Francis of Assisi

Legend of St Francis, Sermon to the Birds, Giotto (Upper Basilica, Assisi)

The ascended master Kuthumi was embodied as Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), founder of the Franciscan order, the divine poverello, who renounced family and wealth and embraced “Lady Poverty,” living among the poor and the lepers, finding unspeakable joy in imitating the compassion of Christ.

God revealed to Francis the divine Presence in “brother sun” and “sister moon” and rewarded his devotion with the stigmata of Christ crucified—the first saint known to receive them. The prayer of St. Francis is spoken by people of all faiths around the world: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!...”

Early life

Francis was born in 1182. His family name was Bernardone and his father was a cloth merchant. He led a boisterous and an indulgent life as a youth, and he used his money to pay for all the parties they held, and so he was called “the king of feasts.”

He left home to fight in the war with Perugia in 1202, a warring city state next to his own, and was captured and imprisoned for a year. Upon his return, he still was continuing in his old pleasureful ways. He was determined to become a knight. He heard the tales of King Arthur and the Round Table and the knights and the chivalry, and so he conceived of himself in the person of a knight. But as he was going to receive the necessary training, a mysterious voice spoke to him from within and posed to him this great riddle: “Francis, who can do more for you, the Lord or the servant?”

Francis answered, “The Lord.”

The voice said, “Therefore why do you leave the Lord for the servant and the prince for the vassal?”

Francis answered, “O Lord, what do you wish me to do?”

And the Lord said, “Return to Assisi and what you are to do will be revealed to you there.”

And so he returned. He became a very different Francis. He was quiet and serious. He knew the conversion of the apostle Saul on the road to Damascus. He had stepped into the very living presence of the aura of Jesus Christ, and that was enough to strip from him the outer layer, merely a patine over his soul of light, of the world consciousness.

His calling

As Francis was in prayer one day in 1206 at the ruined chapel of San Damiano outside the gate of Assisi, he heard a voice from the crucifix above the altar command: “Go, Francis, and repair my house which, as you see, is falling in ruins.”

Francis set about to do his heavenly Father’s business. He took a bolt of cloth from his human father, and he sold it. He presented the money to the Church. The priest refused it because he had heard that Francis had stolen the goods from his father in order to get the money.

Francis’ father pressed charges against him for the theft. Because Francis had taken the vow of the oblate, he was tried in an ecclesiastical court. Upon hearing the charges read by his father, Francis stripped himself of his clothing and threw them at the feet of his father. He said, “Here, I strip myself. Take what I have.”

Immediately the bishop walked over to Francis and laid his own mantle upon him. Francis had received the appearance of the Saviour directly, and now the outer Church recognized him. The mantle of the bishop was laid upon him. He gave up the clothing, the right and wrong of this world, and he was clothed upon with the mantle of the one who was anointed within the structure of Jesus’ Church. The case was dismissed because the money had already been returned to Francis’ father by the priest of the Church.

Renouncing worldly goods and family ties, Francis embraced a life of poverty. He wandered around the countryside for a year clothed in tattered rags. He returned to Assisi and begged for lime and mortar to repair the church of San Damiano, and for two or three years, he fervently dedicated himself to repairing the church of San Damiano, a chapel honoring St. Peter, and the Portiuncula, the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near Assisi. He was treated with great scorn by the people of Assisi, but he continued to pursue the path that he knew to be his own.

Francis’ “day of decision”

The Portiuncula, which was to become the cradle of the Franciscan Order, was described by Saint Bonaventure as “the place that Francis loved most in the whole world.” It was there that Francis received the revelation of his true vocation.

While attending Mass in the restored chapel on the Feast of St. Matthias, February 24, 1208, he listened as the priest read from Matthew 10:

Go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat.

Francis later recalled this as his “day of decision”—the day in which “the Most High personally revealed to me that I ought to live according to the Holy Gospel.” He donned a coarser garment, went barefoot, and began to preach to the townspeople, attracting followers to his way of life. His early followers came from the well-to-do families of Assisi; some that had been on the path of pleasure with him.

The founding of the Franciscan Order

In 1209, Francis, with a band of eleven disciples, went to Rome to seek the approval of Pope Innocent III for a “rule of life” to formally begin his religious order. The Pope initially agreed to the new rule, but many of his advisors objected. Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo (who later became Pope Gregory the Ninth) told the Pope, “If we reject the petition of this poor man on the grounds that the Rule is new and too austere when he petitions us to approve a form of life which is in keeping with the Gospel, we must fear that we may displease the very Gospel of Jesus Christ.” The Pope assented when he recognized Francis as the same figure he had seen in a dream holding up the Lateran basilica on his own back.

This marked the official founding of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor (the “little brothers”), which was founded “to follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps.”

Francis wrote: “The Rule and life of the Friars Minor is this, namely, to observe the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, without property, and in chastity.”

Francis and his companions made their home near a river, and it was a hovel in which these despisers of large and beautiful habitations sought refuge. Here they found shelter from the storms, for as Francis said, “One goes more quickly to heaven from a hovel than from a palace.” Then they were driven from their place by a peasant, and so they left the refuge peacefully and took the road to Portiuncola, which became their base for the next ten years. Francis continued preaching in Assisi, and in those ten years the order grew from an initial twelve friars to three thousand in number.

In 1212, when Clare, a young devotee of noble birth, determined to follow his way of life, Francis began a second order for women, which became known as the Poor Clares (or the Order of Saint Clare). Around 1221, he established the Third Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance, a lay fraternity for those who did not wish to withdraw from the world or take religious vows but desired to live by Franciscan precepts.

Francis and Clare

Among the followers of Saint Francis was the noble Lady Clare, who left her home dressed as the bride of Christ and presented herself to Francis for admittance to the mendicant order.

One of the many legends surrounding the lives of Francis and Clare describes their meal at Santa Maria degli Angeli, where Francis spoke so lovingly of God that all were enraptured in Him. Suddenly the people of the village saw the convent and the woods ablaze. Running hastily to quench the flames, they beheld the little company enfolded in brilliant light with arms uplifted to heaven.

St. Francis, Nicholas Roerich (1932)

Legends of Saint Francis

Saint Francis and the leper

There is a story told in the Fioretti of a leper who was being cared for by the brothers in Saint Francis’ order. The leper was so blasphemous and abusive in his speech that none could bear to come near him. When Francis visited him, the leper complained that the brothers had not looked after him as they should, whereupon Francis offered to care for him himself.

The leper asked him what he could do that the others could not. Francis promised that he would do all he wished. The leper said, “I want you to wash me all over because the odor is such that I cannot stand it.” Francis then prepared water with many sweet-scented herbs, undressed him and began to wash him with his hands. Miraculously, wherever Francis touched, the leprosy disappeared and the flesh was healed.

As the leper’s body was healed, his soul experienced conversion also. Overcome with remorse for his sins, he began to weep bitterly, accusing himself for all the pain he had caused others. After fifteen days of deep penance, he fell ill and passed on. His soul, brighter than the sun, appeared to Saint Francis while he was praying in a forest. Pouring out gratitude and blessings, he announced to Francis that that day he was going to Paradise.

The first nativity scene

In 1223 Brother Francis prepared a special Christmas celebration. His heart’s desire was to commemorate the birth of Christ in a way which would vividly portray the suffering and discomfort the Saviour had borne. He asked his devout friend Messer John Vellita to set up a real manger filled with hay in a grotto on a steep wooded hill in Greccio. An ox and ass were also brought to the spot, just as at Bethlehem.

At midnight on Christmas Eve, the brothers and neighboring people came bearing candles and lighted torches that brilliantly illumined the night. Together they celebrated a solemn Mass over the crèche; and Francis, with a countenance of supreme compassion and unspeakable joy, delivered a moving sermon on the “Bethlehem Babe.” For a moment, his friend John saw a beautiful infant lying in the manger, appearing almost lifeless. Then he saw Francis step forward and lift the Child, who opened his eyes as if waking from a deep sleep and smiled. The vision signified that although Christ had been asleep and forgotten in the hearts of many, he was being brought to life again through the devotion of his servant Francis.

Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, fresco by Giotto in the Upper Basilica at Assisi

The stigmata

The culmination of his meditation upon the Redeemer came to Francis in the agony and the ecstasy of a dread illness when he sought solitude at the retreat on Mount La Verna. As the pale poverello lay outstretched upon a bare rock in the chill of the September dawn, “the fervor of his devotion increased so much that he totally transformed himself into Him who let himself be crucified through abundance of love.”

Brother Leo reports that “suddenly appeared to him a seraph with six wings, bearing enfolded in them a very beautiful image of a crucified man, his hands and feet outflung as on a cross, with features clearly resembling those of Lord Jesus. Two wings covered the seraph’s head; two, descending to his feet, veiled the rest of his body; the other two were unfolded for flight.”

Before the vision faded, Francis felt the five wounds of the Crucified pierce his body with such force that he fell unconscious.

For two years, Francis bore the intense suffering of Christ though at times, in transcendent joy, he would burst into song—lighting upon his “Canticle of the Creatures,” praising not only brother sun but brother wind, brother fire, sister earth, and sister death.

The call to the brothers and sisters of Assisi

Today Kuthumi calls the brothers and sisters of Assisi together once again, those who hunger for the simple life of the Spirit but with the dynamism, the fervor, and the drama that Francis knew. It is the revolutionary Francis who comes once again in Jesus’ name not to send a placid peace but to thrust the sword of the living Word into the decadence of an age.

See also

Kuthumi

Stigmata

For more information

For more on the life of Saint Francis and the ongoing mission of Francis and Clare in this age, see:

• Sermon by Elizabeth Clare Prophet on the life of Saint Francis, June 30, 1978.
• Dictation Out of the Love of Francis and Clare, July 1, 1977, published in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 57, no. 14, July 15, 2014.

Sources

Jesus and Kuthumi, Prayer and Meditation.

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 28, no. 9, March 3, 1985, endnotes.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, sermon on the life of Francis of Assisi, June 30, 1978.