My God and My All: The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi

by Elizabeth Goudge

  A certain lawyer of Bologna, observing this unique preacher, realized that he was no lunatic and going up to him he asked him where he had come from. Bernard, still silent, put his hand in his bosom and, taking out the rule of the order, gave it to him to read. The man was moved and impressed, and turning to the people around him told them that the preacher should not be insulted but honored as a friend of God. Then he took Bernard home with him, and later he prepared for him a “place.” These gifts of “places” on the fringe of big cities were a frequent occurrence in the life of the order, and the gift was accepted provided it was poor enough. It was generally a hut beside the city gate, with a tiny oratory attached, and as the Franciscan missionaries went farther afield they were found all over Europe.

  Bernard, living his life of prayer and penitence at the “place,” setting out from it to preach, to nurse the sick, and comfort the sorrowful, gradually became so loved by the people and so honored by them that he got into a state of panic. His humility, that most precious treasure of the saints, was in danger, and with it his immortal soul. He fled back to Francis and said, “Father, the convent is founded at Bologna, send other brothers there to keep it up and reside there, as I can no longer be of any use; indeed, I fear that the too great honors I receive might make me lose more that I could gain.” And Francis quite agreed with him and sent other brothers to take his place.

  For ten years after the death of Francis, Bernard was the guardian of the Portiuncula and as a father to all the brothers who came there, and then he retired to a life of solitary prayer and contemplation. So winged was his prayer that Giles said of him that “he fed flying, like the swallows.” As he had been one of the first to join the order so he was one of the first to die. He was happy in his dying, for the brothers stood around his bed, among them Brother Giles who had come from his hermitage to cheer him with his joyous exclamation of “Sursum corda! Brother Bernard, sursum corda!” When he felt his strength going from him he asked the brothers to lift him up in bed and he said to them, “Beloved, not for one thousand worlds as beautiful as this would I have served any other master than my Lord Jesus Christ.” And so he died.

  Giles the farmer’s son, sometimes called Egidio, is perhaps the most beloved figure of them all, of whom his brothers did not hesitate to say that he was “one of the most glorious religious whom the world has ever seen in the contemplative life.” He was a great traveler who loved going on pilgrimages and would support himself on his solitary journeys by manifold labors: carrying water, making baskets, gathering logs, beating walnut trees, and cleaning out dirty kitchens. He was a mystic, who like Saint Paul was once caught up to the third heaven, a man of heroic prayer who in his old age said he knew now that martyrdom was an easy matter and that the inner life of prayer was a harder proof of man’s constancy.

  Delightful stories are told about him in his old age, when he lived in a mountain hermitage but was always ready to give shrewd and witty advice to those who visited him in his retreat, and even occasionally to issue out and comment caustically upon the changing scene. Upon one of these occasions, after the death of Francis, he journeyed to Assisi to take a look at the fine buildings that were being erected in honor of the poor and humble saint: a magnificent church to keep his bones, a papal palace, and a large comfortable convent to house the Brothers Minor who once had lived in wattle and daub huts in deepest poverty. The old Giles gazed at the splendor in a silence pregnant with what he did not say, a silence lasting so long that the brothers who were proudly showing him around became uncomfortable.

  “Ah,” said Giles at last, “now you only want wives.”

  The brothers exclaimed in horror, “What is this that you have dared to say, Brother Giles?”

  “I wish to say,” said Giles, “that since you have abandoned holy poverty it only remains for you to abandon chastity, to which you were also vowed.”

  Two cardinals once visited him in his hermitage and asked him to pray for them. He said, “What need, my lords, that I should pray for you, who have more faith and hope than I?”

  “How so?” they asked.

  “Because,” said the old man, “whatever of riches, honor and success this world can offer, you possess, and hope to win salvation; whereas I, in spite of hardship and adversity, fear to be lost hereafter.”

  Giles, one of whose sayings was “Humble yourself daily in everything you do, and in everything you see,” had no use for self-satisfaction. When a brother told him he had visited hell in a dream and seen no Brothers Minor there Giles said, “You did not go down deep enough.” To some lazy brothers he said, “Do you think that in doing nothing you are being spiritual?”

  Not all his sayings were caustic. The Little Flowers of Saint Francis contains a collection of them, wise and loving, for he was a great lover of God and men. “Blessed is he who truly loves,” he said, “and desireth not to be loved again. . . . Blessed is he who loves God with all his heart and with all his mind, who labors and suffers with mind and body for the love of God, and yet seeks no reward under heaven, but accounts himself only to be his debtor.” Giles would have echoed the prayer of a Mohammedan mystic: “O my Lord! If I worship thee from fear of hell, burn me in hell; and if I worship thee from hope of paradise, exclude me from thence; but if I worship thee for thine own sake, then withhold not from me thine eternal beauty.”

  The last years of Giles’s long life were spent in contemplation in a small cell close to a church at the summit of a hill near Perugia, where he could look out over the whole valley of Spoleto and see Assisi and the Portiuncula. He had a little garden here and would wander up and down among his flowers, talking to the doves, and sometimes after the example of Francis he would hold two sticks as though they were a viol and bow and sing aloud the praises of God. He died in 1262, on Saint George’s day, the anniversary of his reception into the order. His life as a son of Francis began in prayer, when he knelt in the church of San Giorgio, continued in prayer and ended in it. “Prayer,” he said, “is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all good.”

  Of all his sons Leo was closest to Francis. He joined the order in 1210 when the brothers were still at Rivo-Torto. Francis called him “pecorello di Dio,” the little sheep of God, perhaps in amusement that he who was named “the lion” should be so gentle. Almost alone among those who were closest to Francis, he was a literary person, a priest, Francis’s confessor, and his secretary. He was an exquisite penman, as can be seen from the breviary he made for Saint Clare, and it was his pen that wrote down the memories of “we that were with him.” His precious “rolls and notes” formed the basis of the earliest writings about Francis, The Legend of Saint Francis by the Three Companions and The Mirror of Perfection, and the biographies of Thomas of Celano and of Saint Bonaventure. It is hardly too much to say that without Leo we today should hardly have known Francis. The gentlest and most retiring of the brothers is thus for us the most valued of them all. Particular stories in the chronicles seem especially connected with the various brothers, and Leo’s is the story of perfect joy from The Little Flowers of Saint Francis. Though it is so famous it is not possible to write of Leo without quoting it in full.

  One day in winter, as Saint Francis was going with Brother Leo from Perugia to Saint Mary of the Angels, and was suffering greatly from the cold, he called to Brother Leo, who was walking on before him, and said to him: “Brother Leo, if it were to please God that the Friars Minor should give, in all lands, a great example of holiness and edification, write down, and note carefully, that this would not be perfect joy.” A little further on, Saint Francis called to him a second time: “O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor were to make the lame to walk, if they should make straight the crooked, chase away demons, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and, what is even a far greater work, if they should raise the dead after four days, write that this would not be perfect joy.” Shortly after, he cried out again: “O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor knew all languages
; if they were versed in all science; if they could explain all scripture; if they had the gift of prophecy, and could reveal, not only all future things, but likewise the secrets of all consciences and all souls, write that this would not be perfect joy.” After proceeding a few steps farther, he cried out again in a loud voice: “O Brother Leo, thou little lamb of God! If the Friars Minor could speak with the tongues of angels; if they could explain the course of the stars; if they knew the virtues of all plants; if all the treasures of the earth were revealed to them; if they were acquainted with the various qualities of all birds, of all fish, of all animals, of men, of trees, of stones, of roots, and of waters – write that this would not be perfect joy.” Shortly after, he cried out again: “O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor had the gift of preaching so as to convert all infidels to the faith of Christ, write that this would not be perfect joy.”

  Now when this manner of discourse had lasted for the space of two miles, Brother Leo wondered much within himself; and, questioning the saint, he said: “Father, I pray thee teach me wherein is perfect joy.”

  Saint Francis answered: “If, when we shall arrive at Saint Mary of the Angels, all drenched with rain and trembling with cold, all covered with mud and exhausted from hunger; if, when we knock at the convent gate, the porter should come angrily and ask us who we are; if, after we have told him, ‘We are two of the brethren,’ he should answer angrily, ‘What ye say is not the truth; ye are but two impostors going about to deceive the world, and take away the alms of the poor; begone, I say’; if then he refuse to open to us, and leave us outside, exposed to the snow and rain, suffering from cold and hunger, till nightfall – then, if we accept such injustice, such cruelty, and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, believing with humility and charity that the porter really knows us, and that it is God who maketh him to speak thus against us, write down, O Brother Leo, that this is perfect joy. And if we knock again, and the porter come out in anger to drive us away with oaths and blows, as if we were vile impostors, saying, ‘Begone, miserable robbers! Go to the hospital, for here ye shall neither eat nor sleep!’ – and if we accept all this with patience, with joy, and with charity, O Brother Leo, write that this indeed is perfect joy. And if, urged by cold and hunger, we knock again, calling to the porter and entreating him with many tears to open to us and give us shelter, for the love of God, and if he come out more angry than before, exclaiming, ‘These are but importunate rascals, I will deal with them as they deserve’; and taking a knotted stick, he seizes us by the hood, throwing us on the ground, rolling us in the snow, and shall beat and wound us with the knots in the stick – if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of the sufferings of our blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for him, write, O Brother Leo, that here, finally, is perfect joy. And now, brother, listen to the conclusion. Above all the graces and the gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ grants to his friends, is the grace of overcoming oneself, and accepting willingly, out of love for Christ, all suffering, injury, discomfort, and contempt; for in all other gifts of God we cannot glory, seeing they proceed not from ourselves but from God, according to the words of the Apostle, ‘What hast thou that thou hast not received from God? And if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?’ But in the cross of tribulation and affliction we may glory, because, as the apostle says again, ‘I will not glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ ”

  Leo, like Giles, lived to be a very old man and died at the Sacro Convento at Assisi.

  Ruffino was an aristocrat of Assisi, a member of the noble family of the Scefi. He is a heroic character, not heroic in the manner of the dauntless Giles, but heroic because of the lifelong battle he had to fight within himself. He was a lonely and melancholy man, beset by fears and anxieties, shy and reserved, the type that today would be called neurotic. But he was not conquered by his disabilities, he conquered them, and a quiet persevering strength in him made him at last a great man of prayer, a man whom Francis called in his absence Saint Ruffino. One of his inhibitions was an inability to speak in public. Whenever he tried to speak to people he became incapable of saying a word, whether from a stammer or from sheer nerves we are not told. But this speechlessness could not be allowed in one of the Brothers Minor, who had pledged themselves to obey the command of Christ to preach the gospel, and Francis, to put an end to it, commanded him to go and preach at Assisi. Ruffino in an agony implored Francis to spare him. He said that he could not do it, and held out so obstinately that Francis suddenly lost his temper and told Ruffino to go and preach at Assisi at once, and for a penance to go there without his tunic and wearing only his breeches.

  There was in Francis a queer streak of harshness, amounting at times almost to cruelty. Normally he was fierce with himself only but on rare occasions the stinging lash caught the brothers too. It is hard to reconcile this harsh streak with his love and gentleness, and those who suffered from it must have been even more taken aback than we are, but it is noteworthy that only one thing called it out, and that was the failure of perfect obedience. No injury done to himself had any power to ruffle the sweetness of Francis’s temper, but to a religious, disobedience to the rule of his order, or to the command of his superior in the order, is disobedience to Christ himself, and Francis could not endure to see his master so dishonored. And these occasional outbreaks tell us something else about Francis, for they show the extreme tension under which he lived. He, like Ruffino, knew the torture of oversensitive nerves and though his joyousness and selflessness gave him an ease that Ruffino lacked, his control could at times snap.

  With desperate courage Ruffino did as he was told. Naked except for his breeches he went up the stony way to Assisi and into the city. It is thought that the place appointed for his sermon was the out-of-doors pulpit of the cathedral, and if this is so he had quite a long way to go through the streets to reach it, with urchins running at his heels and jeering at him and the windows and doors of the city full of staring eyes. For any sensitive man it would have been a nightmare, but for a son of the house of Scefi, who had walked these streets as a prince, it must have been a Via Dolorosa harder to endure even than that of Francis when he came from San Damiano to his father’s home. But no one had the kindness to take hold of Ruffino and pull him indoors as a madman, and when he reached the pulpit he had to clamber up into it and try to preach. He had it in mind to talk to the people about honesty, but though he managed to get his mouth open words came out of it only with agonizing difficulty, and the astonished inquisitive crowd that quickly gathered found in his remarks food rather for mirth than for edification. But Ruffino did not give up. He was doing this under holy obedience, for the love of Christ, and laugh as they would he went on.

  But soon after Ruffino had left the Portiuncula, Francis was seized with sudden frantic remorse. He understood Ruffino, he knew the suffering his temperament caused him, and he had always been gentle with this difficult brother, but if he had brought him any healing he had undone it all now with his harshness. All his fierceness now was turned upon himself. “Son of Pietro Bernadone, thou vile manikin,” he stormed at himself, “wherefore didst thou command Brother Ruffino, one of the noblest citizens of Assisi, thus to go preaching naked? Please God, thou shalt have experience of what thou hast made another to endure.” Then he too cast away his habit and wearing only his breeches set out for Assisi.

  Brother Leo, that quietly efficient young man, picked up the two habits, placed them over his arm and followed gently along behind.

  Francis, when he reached the crowd about the pulpit, waited unnoticed until Ruffino’s poor sermon had stumbled to its end, and then he mounted the pulpit steps and stood beside him. The crowd had found one half-naked friar funny enough; two of them must have seemed more comic still. But their laughter soon ceased, for Francis was preaching to them of the poverty and nakedness of Christ. There was scarcely a moment when he was not thinking of the suffe
ring of Christ, and when he spoke of it neither he nor his hearers could remember anything else. When his sermon ended the congregation was weeping.

  Leo judged this a good moment to step forward and re-clothe the two saints in their habits. When he had done this the people pressed forward and lifting the hems of the worn habits they kissed them, and they showed as much deference toward Ruffino as toward Francis. From that day onward he lived the full life of the Franciscan friar, accepting the chalice of his temperament with fortitude. His long endurance brought him at last to peace, for when as an old man he lay dying Francis appeared to him and lovingly greeted him, and he died in joy.

  Among the brothers there can hardly have been a greater contrast to Ruffino than Masseo, a big burly handsome man, possessed of charm, common sense, and “a fair and devout eloquence.” Preaching held no terrors for Masseo, he enjoyed it, and Francis liked to take him as his companion on a journey because when he wanted to go away quietly and pray, Masseo would keep the people from following him by preaching to them and holding them enthralled by his eloquence. But Masseo had his difficulties too and the stories of him suggest that they came not so much from his disabilities, as did Ruffino’s, as from his gifts. His charm and popularity made the battle for humility harder for him than for another, and moreover he was a hungry man and was not always able to share Francis’s love of poverty quite to the full.

  One day he and Francis were journeying toward Rome where they were to visit the tombs of the apostles. Francis was contemplating a missionary journey to France and he liked to begin all important undertakings by a pilgrimage to Rome. One day they were hungry and weary and stopped at a little town to beg for food. Francis went one way and Masseo another, and Masseo’s good looks, and perhaps also the pitiful sight of a large man sagging for want of food, so touched the hearts of the housewives that they gave liberally of their scraps; but Francis, little and insignificant in appearance, was given hardly anything. When they had finished their begging the two brothers went to a place outside the town where there was a fair fountain, and a large flat stone where they could arrange the food they had begged. When Francis saw that Masseo had been far more successful than himself he was delighted, and then, as he looked about him and saw the sky like a king’s canopy over their heads, and the cool sweet water and the grass, and the stone shaped like a table lifting up the food that had been given them for the love of God, his delight deepened to an ecstasy of joy. This was the bounty of God. This was the table of the Lord, the green pastures and the waters of comfort. “Thou shalt prepare a table before me. . . . Thy loving kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”