A Pure Love of God

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Yesterday, October 3, 2005, was the Feast of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, whose pure love of God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church is still inspiring those who read her autobiography, The Story of a Soul. Saint Therese's "little way" of serving God in offering the daily duties of ordinary living in reparation for sins and for the conversion of sinners is a model for us to follow in our own lives, especially for those of us who are consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as we give all of prayers and sufferings and unseen sacrifices to the Blessed Trinity through Mary.

Today, October 4, 2005, is the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose own pure love of God brought out a genuine reform of the Church at the end of the Twelfth and beginning of the Thirteenth Centuries. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that Saint Francis's voluntary embrace of austere poverty and intense bodily mortifications and his assiduous practice of the interior prayer of the heart made possible the glory of the High Middle Ages in the Thirteenth Century. One of his own spiritual sons, Saint Bonaventure, became one of the leading exponents of Eucharistic piety. The other leading Thirteenth Century exponent of Eucharistic adoration, Saint Thomas Aquinas, a spiritual son of Saint Francis's own contemporary and fellow founder of a religious community, Saint Dominic, owed the very fertile ground in which he worked to the laborious efforts by Saint Francis to dig deep under the top soil of a polluted era to make it possible for there to be a rich and penetrating renewal of the life of the Church. And that great exemplar of Christ the King in the Thirteenth Century, Saint Louis IX, King of France, was able to govern France with special solicitude for the poor and powerless precisely because of the work of the great saint of Assisi, Saint Francis.

Clerical corruption and heresy were rife when Saint Francis was born in 1181 A.D. Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend explains how Our Lord told Saint Francis left his carefree life of wealth and adventures to respond to Our Lord's own call:

The ancient enemy tried to turn Francis aside from his virtuous intentions and forced the image of a hunchback woman upon his mind, warning him that if he did not give up the way of life he had undertaken, the devil would make him as ugly as she was. Then, however, he heard the Lord comforting him and saying: "Francis, take the bitter instead of the sweet, and despise yourself if you long to know me!" Then he found himself face to to face with a leper, the sort of man he utter abhorred; but, remembering the Lord's word to him, he ran and kiss the afflicted man. the leper instantly vanished. Francis then hastened to the place where people with leprosy lived, devoutly kissed their hands, and left them money.

He went into the church of Saint Damian to pray, and an image of Christ spoke to him miraculously: "Francis, go and repair my house, because, as you see, it has fallen into ruins!" From that moment on his soul melted within him, his compassion for Christ was marvelously fixed in his heart, and he devoted himself zealously to the rebuilding of the Church. He sold all he had and wanted to give the money to a certain priest, but the priest refused to accept it for fear of offending Francis's parents. Francis thereupon threw the money on the ground, treating it as worth no more than dust. His father therefore had him bound and held in custody, whereupon he gave all his money to his father, and with it the clothes off his back. Then he flew naked to the Lord and put on a hair shirt. The servant of God next called in a plain, simple man whom he took as a father, and asked him to bless him whenever his true father heaped curses on him.

His blood brother, seeing Francis at prayer clothed in rags and shivering with the wintry cold, said to a companion: "Tell Francis to give you a penny's worth of his sweat!" Francis heard this and quickly retorted: "In fact I sell it to my Lord!" Another day, hearing what Jesus said to his disciples as he sent them off to preach, Francis rose immediately to carry out to the letter what he had heard, took the shoes off his feet, put on a single cheap garment, and exchanged his leather belt for a length of rope. Then he was walking through the woods in winter when thieves laid hold of him and asked him who he was. He declared that he was the herald of God, so they threw him into the snow, saying: "Lie there, you peasant, herald of God!"

Many people of noble and humble birth, both clerical and lay, put away the world's vanities and followed his path. Like a father, this holy man taught them to strive for evangelical perfection, to embrace poverty, and to walk the way of holy simplicity. He also wrote a Rule, based on the Gospel, for himself and his present and future friars: this Rule was approved by the lord Pope Innocent. From then on Francis began with even greater fervor to sow the seeds of the word of God, going about from city to city and town to town.

Saint Francis lived a life of poverty to teach us that we must live as simply as possible, not seek to acquire the luxuries and pleasures of this passing world. We must be attached to the things of Heaven and eschew all of the perquisites and privileges that the world might bestow upon us. He was considered "mad" by many people, including his own father and brother, for seeking to embrace the life of the Gospel with such a pure love of God and a deep detestation of even his own bodily comforts. In other words, Saint Francis of Assisi made himself poor in the eyes of men in order to make himself rich unto eternity, hoping thereby to enrich others with the same inexhaustible treasure of riches that had been bestowed upon him so freely by Our Lord. It was because Saint Francis had so perfectly imitated the life of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb that Our Lord's Stigmata was impressed upon him in 1224, just two years before he died at the age of forty-five, in 1226.

As was the case with another of his sons, one coming from the Capuchin branch of the Franciscans, Saint Padre Pio, Saint Francis's embrace of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer and his deep devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament caused him to be tempted repeatedly by the devil. The adversary despised the fact that priests were reforming their lives because of the example of Saint Francis. He was angered by how many men and women, starting with Saint Clare of Assisi in the year 1212, left the world and all of its pleasures to embrace the Franciscan life of prayer, poverty, chastity, obedience, and severe bodily penances and mortifications.

The Golden Legend narrates one encounter between the devil and the Seraphic saint of Assisi:

While Francis was at prayer, the devil called him three times by name. The saint responded, and the devil added: "In the whole world there is not a single sinner to whom the Lord will not grant pardon if he repents; but if someone kills himself with excessive penances, he will not obtain mercy forever." by a revelation, the saint instantly recognized the lie and the liar, and saw how the demon was trying to cool his ardor to lukewarmness. The ancient enemy, seeing that his effort was of no avail, aroused in Francis a violent temptation of the flesh, but the man of God, feeling this, took off his habit and scourged himself with a coarse rope, saying to his body. "See here, brother [donkey]! Either behave yourself or take a beating!" But the temptation persisted, so the saint went out and threw himself naked into the deep snow. Then he made seven snowballs, which he set in front of him, and spoke again to his body: "Look here," he said, "the biggest ball is your wife, the next four are two sons and two daughters, and the last two are a manservant and a maidservant. Hurry up and clothe them, they dying of cold! Or if it bothers you to give them so much attention, then serve the Lord with care!" Thereupon the devil went away in confusion, and the man of God returned to his cell glorifying God.

Saint Francis of Assisi knew that his life of poverty and penance and mortification would be misunderstood and reviled by many. Indeed, some converts to Catholicism in the past century or so, especially those from the many strands of Calvinism here in the United States, have made gargantuan efforts to reconcile their love of earthly riches and popularity as being perfectly compatible with the Faith of the One Who lived in complete poverty while He toiled at hard manual labor as a carpenter before He assumed His Public Ministry for three years prior to being affixed to the wood of the Cross to reshape our poor souls unto eternity. Such people labor in vain to find any compatibility between John Calvin and Adam Smith and their ilk with the true spirit of Our Lord exhibited by Saint Francis of Assisi, a man who was content to be held in contempt by all as he despised everything in the world, including the material riches that were his very birthright. Even some cradle Catholics do not understand that the world of Modernity is a world that rejects utterly and completely the Franciscan spirit of poverty and humility, which itself is an imitation and extension of the Holy Poverty of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

Once again, a brief excerpt from The Golden Legend:

He preferred to hear himself reviled rather than praised, and when people extolled the merits of his sanctity, he ordered one of the friars to assail his ears with abusive epithets. The friar, all unwilling, called him a bumpkin, a money-lover, an ignoramus, and a worthless fellow, and Francis cheered and said: "Lord, bless you, brother! You have told the truth., and I need to hear such things!" The servant of God wished not so much to be in command as to be subject to authority, not so much to give orders as to carry them out. Therefore he gave up the office of general of his Order, and asked for a guardian, to whose will he would be subject in everything. To the friar with whom he was accustomed to go about he always promised obedience and always kept his promise.

This gentle saint, who loved all of God's creatures and even preached a sermon to a flock of birds, who listened attentively to him, showed his special solicitude for priests. Even though he knew that he had embraced the life of prayer and penance and mortification to help rebuild the Church in her human elements during a period of clerical corruption quite similar to our own today, he had special reverence for priests and was ever humbly submissive to them. As Jacbous de Voragine points out in The Golden Legend:

He always manifested deep reverence for the hands of priests, hands empowered to produce the sacrament of Christ's Body. He often said: "If I happened to meet at the same time a saint coming down from heaven and soon poor little priest, I would hurry first to kiss the priest's hands and would say to the saint: "Wait for me, Saint Laurence, because the man's hands have handled the Word of life and possesses something beyond the human."

Saint Francis could not make Our Lord present under the appearances of bread and wine. He did, however, perform many miracles, especially with the instrument of our salvation, the Crucifix. A professor, who did have have tenure and was dismissed after a year's worth of service, at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, remarked in November of 1985 on Saint Francis's miracles, many of them performed with a Crucifix, when addressing a student rally called to protest the administration's decision to suspend several liberal arts major fields in order to emphasize "career related" programs:

It is no accident that this college, named after the Saint who bore on his holy body the very brand marks of Christ Himself, has suffered a decline in enrollment since taking down the instrument, the Crucifix, by which he performed many miracles in order to obtain state and federal funding. How ironic it is that Saint Francis College in Brooklyn has done voluntarily what Communist authorities in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and Red China have had to do by brute force: tear down the Crucifix from the walls of Catholic schools and institutions of mercy.

Saint Francis was ever devoted to the Mother of God. Consider this prayer of his own composition to Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, which would not be defined solemnly for over 800 more years:

Hail, holy Lady, Most holy Queen, Mary, Mother of God, Virgin made Church; Chosen by the most holy Father in heaven, consecrated by Him, with His most holy beloved Son and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. On you descended and in you still remains all the fullness of grace and every good.

Hail, His Palace, His Tabernacle, Hail, His Robe. Hail, His Handmaid. Hail, is Mother. And Hail, all holy Virtues who, by the grace and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, are poured forth into the hearts of the faithful so that, faithless no longer, they may be made faithful servants of God through you. Amen.

Yes, uppermost in the seraphic soul of Saint Francis of Assisi was the desire to convert erring sinners within the Church, starting with priests and religious, and to pray for the conversion of those who had strayed from the Faith or who were entirely outside of the Catholic Church. Never presuming his own salvation (indeed, he said on his deathbed that he feared for his soul, which frightened the friars considerably; after all, if Francis was fearing his Particular Judgment after his austere life of penance and mortification, then what was to happen to them?), Saint Francis worked first on his own soul but never retreated from seeking the conversion of others, including a Mohammedan Calipha. He spent endless hours prostrate on the ground in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the Portinucula in Assisi.

Inspired by the simplicity and poverty and holiness of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, may we in our age of clerical corruption and lack of fidelity to the perennial teaching Our Lord has deposited to His true Church embrace the Cross  that shaped Saint Francis and pierced his very flesh so that we may be detached from the things of this passing world and attached solely on the pursuit of personal sanctity, principally by profound daily Eucharistic piety and Total Marian Consecration, as befits redeemed creatures.

Dom Prosper Gueranger's prayer, found in his The Liturgical Year, to Saint Francis is one that we should take for our own, especially the reference to money-making in Nineteenth Century France, which is, obviously, just as much a curse in our own country today:

Mayest thou be blessed by every living soul, O thou whom Our Saviour associated so closely with Himself in the work of Redemption. The world, created by God for Himself, subsists through the saints; for it is in them He finds His glory. At the time of they birth the saints were few; the enemy of God and and man were daily extending his darksome reign; and when society has entirely lost faith and charity, light and heat, the human race must perish. Thou dist come to bring warmth to the wintry world, till the thirteenth century became like a spring time, rich in beautiful flowers; but alas! no summer was to follow in its wake. By thee the cross was forced upon men's notice; not indeed, as heretofore, to be exalted in a permanent triumph, but to rally the elect in the face of the enemy, who would too son afterwards regain the advantage. The Church lays aside the robe of glory, which beseemed her in the days of our Lord's undisputed royalty; together with these, she treads barefoot the path of trials, which liken her to her divine Spouse suffering and dying for His Father's honour. Do thou thyself, and by thy sons, ever hold aloft before her the sacred ensign.

It is by identifying ourselves with Christ on the cross, that we shall find Him again in the splendours of His glory; for man, and God in man, cannot be separated; and both, thou didst say, must be contemplated by every soul. Yet no otherwise than by effective compassion with our suffering Head can we find the way of divine union and the sweet fruits of love. If the soul suffers herself to be led by the good pleasure of the Holy Ghost, this Master of masters will conduct her by no other way, than that set forth by our Lord in the books of His humility, patience, and suffering.

O Francis, cause the lessons of thy amiable and heroic simplicity to fructify in us. May thy children, to the great profit of the Church, increase in number and still more in sanctity; and never spare themselves in teaching both by word and example, knowing, however, that the latter is of greater avail than the former. Raise up again, with their former popularity, in that country of France which thou didst love on account of its generous aspirations, now stifled by the sordid vulgarity of money-makers.The whole religious state looks upon thee as one of its most illustrious fathers; come to its assistance in the trials of the present time. Friend of dominic, and his companion under our Lady's mantle, keep up between your two families the fraternal love which delights the angels. May the Benedictine Order never lose the affection which causes it to rejoice always on this day; and by thy benefits to it, strengthen the bonds knit once for all by the gift of the Portiuncula!"

Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, lover of Poverty, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, friend of Saint Francis, pray for us.

Saint Padre Pio, pray for us.

Blessed Junipero Serra, pray for us.