the Joy that was his. To him the sky and the earth, the sun and the
flowers, the fields and all living things, spoke with articulate speech
of the life that is in them. As for his fellow-men, their life was his
life. He had come to pass beyond the bounds of his own personality, and
to enter into that spiritual communion with all living things, whereby
man escapes from his own limitations, and the world lives in him as he
in the world. And above all, and yet in all, he beheld the ever blessed
God, the Author of all life that is. To Francis, God was ever present
in the Creation, the Life behind all life. “The Heavens show forth
the Glory of God, and the Firmament declareth the Work of His Hands.”
The intimate relationship binding creation to its Creator was to him
an abiding perception; he could not think of Earth apart from Heaven,
nor of finite man apart from the Infinite God. Whatever was good and
beautiful was to him an indication of the Divine Goodness and Beauty,
a portal of the Eternal Kingdom; and with keen spiritual intuition he
discovered the good and the beautiful, where men of lesser sensibility
would only find the commonplace and the material. “To them that love
God, all things work together unto Good;”[29] the truly spiritual man
discovers the imprint of the Divine Life along all the highways and
byways of Creation: just as the poet’s eye discovers beauty in the
woodland through which the ordinary wayfarer passes unheeding.
Thus the whole creation poured into the Soul of Francis an unceasing
stream of spiritual life, and with the inflowing life came joy--joy
unutterable; and sorrow too. For life as it is, has no joy altogether
separate from pain. There is tragedy in the purest romance, death even
where there is life. And so the “joyous troubadour of God” sorrowed
much because of the shadow that lay across the sunshine. To him
personally life was joy, such was his liberty of spirit; but it was not
so to all men. Many are they to whom life is sorrow; they walk as in a
dark valley with but the twilight around them; nay, at times with no
light at all, but only darkness, and their souls are starved for lack
of light and warmth; even when in their ignorance or despair they seek
pleasure in the immediate objects of sense around them. For these he
sorrowed with the sorrow of Christ weeping over Jerusalem. It was a
sorrow which kept him at long vigils when the world lay asleep, praying
for mercy for the souls of men. Yet this sorrow could not destroy the
essential joy of life which was his in a super-eminent degree. He
sorrowed as many a man and woman sorrows over a friend who is deprived
of the happiness which is their own.
Truly was Francis a “King and heir of the Kingdom,” if Kingship means
sovereign possession; for he found what is best in life and had it as
his own, nought else than the very joy of life. Francis himself has
told us how this joy of life came to him with the absolute renunciation
of what the world at large holds most dear--wealth, place, and power.
In renunciation he found spiritual freedom, and with it joy. No man is
truly joyous whose joy does not spring from his own soul, or from that
inalienable possession of the world which comes of spiritual communion
with what is good and true in it, and therefore Eternal.
The joy which is dependent upon the possession of the merely visible
and material can never reach the inmost spirit of man, even were such
possession not, at best, uncertain and of its nature transitory. Nay,
the joy of life, which springs from man’s own spirit, is impossible
to him whose heart is set upon the merely external world. For the
spiritual and the material are in the immediate aspect a simple
antithesis; so that where the one is, the other cannot be. “You
cannot serve God and mammon.” You cannot satisfy your nature with the
transitory, and yet retain an appetite for the Eternal. Consequently,
he who would be free and retain a relish for the life of the Spirit,
must beware of the lust of the earth, and keep a detached heart towards
what is of its nature unspiritual.
To St Francis, a man amongst men, the lust of the earth was radically
allied with pride of class, an inordinate ambitiousness of glory, and a
love of luxury. Poverty, as Francis understood it, meant the antithesis
of all this. The Lady Poverty (to borrow the Saint’s own imagery) was
an outcast; she was the despised of men; and she walked amid the rough
ways of the earth with threadbare garments and bruised feet.
The story how Francis found his ideal bride and came to love her with
chivalric devotion, is too well known to need repetition. The final
act in the drama came when one day, riding in the plain before Assisi,
he was met by a leper who besought an alms, and, filled with disgust,
he at first thought to pass on, but, moved by a nobler impulse, cast
himself from his horse, and not only gave the alms, but folded the
leper to his breast and embraced him. From that moment he himself has
told us that “what had seemed bitter was changed into sweetness of soul
and body, and not long afterwards I left the world.”[30]
The embrace of the leper marked the final abandonment in Francis’ soul
of the sense of separation between himself, the son of the wealthy
Bernardone, and the outcasts of society. Henceforth to Francis, the
poor and the outcast were human brethren, worthy of a brother’s
intimate love and care. In the same moment he cast aside, once for
all, his youthful dream of entering the ranks of chivalry, and seeking
renown in battle and tournament. Henceforth he would be the servant of
his brothers the poor, and “serve the Lord in Poverty and Humility.”
The path of renunciation was further determined for him when his new
ideal of life clashed with the commercial interests of his family.
In the newly-awakened consciousness of his kinship with the poor, he
considered his share in the family business as their share, and freely
parted with what he had a right to consider his own. Pietro Bernardone,
his father, foresaw commercial ruin from such a course, and when he
found that Francis was indissolubly wedded to his ideal, promptly
disinherited him. Henceforth Francis was without house or property of
his own. With the keenness of a soul set free, he at once recognised
in his father’s act of disinheritance the charter of his spiritual
freedom. “Now in truth can I say: Our Father Who art in Heaven!” Heaven
and earth became his when in the moment of abandonment he called God
his Father. Thus he cast from himself forever the three dominant
tyrannies which in his own age and since, have oppressed the souls of
men--wealth, place, and power. He had become in very truth the Poor Man
of Assisi, and yet who was richer than he?
Never did Francis regret his renunciation, but ever did the thought
of it fill him with gratitude and joy. One day, some years after his
disinheritance, the Saint and one of his disciples, Brother Masseo,
were eating a scanty meal of broken bread, begged by the way; they
ate near a fountain, and a large stone was their table. “O Brother
Masseo,” said Francis, his soul bubbling with joy, “we are not worthy
of so great a treasure;” and he repeated these words several times.
Brother Masseo answered: “Father, how canst thou talk of a treasure
where there is so much poverty and indeed a lack of all things? for we
have neither cloth, nor knife nor dish, nor table, nor house; neither
have we servant nor maid to wait upon us.” Then said the Saint: “And
this is the very reason why I look upon it as a great treasure, because
man has no hand in it, but all has been given us by Divine Providence,
as we clearly see in this bread of charity, in this beautiful table of
stone, and in this clear fountain.”[31] Surely here we find the very
apotheosis of poverty; of the poverty which, discarding the artificial,
is happy in the simple realities and in the bounties of nature, and
feels no barrier between itself and the spiritual possession of the
very earth itself.
Here it may be as well to take note how alien is the poverty of Francis
from the vulgarity and squalor, the idleness and discontent, which
mark too frequently the life of the poor. No greater misconception of
Franciscan poverty could there be than to conceive it as sanctioning or
condoning any condition that detracts from the proper native dignity
of man. The “Lady Poverty” of Francis went with bare and bruised feet,
her garment was coarse, and she ate but the bread of the peasant; but
she retained her native dignity of soul, and bore herself as a Queen
wherever she went. She delighted in the pure air, and the flowers, and
the running stream, was honest and self-revering, simple and joyous.
The poverty of our city slums where hearts break in discontent, and
souls are starved for lack of spiritual intelligence--such was not
the poverty of Francis’ dream. To use again his own manner of speech,
this is poverty in slavery, degraded and dishonoured by the vice and
selfishness of man. With a full heart would he have set himself to
rescue his Ideal from her modern degradation and restore her to her
place of honour upon the earth. Knight-errant as he was, he would not
have rested until poverty was made honourable amongst men. To rescue
the poor from the conditions which have so effectually demoralised them
during the past two or three centuries of unheeding individualism,
would undoubtedly have been to Francis a first and urgent duty were
he with us to-day. Even in his own time he regarded with anxiety the
conditions which debased the poor; even then he considered himself the
knight-errant sent to rescue the comely maiden Poverty from the neglect
and heartless scorn of the world.[32] But was ever Italian peasant so
utterly degraded as are many of the victims of modern industrialism?
Poverty with Francis was the mother of spiritual freedom; poverty in
the London slum is synonymous with hard materialism and irreligion.
Was ever contrast greater? And yet Francis has made evident to us that
beneath the squalor and degradation of the modern city, there is a
spiritual possibility, if only it can be recovered. But will it ever
be that poverty shall again regain amongst the hungry multitude the
honourable estate with which the Saint of Assisi had endowed it? Will
it ever be rescued from its present inhuman conditions? The future only
can tell; and they who strive that it shall be so can only work in the
strength of their faith; but faith verily can accomplish the apparently
impossible, if faith itself be strong. Meanwhile the ideal of Francis
has assuredly a prophetic message for the multitude which is not hungry.
Poverty, as Francis preached it, is an integral element in the
Christian life. Christianity imperatively demands of all its followers
an acceptance of the truth which Francis embodied so wonderfully in
himself. No one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he be as Francis
was, a lover of Poverty. Such is the Gospel. “Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”[33] There are those
who so interpret this beatitude as to empty it of all significance
concerning material possessions. The meaning of Christ, however, is
made clear, by His own earthly life and by the lives of His early
disciples. “Poverty of Spirit” means nothing less than detachment of
heart from the possession or achievement of material gain, and from its
attendant pleasures. No man can be a disciple of Christ who is not free
from the moral slavery which wealth and temporal possessions so easily
set upon the soul. To no man is given the spiritual insight and vision
which alone can bring rest eternal to man’s spirit, unless he have
first put from him the lust of the earth. And according to the measure
of his detachment is spiritual achievement possible.
Is then every man to imitate St Francis of Assisi, and cast off all
wealth and become dependent upon the labour of his hands or the charity
of his neighbour? No such claim is made by Francis, for it was not
made by Christ. If Christ demanded of the young man that he should “go
and sell what he had and give it to the poor” in order to follow Him,
He also acquiesced in the rich Zacchæus keeping his wealth so long as
he did not neglect his duty to those in need. Francis, too, following
the Divine Model, gave no injunction to the Lord of Chiusi or to the
Lady Giacoma to renounce their property, and he expressly forbade his
friars, who like himself gave up all right of possession, to judge
those who have possessions. No, it is not the holding of property, but
the selfish misuse of it and the inordinate desire of material gain and
its pleasures, which is opposed to the virtue of evangelical poverty.
In few words may the Christian precept of poverty be set forth: Let
no man set his heart on any material possession for its own sake, or
for the mere holding of it; if a man is lacking in this world’s goods,
let him not fret nor complain, but seek rather the life of the spirit.
If, on the other hand, he is endowed with this world’s goods, either
by inheritance or as the result of honest labour, let him bear in mind
that such goods are not absolutely his own; they belong, in the first
instance, to God, the Master of all, and may rightfully be used and
distributed only subject to the Divine laws of justice and charity. No
man has an absolute ownership before God, so that he may satisfy his
own whim or pleasure without consideration for what is due by Divine
Law to his fellow-men. Possession in the sphere of conscience is
stewardship. The rich are God’s stewards, appointed to “give to every
man his just measure in due season.” Such briefly is the precept of
Evangelical Poverty--a precept which has no direct connection with any
theory of social economics, but is based upon the fundamental law of
religion, that only the poor in spirit are spiritually free and capable
of citizenship in the realm of eternal life.
Assuredly to us who live our lives upon the pulse of a great industrial
empire, this message of the Poverello comes with a distinctness not
to be passed unheeded. As a race we are a prosperous people, and
money-making is our first preoccupation. Luxuries are easily within
our grasp; cheap luxuries, perhaps, which is all the worse, for that
very cheapness is a snare blinding us to the fact that what we indulge
in is a luxury. In money-making and luxury lie the elemental dangers
to our spiritual life. “Money,” says Cardinal Newman, “is a sort of
creation, and gives the acquirer, even more than the possessor, an
imagination of his own power, and tends to make him idolise himself.
Again, what we have hardly won we are unwilling to part with; so that a
man who has himself made his wealth will commonly be penurious, or, at
least, will not part with it except in exchange for what will reflect
credit on himself or increase his importance. Even when his conduct
is most disinterested and amiable (as in spending for the comfort of
those who depend on him), still this indulgence of self, of pride, and
worldliness insinuates itself.” And he adds: “If such be the effect of
the pursuit of gain on an individual, doubtless it will be the same on
a nation; and if the peril be so great in the one case, why should it
be less in the other?”[34] The enduring strength of a nation, as of an
individual, depends upon moral fibre and spiritual vision. If these be
destroyed no nation can long remain save as a warning to the nations
that shall come. Undoubtedly there are strong tendencies amongst us
towards the worship of wealth and its attendant luxuries and towards a
selfish accumulation of wealth beyond all possible needs, tendencies
which acquire strength with the growth of empire and trade. Well for us
is it that at this time Francis of Assisi is becoming widely known. To
all who revolt against the vulgar materialism which dominates so much
of our present life, Francis of Assisi is as a prophet sent by God.
Standing against the dark background of Avarice and Luxury which had
already infested the growing commercial centres of the mediæval world,
he throws the light of his own clear personality into the dark corners
of our own life.
We yearn, many of us, for a deeper spiritual life; we sorrow because
the joy of life seems flitting ever further and further away from this
complex social organism of ours. We seek direction, and the Poverello
is here to lead us; and the way he leads is that of detachment and
renunciation. But his own personality and life are an assurance to us
that the renunciation he preaches, leads to richer gain; he leads us
through death, only that we may find life even here, in some measure,
upon the earth, and in the fulness of the spirit hereafter. Thus and
not otherwise does he interpret to us the Poverty of Christ.
FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
Crawley, Feast of St Anthony
of Padua, 1901.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
A PRAYER OF THE BLESSED FRANCIS TO OBTAIN HOLY POVERTY.
O Lord Jesus! Show me the ways of Thy dearly-loved Poverty. I know
that the Old Testament was but a Figure of the New. In the Old, Thou
hast promised that “every place that your foot shall tread upon, shall
be {Deut. xi. 24.} yours.” To tread under foot is to despise; Poverty
treads all Things under foot, therefore she is the Queen of all Things.
But, O my dear Lord Jesus, have pity upon me and upon my Lady Poverty,
for I am consumed with Love for her, and can know no rest without her.
Thou knowest all this, my Lord, Thou who didst fill me with the Love
of her. But she sitteth in sadness, rejected of all; she, the Mistress
of Nations, is become as a Widow; the Queen of all Virtues is become
contemptible; {Lament. i. 1.} and sitting upon a dunghill she lamenteth
that all her friends have despised her and have become her enemies; for
long now she knows them to be wantons and no Spouses of hers.
Remember, O Lord Jesus, that Poverty is so much the Queen of the
Virtues, that Thou, forsaking the dwelling-place of the Angels, didst
descend upon Earth in order to espouse her in Love Everlasting, and so
as to bring forth in her, and by her, and through her, all the Children
of Perfection. And she clung to Thee with such Fidelity, that even
within Thy Mother’s womb she paid Thee homage, for Thy Infant Body was,
it is thought, the smallest of all. And at Thy Birth she received Thee
in a Holy Manger and Stable; and in Thy Life upon Earth she so deprived
Thee of all things, that Thou hadst no place where to lay Thy Head. And
as a faithful Helpmeet she followed Thee loyally when Thou didst go
forth to do battle for our Redemption, and in the Agony of the Passion
she was Thy only Armour-bearer. When Thy Disciples denied Thee and
fled, she alone did not leave Thee, but was Thy faithful Companion with
all the host of her Princes.
Even Thy own Mother (who alone did faithfully honour Thee, and with
grievous Sorrow share Thy Passion), even she, I say, could not by
reason of the height of the Cross, reach up unto Thee, but the Lady
Poverty in all her Penury, like a most dear Servitor, did there hold
Thee in an ever closer embrace, and join herself more and more nearly
to Thy Sufferings. For the which reason she did not wait to smooth
Thy Cross, nor to give It even the rudest preparation; nor, it is
thought, did she even make sufficient Nails for Thy Wounds, nor sharpen
or polish them, but furnished three only, all rough and jagged and
blunted, to support Thee in Thy Martyrdom. And when Thou wast dying of
a burning Thirst, Thy faithful Spouse was careful lest Thou shouldst
have one drop of Water even, and by the hands of the impious Soldiery,
prepared Thee a Cup of such bitterness, that Thou couldst only taste,
but not drink of it. And in the close Embrace of this Thy Spouse, Thou
didst yield up the Ghost.
But so faithful a Spouse was not absent at Thy Burial and would not
suffer Thee to have anything of Thy own, either Sepulchre or Ointments
or Linen, for these were all borrowed from others. Nor did she fail to
be present at Thy Resurrection; for rising gloriously in her Embrace,
Thou didst leave behind in the Sepulchre all those things which had
been borrowed. And then Thou didst take her up into Heaven with Thee,
abandoning all earthly things to those that are of the Earth, and
bequeathing unto the Lady Poverty the Seal of the Kingdom of Heaven,
wherewith she might seal the Elect who desire to walk in the Way of
Perfection.
O who would not love the Lady Poverty above all things! Of Thee, O
Jesus, I ask to be signed with this Privilege; I long to be enriched
with this Treasure; I beseech Thee, O most poor Jesus, that, for Thy
sake, it may be the Mark of me and mine to all Eternity, to possess no
thing of our own under the Sun, but to live in penury upon the goods of
others, so long as this vile body lasts.
AMEN.
NOTE
This remarkable prayer figures as the composition of St Francis in
all the editions of his works from Wadding (Antwerp, 1623) to Fra
Bernardo da Fivizzano (Florence, 1880). But we have (unfortunately)
no satisfactory or scientific proof that the prayer was really the
composition of the Seraphic Patriarch. Wadding took it from Ubertino
da Casale “Arbor Vitæ Crucifixi Jesu” (Venice, 1485). Ubertino wrote
his redoubtable book in 1305, and though he puts this prayer into the
mouth of St Francis, the context points to the fact that he is rather
attempting to reproduce the sentiments of the Saint, than giving a
prayer literally written by him. And his indebtedness to the “Sacrum
Commercium” is obvious. But whether written by St Francis or not,
there can be no doubt that when he prayed, he often prayed after this
fashion. It most faithfully reflects his spirit and ideas, and is
admirably illustrative of the “Sacrum Commercium.” For this reason we
have given it a place in the Appendix. It is also interesting as being
the probable source whence Dante drew his beautiful idea that the Lady
Poverty was more privileged than the Blessed Virgin, insomuch as she
followed the Lord up on to the very Cross itself:
“_Si che, dove Maria rimase giuso,
Ella con Cristo salse[35] in su la croce._”
The naïve sublimity of the concluding petition of the prayer “et
alienis rebus semper cum usus penuria, dum vivit caro misera,
sustentari,” is most characteristic of the Saint, not only in its
sentiment but in its Franciscan directness. It strikes strangely upon
modern ears to hear a Divine petition that certain men may ever be
known as men who lived upon others. But it is logical, as Francis
always was. There can be no evangelical poverty with possessions, and
yet man must keep body and soul together; hence mendicancy is the only
resource of the real lovers of my Lady Poverty. This sentiment recalls
the famous saying of St Francis in the Fifth of his “Collationes
Monasticæ”: “There is a compact between the World and my Brothers. They
owe it a good example, and the World in return must provide them with
all necessities. But if the Brothers, breaking faith, cease to give
their good example, the World will, with justice, withdraw its helping
hand.”
Very interesting, and of considerable importance, is the fact that this
Prayer speaks of Christ being crucified with three nails only. Whether
St Francis wrote the prayer or not, we may take this to have been his
opinion, for it seems to have been the common opinion of the thirteenth
century. And bearing in mind this opinion of his, it becomes impossible
to attribute the phenomena of his Stigmata to subjective causes, or to
that which is loosely called hysteria. The Stigmata of St Francis were
not merely open wounds, but showed nails of a black fleshy substance,
one in each hand and one in each foot. If these Stigmata had been the
result of intense meditation on the Passion, then, seeing what his
opinion was, the singular phenomena which were developed in him, would
have shown one nail only for the feet, and not a nail in either foot.
The point is of capital importance to investigators of a remarkable
occurrence which, while proved beyond a doubt as a matter of fact, has
hitherto found no scientific explanation.
APPENDIX II.
PARADISE--CANTO XI.
LINES 28-123
_Dean Plumptre’s Translation_
It is probable that Dante knew the “Sacrum Commercium”; it is certain
that he knew the Prayer to obtain Poverty. Therefore it may be
convenient to give _in extenso_ that part of the Divine Canto which
sings of the Mystic loves of Francis and the Lady Poverty.