Here is the homily on Saint Francis' conversion that I preached for them this morning:
Mass with
Pilgrims from the U.S.A.
On the Conversion
of Saint Francis of Assisi
Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ,
May
the Lord give you peace! There is to be found – to be heard – in this hallowed
“city set on a hill” a voice that stirs deep within the soul (Matthew 5:14). It
is as if this voice asks each one who hears it, “Have you ever in your lifetime
commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place” (Job 38:1)? This voice
speaks to us – ultimately – of our mortality and of our powerlessness over the
forces of nature, yes, but also – and more importantly – over our very lives.
When
first we begin to detect this voice, we might be tempted to think it comes from
the ancient stones that make up these narrow and charming streets or that build
up the walls that surround us. At first, we think this notion absurd. “Stones
cannot speak,” we say. And yet, still a voice calls out, “Which is the way to the
dwelling place of light, and where is the abode of darkness” (Job 38:19)?
These
stones, after all, have witnessed the passing of thousands of lives of men, and
yet still they remain, though the men do not. Walking through this city of
peace, we become ever more aware that these stones, that Assisi itself, remains
solely as a tomb, as a tomb for a diminutive man who died 787 years ago this
very night. These stones stand as a silent witness to the truth of the words so
often spoken by the man they entomb: “What a man is in the eyes of God, that he
is and nothing more.”
We
walk upon and among the stones of this city not as tourists, but as pilgrims.
Tourists travel the world simply to look at something for a brief moment, snap
a picture, and then head off to the next place on the list. Tourists look upon
a thing or a place, but their never enter in.
Pilgrims,
on the other hand, travel with a much deeper purpose. They look upon things and
places, yes. They take pictures here and there to jog their fading memories in
later years, yes. But unlike tourists, pilgrims seek to enter into the place
they visit, to meet its people, to live something of its history, to allow the
place to touch and move their hearts.
Unlike
tourists who simply take a break from their everyday life to see the world,
pilgrims recognize that
Each one of us is on an ongoing journey: it is the nature of
man to journey part of the road, that of his own existence. However, this
journey may be that of a wanderer or a pilgrim. Our times are full of people
who wander because they are deprived of an ideal of life and are often unable
to make sense of the vicissitudes of the world.[1]
This journeying is part of what it
is to be human. However, if we are to journey, we must have a destination in
mind. A tourist has no ultimate destination in mind, but a pilgrim sets out
always to encounter the Lord, to look upon his face and to be blessed by him.
You have come to Assisi to walk
where Saint Francis walked, to pray where he prayed, to see what he saw. As you
seek to follow after the little man poor man, your spiritual task is to hear
him echo to you these words of Saint Paul: “Be imitators of me, as I am of
Christ” (I Corinthians 11:1).
When he was in his early twenties –
about the age you are now – Francis, so his early companions tell us, “was always happy
and generous, dedicated to play and song, roaming through the town of Assisi
day and night with friends like him, spend-thrifts, dissipating all that they
could have or earn on lunches and other things.”[2] Though
the young men of his day called him the “king of feasts,” his was not the
drunken revelry of our day; “even among wanton youths,” Saint Bonaventure tells
us, “he did not give himself over to the flesh, although he indulged himself in
pleasures.”[3]
Francis’ was the constant delight of singing and dancing and music and food and
companionship.[4]
It was, I suppose, something akin to the life of J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits.
To us, such a life seems simple and
enjoyable; it seems what we might call the good life, a life to be sought and
enjoyed. Yet Francis, thinking back to these early years on his deathbed,
described them as, “while I was in sin,” a curious phrase for a period marked
by generosity and friendship.[5]
What made this period so sinful?
By his natural temperament, Francis was
of a “feverish impulse” and “did not know moderation.”[6]
Not only this, he was “flighty and not just a little daring.”[7]
In this, I suspect, he was not too unlike each of us. These characteristics
kept him, in these early years, focused in on himself and on his own pleasures
and kept him not fully open to others and to the Lord. His chief desires were
for pleasure and knightly glory. In this, Francis was not unlike the men of his
day.
When he visited Assisi several years
ago, His Holiness Benedict XVI reflected on the eight hundredth anniversary of
the conversion of Saint Francis, which did not so much happen all at once but
in several steps. He said:
It
is interesting to notice how the Lord took Francis in his stride, that of
wanting to affirm himself, in order to indicate to him the path of a holy
ambition focused on the Infinite: "Who can be more useful to you, the
master or the servant?" (LTC 2, 6), was the question that he heard
resound in his heart. It was as if to say: why be content to be dependent on
men when there is a God ready to welcome you into his house, into his royal
service?[8]
In this call to serve the Divine
Master, Francis recognized the satisfaction of every longing of his heart.
So it was that, after his
encounter with the leper, he gave himself entirely into his service. Aided by
his natural “feverish impulse” and his “daring” in that moment of overflowing
love, he let loose the floodgates of his heart and held nothing back for
himself. In that very moment, when he forgot himself whom he so often
remembered before, everything changed and he found – and was possessed by – the
joy he earlier sought in parties, music, and friends.
In a word, we might say that
Francis realized that God alone is enough, that God alone is all we need and
all we truly desire. This realization is the moment of his conversion. This
realization led him to orient his life outward and away from himself, to orient
his life – as Pope Francis would say – to the peripheries. These eight hundred
years later his realization remains fresh and intriguing.
The life of Saint Francis
attracts so many people because, in the depths of our hearts, we know his
realization to be true and we want to reorient our lives as he did, even if we
lack the courage – or the feverish impulse and daring – to do that same. Let
us, then, this day ask Saint Francis to help us understand the beauty and truth
of his life and to make his words our own:
Therefore
let us desire nothing else, let us wish for nothing else, let nothing else
please us and cause us delight except our Creator and Redeemer and Savior, the
one true God, who is the Fullness of Good, all good, every good, the true and
supreme Good, Who alone is Good, merciful and gentle, delectable and sweet.[9]
Amen.
[1] Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella,
Address to the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, 13
September 2013. In Annales 2014: Ordinis Equestris Sactic Sepulchri Hiersoloymitani, 18.
[2] Legend of the Three Companions, 1.2.
[3] Saint Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis, 1.1.
[4] Tomaso di Celano, Second Life, I.3.7.
[5] Saint Francis of Assisi, The Testament, 1.
[6] Tomaso di Celano, First Life, 2.3.
[7] Tomaso di Celano, First Life, 2.4.
[8] Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting with
Youth, 17 June 2007.
[9] Saint Francis of Assisi, The Earlier Rule, XXIII.9.
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