Francis

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#990033" TEXT="#080000" background="01ed4c00ddthgj.png"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 WIDTH="91"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Deus meus et omnia</B></div> <div> <IMG SRC="048977a0.jpg" border=0 width="151" height="378" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> <A NAME="anchor"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div> Francis with his hand in the 'fear not' mudra.</div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFCC80" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="558" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#990000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#660066" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#339999 > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 14 ><NOBR><div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="home"><U>home</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#339999" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id3.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Us"><U>About Us</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#339999" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><B>Francis</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#339999" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Clare"><U>Clare</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#339999" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="annoymous_one.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="One With No Name"><U>One With No Name</U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#339999" FACE="Symbol" >   ·   </FONT><A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="benefactors and donations"><U>benefactors and donations</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 73 ><NOBR><div> <IMG SRC="0d14e490.png" border=0 width="78" height="73" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#6633CC" FACE="Tempus Sans ITC" ><B>The Fourth Order of Francis and Clare </B></FONT></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B> </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="home"><U><B>home</B></U></A><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#6633CC" FACE="Arial" ><B>  </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#6633CC" FACE="Tempus Sans ITC" ><B> </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="id63.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dec 04"><U><B>site guide</B></U></A></FONT></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <div> Francis</div> <div> <IMG SRC="0ac425a0.gif" border=0 width="66" height="90" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Francis Bernardone was born in 1182, in the second century of the second millennium, to Piero and Pica Bernardone, a wealthy Italian cloth merchant, and his French wife. Francis grew up in wealth and privilege and the accepted values of his culture. He was trained by his father to succeed him in the family business.</div> <bR> <div> When he was nineteen, war broke out and Francis went to fight. He was taken hostage and imprisoned in a camp for several months. When he returned to Assisi, he is said to have been ill of body and fragile of mind. The descriptions of his behavior and emotional states indicate that he was experiencing what we would today call Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. The horrors of war created an abyss within him. He questioned the cultural assumptions and use of power that surrounded him. Nothing made any sense to him. He no longer knew who he was. He became sensitive to the suffering around him. He began to give to the poor his father's cloth and his father's money. He began to pray.</div> <bR> <div> Francis Bernardone was falling in love with the Jesus of the Gospels, who broke bread with the poor and the outcast, who is concerned with people coming into relationship with one another, with conversion of heart, conversion of the spirit by the Spirit. He was falling in love with a Jesus who was concerned with people coming into relationship with his father, that birthing force of the universe, that essence shining out of all that is, that wild love.</div> <bR> <div> The scenes of Francis' conversion are famous: the dream which asked him who he would serve, that power from which life came or mere human use of power; the encounter with the dreaded leper in which he choose to place love before fear; his experience of love in his care for the poor and the sick; the voice which called out to him from the cross in the ruined chapel of San Damiano, “Rebuild my church which is in ruins”.</div> <bR> <div> The path of radical commitment to the spiritual center of life was consummated on the day Piero Bernardone, angry and embarrassed by his son's behavior, dragged Francis before the Bishop and people of Assisi. On that day Francis Bernardone broke his father's heart. He stripped himself naked and returned to his father his rights as a son and all his possessions, including his clothes. Now he belonged only to God. He looked mad. He looked insane. He looked touched. Francis had fallen in love with Holy Wisdom, clothed as the most beautiful Lady Poverty, in simplicity, in humility, in trust.</div> <bR> <div> Francis left the company of his rich companions, lived among the poor and disenfranchised and began to literally “rebuild” the broken down churches and chapels of rural Assisi. He preached of the beauty of a simple life based on Gospel ideals, proclaiming penance, reconciliation and peace to everyone. He earned his way as a day laborer, or at the “Lord's table” with a beggar's bowl and the greeting, “Peace be with you”. He was mocked by many.</div> <bR> <div> He did attract followers, whose vocational callings are some of the most courageous and some of the most hilarious. They were a motley crew of rich young men turned beggar wanderers, preachers of the gospel, hermits and fools for Christ. They lived on the edge. They lived among the poor, the lepers and the outcasts of society, bringing comfort and care wherever they were. They became the poor and lived lives of utter poverty, facing cold, starvation, humiliation. They were wayfarers and troubadours of love and holy wisdom. They followed Francis, who preached to the birds, tamed wolves, sang, danced and played a fiddle made of sticks. The people of Assisi were horrified at these “Friar Minors” or “lesser brothers” </div> <bR> <div> Yet more followers came; among them a beautiful young woman of wealth, Claire Offreduccio. In 1212 this courageous woman founded the second Franciscan Order, the contemplative Poor Ladies or “Poor Clares”. She was the first woman to ever write a religious rule. The character of her Franciscan vocation was in many ways determined by the condition of women at that time. Her courage led many women to embrace the rule of Lady Poverty and the gospel ideal of simplicity and union with God and others.</div> <bR> <div> In 1221, a married couple, Lucchesio and Buonnadonna, asked to be able to live the life of the Minors while remaining in their married state. The third order of Franciscans was born.</div> <bR> <div> All three Franciscan orders grew rapidly and Francis continued to guide them by the living example of simplicity, penance, joy and freedom that had attracted its members. In 1219 during the fifth crusade Francis crossed the borders over “enemy lines” to speak with Sultan al-Kamil. No one thought he would live but in some accounts it is said that he returned with a peace agreement, which to his sorrow the crusaders refused to sign.</div> <bR> <div> Among the newer members of the Friar Minors, there were many that felt they could not live by such a simple rule. They needed houses, security, and a place to study. They demanded a new rule, which Francis wrote and they rejected for its extreme simplicity. Francis entered a period of intense fasting and prayer. He grieved that many Friar Minors did not want the gifts the Lord had given them. He fasted and prayed for many months. His health was poor. He had difficulty walking and was nearly blind. Outside his cave on the mountain retreat of LaVerna, Francis of Assisi received the Stigmata, the wounds of Christ imprinted on his hands, his feet, his side.</div> <bR> <div> Within the year, in the garden of the Poor Clare's at San Damiano, he wrote the first part of his famous poem, the Canticle of Brother Sun. He finished the poem on October 3, 1226, the day of his death at the age of forty-four.</div> <bR> <div> The life of Francis, El Poverello, the Little Poor Man as he was called, rebuilt the temple of God in the hearts of others, so much so that he was canonized only two years after his death.</div> <bR> <div> Why does this man's spiritual journey so touch and inspire the hearts of people? In the course of his life, Francis struggled with a spiritual wound that afflicts the hearts and souls of many, self-loathing and self-hatred. He would relapse into extreme penances or self-shaming and deprecating comments about himself. He did not tend his own health or real needs in a loving way as he tended for the health of lepers. Only the discipline of joy and love would redeem him from these states. The tension of this condition of being speaks to members of the Fourth Order who like Francis have struggled with self-hate and shame. The great spiritual discipline of the Fourth Order is self forgiveness, self mercy, self compassion. We are ruthless about it. By bringing compassion and mercy to ourselves, we embody the radical love of God. We can truly bring compassion and mercy to a world in need. Companions of the Fourth Order do not identify with the frailties of their personalities. With holy boldness and joyous humility they dare to rejoice that God dwells in them just as they are.</div> <bR> <div> When we think of Francis, we often remember his love of tree, flower and stars. His relationship with birds and all living beings is characterized by his joy, his singing, dancing, his poems and songs. The tension of his personal struggle continually demanded he relinquish his self-concept and self-judgment to the greater truth of God's love. The profound wisdom of Francis' spirituality is his continual reorientation to the compassion and wisdom of God. </div> <bR> <div> During his life, the heart of Francis of Assisi expanded to embrace this world with complete abandon. He allowed self-protective boundaries to melt away. He said of the leper he embraced that fateful day; it was Christ come to free him of fear and grant him holy simplicity. In the icon to the left we see Francis' hand extended in the mudra of 'no fear'.</div> <bR> <div> It should not surprise us that a heart, so capable of embracing all that is, should make its way into the full expression of the mystery of redemptive love. Expanding the heart to embrace what is foreign, repulsive, frightening in others and ourselves is both terrifying and beautiful. Francis' invitation is this: to live in humility, trust and abandon at the edge of fear, at the edge of longing, at the edge of vulnerability.</div> <bR> <div> “Cracked open like seed grain, ruthlessly love has taken us far.”</div> <div> On the Feast of the Holy Stigmata of Francis of Assisi</div> <div> September 17, 2000</div> <bR> <div> Barbara Flaherty</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id14_m.htm" TITLE="Francis"><U>Back to Top</U></A>     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="home"><U>Home Page</U></A></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>