can learn from his life is we need to be careful on putting limitations on where God's grace can reach.
If we think that God's grace can't overlook theological errors, we have a wrong understanding of grace and a wrong understanding of Christianity. Now I'm supposing that most of you hearing this CD are willing to concede that Francis was a genuine Christian, even if you can only do so grudgingly. But my guess is that in your mind, you're thinking of Francis as being way back at the end of the line behind all of us who have our theology straight.
Now the reason we think like that is because we've never been able to grasp the significance of Jesus ' statement about the two greatest commandments. Now with our intellect, we know what the two greatest commandments are. One, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And two, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We know that with our intellect. But in our hearts, we think that those commandments somehow rank below having our theology correct.
Now, we didn't get that impression from reading the four gospels because Jesus hardly ever talks about theology. But our churches and our denominations have convinced us that the greatest commandment is to have all of your theological ducks all properly lined up. Things like truly loving God and truly loving your neighbor somehow rank far below having correct theology. Now, it may be that no one would acknowledge that on paper, but I can assure you that is what most conservative Christians believe in their hearts.
So the big lesson I would like for you to take home with you from the life of Francis is to believe the words of Jesus. Truly believe Him when He says that the two things that count the most are loving God and loving our neighbor. If your Christianity has focused more on theological correctness, and certainly mine has at different points in my life, I would encourage you to lay aside your theology for a while and focus on developing a love relationship with both God and with your neighbor.
To me, that's what the message of Francis ' life is all about.