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

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Chapter 12

  The Creatures

  Let the heavens and the earth praise him, the glorious,

  and every creature which is in heaven and on earth

  and under the earth, in the seas and all that are in them.

  Let us praise and exalt him above all forever.

  WRITINGS OF SAINT FRANCIS

  POPE PIUS XI WROTE OF FRANCIS, “The herald of the great King did not come to make men doting lovers of flowers, birds, lambs, fishes, or hares; he came to fashion them after the gospel pattern, and to make them lovers of the cross.” This is a warning which most of us need, so prone are we to think of Francis only as the happy troubadour singing God’s praises over the hills and through the valleys, as the storyteller who could keep the crowd rocking with laughter at his jokes and as a man who so loved animals, birds, and flowers that he would preach to them and talk to them as though they were his human friends. We dwell on this sunny side because it seems to us easy and happy and turn aside from the other because it is grim and difficult. We would rather not think of the penitent who scourged himself until the blood ran down, of the man who was not ashamed to go weeping through the world for the passion of Christ, of the fasting and the nightlong vigils in darkness and cold. We would like to think of poverty in terms of spiritual freedom and sunny days in the woods, not in terms of hunger, lice-infected rags, pouring rain, lepers, disease, and death. The dark side of the picture presents a challenge it is not easy to meet, and we are not altogether sure that we wish to be made into lovers of the cross.

  But having acknowledged ourselves cowards, sodden with comfort, anxious to escape if possible even a twinge or two of shame, it is permissible to go back and think of Francis with the creatures because, though his mastery of them is a happy and pleasant thing to think of, there is nothing easy about it. Like his gift of healing it is the fruit of holiness in its three aspects of selflessness, obedience, and that deep reverence for God which grows out of true penitence.

  In his book The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis draws an imaginative picture of man before the fall, man with his whole being centered upon God, not upon self, consciously in control of every part of himself, all his functions and all his powers, because his whole consciousness reposed on God. “Wholly commanding himself, he commanded all lower lives with which he came into contact . . . for man was made to be the priest and even, in one sense, the Christ, of the animals – the mediator through whom they apprehend so much of the divine splendor as their irrational nature allows.” The saints, who through their costly discipline and fiery love for God have almost attained again to this primeval blessedness, show us something of what man was meant to be, what he might be again if he could turn back from self to God. Marvelous powers and energies are in us all but they are stifled and overlaid by the mud of self. Once that is washed away they are liberated and the man who enters into the enjoyment of them is not so much abnormal as normal; now at last he approximates a little nearer to what he was meant to be.

  Francis himself ascribed all his powers to obedience. When a man gives himself to live in obedience to the will of God, the power of God enables him. “Though we are commanded to do things beyond our strength,” said Francis, “yet will holy obedience give us power to do them.” In his “Salutation of the Virtues” he wrote, “O holy obedience, thou confoundest the will of the body and the flesh, thou takest the body and makest it to obey the spirit and to obey a neighbor and all the animals and wild beasts, so that these too can be free with man, as far as God permits it.” This passage draws a wonderful picture of the brotherhood of creation as it ought to be, all bound together not only in obedience to the God who made them but in obedience to each other because the Creator himself dwells in every created thing. Saint Bonaventure says of Francis, “His all-embracing love for every creature set forth a new picture of man’s estate before the fall. When he thought of the first beginnings of all things he was filled with overflowing charity, and would call the dumb animals, however small, by the names of brother and sister, forasmuch as he recognized in them the same origin as himself.”

  Through penitence, and its awareness of the great gulf that separates sinful man from the awful holiness of God, Francis had attained to a deep and adoring reverence for God, and it was because of this reverence that he loved the creatures so much. Not only were they God’s handiwork, indwelt by him, but they had all of them some attribute that lifted his thoughts to God. He could never bear to put out lanterns or candles because they reminded him of the Light of the World, and when he washed his hands he chose a place where the water that fell would not be trodden by his feet, for water was to him a symbol of penitence. When he walked over stones he walked in reverence for love of him who is called the Rock, and he would never allow a whole tree to be cut down for firewood because Christ died upon a tree. The three companions say, “We who were with him used to see him rejoice, within and without as it were, in all things created.” Celano says, “This happy traveler . . . exulted in all the works of the Lord’s hands, and penetrated through these pleasant sights to their life-giving cause and principle. In beautiful things he recognized him who is supremely beautiful; all good things cried out to him, ‘He who made us is the best.’ Everywhere he followed the Beloved by the traces he has impressed on all things; he made for himself of all things a ladder whereby he might reach the throne.”

  Francis would have echoed the words of Saint Augustine, “Thy whole creation speaks thy praise . . . that so our soul rises out of its mortal weariness unto thee, helped upwards by the things thou hast made and passing beyond them unto thee who hast wonderfully made them; and there refreshment is and strength unfailing.”

  No wonder the animals loved and obeyed him, as entering deeply into their being and their life he made himself their brother in obedience and their servant in reverence, a mediator of the love of God to them as he was to the sick and poor with whom he identified himself. He understood as few have done that this is the meaning of redemption. To grieve for the suffering, to pray for them, to relieve them out of one’s own affluence, is something, but not redemption. The redeemers huddle with the homeless under the dark arches where they sleep at night, wear their filthy rags with them, starve with them, sicken of their diseases with them, remembering always that God himself could only redeem the soul of the penitent thief by bleeding and dying beside him. In something of the same fashion it would seem that by sharing the temporal existence of the creatures a man can bring them to share in some sort in his own heavenly life. We shut up animals in cages that we may observe their habits but Francis slept out in the open with the beasts, as fearless of them as they were of him because his sharing of their life made brotherhood between them. We watch the birds through field glasses but he had only to sit still in the woods to have them perching on his shoulders and knees and outstretched hands. All the stories of Francis and the animals show him sharing their life of danger and hardship that they might share his life of worship, obedience, and compassion.

  At the Portiuncula there was a fig tree by Francis’s little cell of wattle and daub, and in this tree there lodged a cicada. The man and the small creature lived side by side in neighborliness, and when the cicada started her merry chirpings in the mornings Francis would rouse himself to sing the divine praises. “One day he called her,” says Saint Bonaventure, “and she, as though divinely taught, lighted upon his hand. He said to her, ‘Sing, my sister cicada, and praise the Lord thy creator with thy glad lay.’ For eight days she came and went at his bidding, singing when he told her to. Then he said to the brothers, ‘Let us now give our sister cicada leave to go, for she has gladdened us enough with her lay, stirring us up these eight days past unto the praises of God.’” He gave her leave and she flew away.

  Francis the troubadour was especially happy with the birds, and of them all his favorite was the lark because “Sister Lark hath a cowl like a religious.” The killing of birds horrified him and he wanted the emperor to p
ass a law “that no man shall take or kill sister larks, nor do them any harm,” and he wanted another law passed that should compel men to feed all the birds and animals on Christmas Day. The creatures were nearly always well behaved with Francis, even the swallows of Alviano who were so noisy over their nest building that the sermon Francis was trying to preach could scarcely be heard. Nest-building swallows are generally very intent on their own affairs, yet when Francis called to them, “My sisters, the swallows, it is now time for me to speak,” they were promptly silent till his sermon was finished. But there was once a robin who misbehaved himself. At the Portiuncula a cock and hen robin used to come every day and take crumbs from the table for their chicks, and Francis made them welcome and offered them grain as well. This was a good home for chicks, the parents thought, and when they were out of the nest they “offered their chicks to the brethren, as having been reared at their cost; and having made them over, did not appear in that place any more.” The chicks behaved well for a time, shunning all lay folk and professing themselves nestlings of the brethren only, and then the biggest got above himself, persecuting the little ones and driving them away from the food that he might have it all to himself. Francis, saddened, feared he would come to a bad end, and so he did. “The disturber of his brethren went up on a vessel of water to drink, and immediately fell in and was drowned.”

  Another story is told by Thomas of Celano, and concerns a leveret who would run to Francis as chickens run to the shelter of their mother’s wings, and could hardly bear to be parted from him. “Once when he was staying at Greccio, one of the brethren brought him a live leveret that had been caught in a snare; and when the blessed man saw it, he was moved with compassion and said, ‘Brother Leveret, come to me. Why didst thou let thyself be so deceived?’ And forthwith the leveret, on being released by the brother, fled to the holy man and, without being driven there by anyone, lay down in his breast as being the safest place. When he had rested there a little while, the holy father, caressing him, let him go, so that he might freely return to the woodland. At last, after the leveret had been put down to the ground many times, and had every time returned to the holy man’s bosom, he bade the brethren to carry it into a wood which was hard by.”

  Most famous of the animal stories is the tale of the wolf of Gubbio. Toward the end of his life, when Francis had become too ill to walk from place to place, he would ride on a donkey, with one of the brothers walking beside him. He was journeying one day from the monastery at San Verecondo to Gubbio, and at evening came near a forest through which he must pass to reach Gubbio. Some peasants working in a field close by looked up and saw the familiar and beloved figure of Brother Francis on his ass, with an old sack flung over his shoulders to keep out the cold, and the brother walking by his side. They saw that he was riding toward the forest and they called out to him to stop. “Tarry with us tonight, Brother Francis,” they entreated him, “for the day is far spent and yonder forest is full of fierce wolves, who will rend thee and thy comrade, and assuredly devour thine ass.”

  But Francis, unperturbed, called back to them, “What evil have I done to Brother Wolf that he should wish to sup on Brother Ass? Good night, friends, and God bless ye.” And he rode on into the forest, the brother with him. It is sad that we do not know who this brother was, for the names of all these men who accompanied Francis on the more dangerous of his adventures should surely be written in letters of gold. It was generally only one brother who was with him, and the poor man was not perhaps always endowed with Francis’s sublime indifference to wolves or martyrdom. Yet they always went on tramping faithfully beside the donkey.

  Francis and the unknown brother emerged in safety from the forest and came to Gubbio, to find the little town in a state of panic. It was bitterly cold and the wolves were hungry. There was one great wolf in particular of whom they went in ceaseless dread. He hunted alone, so fearless and savage with hunger that he came right up to the walls of the city, carrying off animals and children and not afraid even to attack armed men. Gubbio was in a state of siege, grief-stricken, and terrified, and all the trouble was poured out to Brother Francis as soon as he arrived. Full of compassion he said he would go out and talk to the wolf, who was known to be not far away in a stony lair. At this there was an outcry but frail and ill though he was, he persisted. Signing himself with the cross, he walked out from the city gate, a few friars with him and the citizens of Gubbio following. The citizens did not get very far; they preferred to view the little drama from the dress circle. The friars went on with Francis and then halted. The Little Flowers of Saint Francis says that they feared to go farther, but it seems more likely that Francis told them to stop and wait for him, for failing to go farther was never a Franciscan failing.

  He went on alone and presently encountered the wolf. As the creature ran at him Francis made a great wide sign of the cross and cried out, “Come hither, Brother Wolf; I command thee, in the name of Christ, neither to harm me nor anyone else.” The wolf recognized his redeemer. He was in danger of death from the cold and the gnawing hunger in his belly. This man, coming to him in his stony wilderness, was also in danger of death. They were together in danger. He crept to the man’s feet and lay down there, and for them both the danger was past. Francis talked to the wolf. He knew, he said, how hungry he was, and that it was hunger alone that had made him so wicked. He promised the wolf that if he would make peace with Gubbio, and do no more harm there, the citizens on their side would keep him supplied with food so that he should not again have to suffer this hunger. “But if I obtain all this for thee,” said Francis, “thou must promise on thy side never again to attack any animal or any human being; dost thou make this promise?” The wolf sat up on his haunches and bowed his head, and Francis said, “Brother Wolf, wilt thou pledge thy faith that I may trust to this thy promise?” And putting out his hand “he received the pledge of the wolf; for the latter lifted up his right paw and placed it familiarly in the hand of Saint Francis, giving him thereby the only pledge which was in his power.”

  Then Francis commanded the wolf in the name of Christ to follow him, and together they went back to Gubbio, Brother Wolf trotting along beside Francis as meekly as a lamb. In amazement and joy the people at the city gate parted to let them come through, and Francis and the wolf went up through the steep streets of the city while young and old, men and women and little children, followed them in procession to the market place. The great wolf walked very sedately, head down, tail between his legs, for he was very sorry for his sins. He was so big and strong that one snap of his jaws would have demolished the little man beside him, but the power resided in the little man. Then Francis talked to the people. He told them that if they would promise to feed Brother Wolf until the end of his days he on his part would promise not to hurt them anymore, and the people with one voice promised. Then Francis turned to the wolf and said, “ ‘Brother Wolf, dost thou promise to keep the compact, and never again to offend either man or beast, or any other creature?’ And the wolf knelt down, bowing his head, and, by the motions of his tail and of his ears endeavored to show that he was willing, as far as was in his power, to hold to the compact. Then Saint Francis continued: ‘Brother Wolf, as thou gavest me a pledge of this thy promise when we were outside the town, so now I will that thou renew it in the sight of all these people, and assure me that I have done well to promise in thy name’; and the wolf lifting up his paw placed it in the hand of Francis.”

  Brother Wolf lived for two years in Gubbio, very gentle and courteous. He went from door to door for his food, living at the table of the Lord like a true Franciscan, and the people received him with a courtesy equal to his own and fed him gladly. In all that time no dog barked at him and he did no harm to any living creature. The people loved him dearly because his gentleness reminded them of Francis. The creature who had yielded himself in obedience to his redeemer had become very like him. Then Brother Wolf died “and the people of Gubbio mourned his loss greatly.”


  There are certain persons who have considered the veracity of this story open to considerable doubt, declaring Brother Wolf to have been no wolf at all but a bandit whose ferocity had earned him the title of wolf, yet two historical facts support it. It is true that Gubbio was afflicted by a plague of wolves at this time, and in a very old church in the city, San Francesco della Pace, the skeleton of a large wolf was found reverently buried.

  Chapter 13

  The Chapter of Mats

  Show me your cloister, asks the Lady Poverty of the friars.

  And they, leading her to the summit of a hill, showed her the wide

  world, saying: This is our cloister, O Lady Poverty.

  SACRUM COMMERCIUM

  ON EARTH THE GREAT DAYS cannot, and may not, endure. “This is too good to last,” we say, and at our happiest we are often most afraid. When a great man is at the height of his power then it is slipping from him. When physical beauty has come to the peak of perfection decay has set in. The mystery of spiritual survival, not only of the souls of men but of anything that in its earthy flowering has caught some reflection of the shining of God, is something we must believe in if we believe in God at all, since all beauty is a part of him, but is as much beyond our comprehension as he is himself. We only know that relinquishment is one of the laws of our being, and that we must submit to it, since it is our only pathway back to God. We journey out from him gathering to us one after another of his gracious gifts, and we journey home putting them back one by one into his hands. It should not be so difficult for us, for we know where they are, but even for the saints there is one sort of relinquishment which can be like the bitterness of death. When they have to stand back and see the work they have done for love of God being apparently corrupted or destroyed even they can hardly bear it. It had not been too hard for Francis to give up all the earthly treasures, youth, and health with all their attendant joys, home and security; he had not even waited, as most of us do, for time to take them from him, he had flung them away himself that he might embrace the poverty of Christ. But in their place had come treasure of a different sort: the poverty of Christ itself, the glory of the order in its spring flowering, the love and devotion of his sons; and these had meant more to him than all he had flung away. Now there was to be loss of a more searching kind, a relinquishment so hard that he would not be able to accomplish it for himself. The years were coming when the order, that was to him as his own being, would fall away from its first beauty, would turn back upon the journey to God and want again a measure of the power and security it had relinquished. The poverty of Christ would no longer be acceptable to all his sons. Many of the brothers would forsake him, not as man but as leader, because the path to heaven that he was treading was too hard for them. The agony of Francis, his Gethsemane and his Calvary, had not come yet, but at the Whitsun chapter of 1219 there appeared over the horizon a cloud that foreshadowed the coming sorrow.