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

by Elizabeth Goudge

  He asked Leo for pen and parchment and wrote the psalm that has been called The Praise of the Crucified.

  Thou art the holy Lord God; thou art God of gods, who alone workest marvels.

  Thou art strong, thou art great, thou art most high; thou art almighty,

  Thou holy Father, king of heaven and earth.

  Thou art threefold and one; Lord God of gods.

  Thou art good, every good, the highest good; the Lord God, living and true.

  Thou art love, charity; thou art wisdom; thou art humility.

  Thou art patience; thou, fortitude and prudence.

  Thou art security, thou art rest; thou art joy and gladness.

  Thou art justice and temperance; thou art all our wealth and plenty.

  Thou art beauty, thou art gentleness; thou art the protector;

  Thou art the keeper and the defender.

  Thou art our refuge and strength; thou art our faith, hope, and charity.

  Thou art our great sweetness; thou art our eternal life.

  Infinite goodness, great and wonderful Lord God almighty; loving and merciful savior.

  If the words do not pour forth quite in the headlong fashion of the days of his youth, when he wrote the first rule, they hold the same joy, only flowing more quietly because more deeply.

  Those who have attained union with God come back to the world again not bemused visionaries but men and women of action. Set free from self they are able to serve those about them with all their practical as well as spiritual powers lifted to the highest point of usefulness. Francis, though so ill and crippled and already a dying man, was yet able for a short while to begin life all over again, traveling, healing, preaching, and comforting with tireless love. So now during these last days on Alvernia he did not go back to his lonely prayer but stayed with his sons that he might serve and comfort them.

  Leo had special need of his help, for he was still going through a time of lonely misery and darkness, feeling more than ever that Francis had moved away from him to a place where he could not follow and that he had lost him. He realized too, as he looked at Francis, what it really means to be a lover of God, what the cost is, and comparing himself with Francis he despaired of himself. He was a very humble person who felt himself unworthy of love. He felt shut out alike from the love of God and of Francis, like a child in the dark on the wrong side of the door. There was a certain blessing in the Old Testament that he loved very much and he thought that if Francis were to write this out for him, and he were to have it with him always, it would keep him from despair. But he could not bring himself to ask Francis to do this. He could not presume to intrude himself and his wretchedness upon the notice of this great saint in his bliss.

  While Francis was writing out his praises Leo was sitting humbly near him, watching him with doglike devotion but silent in his misery. Francis, after he had written the words “Loving and merciful Savior,” turned the parchment over and wrote something else on the other side, and drew a small picture, and then handed it to Leo saying, “Take this sheet and carefully keep it by thee till the day of thy death.” Leo took the sheet and to his amazement read the very blessing that he had longed for.

  The Lord bless thee and keep thee.

  The Lord show his face to thee and have mercy upon thee.

  The Lord turn his countenance to thee and give thee peace.

  After this Francis had written, “Brother Leo, may our Lord bless thee,” and below he had drawn the outline of a head and resting upon it in blessing the sign Tau, with which Francis always signed his letters. In utter joy Leo took the parchment, and the darkness was lifted from his mind and soul, never to return. From that day until the day when he died he kept it folded over his heart. It can be seen today in the sacristy of the Sacro Convento at Assisi, the creases where he folded it clearly visible. He annotated it three times in his exquisite handwriting. The first note reads, “Blessed Francis wrote with his own hand this blessing for me, Brother Leo.” And the second is, “In like manner he made this sign Tau together with the head with his own hand.” The third is longer:

  Blessed Francis two years before his death kept a Lent in the place of Mount Alvernia in honor of the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of the Lord, and of the blessed Michael the archangel, from the feast of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin until the September feast of Saint Michael. And the hand of the Lord was laid upon him; after the vision and speech of the seraph and the impression of the stigmata of Christ in his body he made and wrote with his own hand the praises written on the other side of the sheet, giving thanks to the Lord for the benefits conferred on him.

  Francis gave Leo a task to perform for him. He asked him to consecrate the stone upon which the feet of the seraph had rested, as Jacob had consecrated the stone of his vision that it might be holy forever. Leo washed it and then anointed it with wine, oil, and balsam. To the other brothers we can believe that Francis had words to say to each man alone that he would never forget. We know that he talked long with Ruffino. And so the quiet days passed and the autumn morning came when Francis, with Leo to take care of him, was to start his journey back to the Portiuncula.

  The Lord Orlando came to take leave of him, bringing a donkey for him to ride upon, and the six brethren who were to stay longer praying upon the mountain were weeping because they must say goodbye. God had visited them upon the mountain, drawing them into closer union with each other as well as with himself, and the ending of such holy days was hard to bear. And they must have known that Francis would not see Alvernia again. Masseo wrote a description of his farewell to the brothers and to the mountain which is kept still in the convent at Alvernia.

  Our dearest father had decided to bid farewell to the holy mountain on September the 30th, 1224. . . . My Lord Orlando, the Count of Chiusi, had sent up the beast for him to ride on, since on account of the wounds in his feet he could not walk. Early that morning he heard mass as usual in the little chapel of Our Lady of the Angels. Then he summoned the brethren and commanded them under obedience: they were to remain lovingly together, to give themselves to prayer, and to recite their office by day and by night. Then he commended to their care the holy mountain: never were the brethren, now or in the future, to use this mountain for any secular purposes: on the contrary, they were always to look upon it as a holy place, and he would bless quite specially those who lived here or looked after the holy place reverently. To me he then said: “Brother Masseo, I want you to know that it is my desire that only good religious should live here – the best of my order. O, Brother Masseo, what more can I say?” Then he began to take his leave: “Farewell, Brother Masseo,” he said, “farewell. Farewell, Brother Angelo.” And he said the same to Brother Sylvester and Brother Illuminato. Then he said: “Live in peace, my dearest sons, and God bless you. I am going away, but my heart stays with you. I am going with Brother Leo, the lamb of God. I am going to Santa Maria degli Angell, and I shall never come back. Now I must go, farewell, and love one another! Farewell, holy mountain. Farewell mountain of Alvernia. Farewell, dear Sister Falcon, and thank you for your kindness to me. Farewell, mighty rock of Sasso Spicco. I shall never see you again. Farewell, little chapel of Our Lady: to you, O Mother of the Word, I commend these sons of mine.” And so he left, weeping, and he took our hearts with him. I, Brother Masseo, have written this through my tears. God bless us all.

  Through the centuries the brothers have obeyed the command of Francis and kept the mountain holy. A convent and church have been built there and the Chapel of the Stigmata encloses the rock that Leo consecrated. After matins and lauds have been said the brothers walk in procession through the cloisters from the church to the chapel, a large wooden cross carried before them. There they kneel and pray, and keep silence beside the rock, then return the way they came. The cloister has only been built in comparatively recent years, but all through the centuries when there was no shelter for them the brothers came and went through the winter storms as well as the summer nights of
stars. Only twice was the tempest so great that they could not go. It is said that one of those occasions was a night of deep snow. In the morning, when the sky had cleared, the brothers saw the smooth expanse of white snow patterned with the footprints of hundreds of birds and small creatures who had gone to the chapel in their stead.

  Francis, Leo, and the peasant whose donkey Francis was riding, descended the mountain together. As they climbed down the steep path toward Borgo San Sepolcro Francis was withdrawn into prayer. When they came to the little town and made their way through the steep streets, the people crowding joyously around Francis, he was unaware of the turmoil, and when they were out in the country again he asked Leo when they were coming to Borgo San Sepolcro? That evening they reached the convent of Monte Casale and rested there for a few days in the peace and beauty. Sitting at supper with the brothers on the first evening Francis was told of one of their number who was cruelly ill with epilepsy. Full of pity he took a piece of bread from his plate, made the sign of the cross upon it and sent it to the sick man, who when he had eaten it was cured. This man was the first of many sick people who were cured by Francis after he had received the stigmata, for now he was more than ever a channel of the peace and love of God to those who suffered.

  When he was a little rested Francis and Leo set forth upon the next stage of their journey home. From the height of Monte Casale, before he rode down from the hills, Francis had his last view of Alvernia and he lifted his hand and blessed it. “Farewell, Mount of God, holy mount, farewell Monte Alvernia; God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit bless thee. Abide in peace since we shall see each other never more.”

  At Cita di Castello in the plain Francis stayed for some while at the earnest prayer of the people, and he ministered to them and healed their sick. When he left them the snow was already falling in the mountains and it was no weather for a sick man to be traveling. The peasant who was with them considered that it was no weather for any man to be traveling and when their first evening found them snowbound in the hills, unable to get to the village where they had hoped to find shelter and forced to spend the night sheltering under a rock, his lamentations were bitter. Francis gently laid his hand upon him. His hand when strong and supple had always had power but now that it was weak and wounded and full of pain, and very little use to Francis himself, its power to help others was redoubled. The shivering peasant felt a glow of warmth all through him. He was comforted, and like a child in its cot he curled up under the rock and slept all night as happily and peacefully as though it were midsummer. Francis, Leo, and the donkey spent the night the best they could, the donkey with his back turned stoically to the weather and Francis and Leo contented because they were together.

  The next day they came to the Portiuncula. There was no sorrow in this homecoming. In the soul of a man who has come as close to God as had Francis fear and anxiety have no place. Even Elias had no more power to hurt him now. He now knew him in whom he had believed and could say with Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

  Chapter 19

  The Last Journey

  They are truly peacemakers who amidst all

  they suffer in this world maintain peace in soul

  and body for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  WRITINGS OF SAINT FRANCIS

  ELIAS ON HIS SIDE RECEIVED Francis with reverence, awe and joy, for though Francis was not aware of it the news of some miraculous happening at Alvernia had preceded him home. In the history of the Church three hundred men and women are known to have received the stigmata – one of whom, a son of Francis, still lives in southern Italy – but Francis was the first of whom we have knowledge. For years past the children had been crying, “Il Santo! Il Santo!” when he entered a village, but now he was a saint indeed and in its possession of him the order was privileged above all others. His union with the suffering of Christ had integrated and saved his sons. They would have their troubles and dissensions after his death but what he had suffered and what he was would always hold them. Elias, welcoming him home, forgot the irritations of the past. From now until the end their relationship has a touching beauty about it. Elias fussed over Francis with the tenderness of a devoted mother, and Francis gave his dying body into Elias’s keeping with peaceful obedience, gratitude, and humor.

  But after his return to the Portiuncula he still had a few more months of active work before him. As soon as possible after his return home he set off on his last missionary tour, to the dismay of the brothers, for his body was so broken with illness and pain that they did not know how he would live through it. But the great power of love that filled him gave his body a miraculous strength. “Let us now begin to serve God,” he said to the brothers. All that he had done up till now seemed to him nothing. He had seen all the suffering of the world in the face of the crucified seraph and he must spend himself for the suffering poor for as long as he could go on. He kept going right on into the summer. Celano says, “He filled all the earth with Christ’s gospel, so that often in one day he would make the circuit of four or five villages or even towns, preaching to everyone the gospel of the kingdom of God. . . . And though he could no longer walk he went round the country riding on an ass.” Through these months he had an especial loving care of the sick, and in particular the lepers. This new rebirth had brought back to him the days of his conversion and as well as he could he tried to tend the lepers as he had done as a young man. They above all other men stood to him for the suffering Christ.

  During this time not only his health but his eyesight got much worse and when he returned to the Portiuncula Elias took action with guile. Cardinal Ugolino was now at Rieti with the pope and his court and, unknown to Francis, Elias wrote to him and told him of Francis’s condition. The cardinal replied that Francis must come at once to Rieti and be examined by the pope’s own physician.

  Francis would rather have stayed quietly where he was, in the peace of his beloved Portiuncula, taking such pains as came to him as God’s will for him, but he was glad to do what Elias wanted. In the past he had not been able to give his conscience into the keeping of the minister general, and so he was all the more happy to be able to give his body. Accompanied by the faithful four who hardly ever left him now, Leo, Ruffino, Masseo, and Angelo, he started out on his last memorable journey. In one sense it was a pitiful journey, a way of sorrows, for he was dragged from doctor to doctor and from place to place when there was nothing that anyone could do for him. Yet each resting place, each station of the cross, was the scene of some heavenly occurrence, each like a light lit in a dark place, so that the journey in the end had been a gift to the whole world that has never been forgotten.

  The first stage of the journey was a very short one. Francis, when he left the Portiuncula with the brothers, decided that he would like to stop at San Damiano on his way and pay a short visit to Clare and say goodbye to her. His scrupulosity about visiting her had vanished now with his other mental miseries and their love was what it had always been, only deeper. In the phrase of little Agnes he came very often now “to comfort her in Christ.” And she comforted him, for she understood his suffering and his joy as perhaps not even Leo was able to do, for she in her different way had come to Mount Carmel also. Francis had meant to spend only one night at San Damiano, and to continue his journey the next day, but that first night he was suddenly taken very ill, and by the morning they all realized that he would not be able to go on for the present. All their plans were frustrated, but as so often happens, out of the frustration of man’s plan God’s plan came to fruition. Out of that long wait at San Damiano God brought slowly to birth a song which is one of the treasures of the world.

  Under Clare’s direction the brothers built a wattle cell for Francis in the convent garden, like the one he had at the Portiuncula. It was early summer and he could hear the birds singing and smell the flowers in the convent garden, and the love of the devoted four and of Clare and her sisters upheld him.
Clare perhaps sat by him often, busy with her exquisite needlework. There is still to be seen, at Santa Chiara, the pair of sandals of soft leather that she made for him to ease his wounded feet. But his pains increased. To the wasting misery of his disease and the throbbing of the wounds was added torturing pain in his eyes, and for a while he became totally blind. And then his cell became overrun with field mice. Had he been able to see sister mouse and her bright eyes he would not have minded so much, but in the total darkness which enclosed him it was an added misery to have the little creatures scampering everywhere. They allowed him no rest and tormented him so much that he could not even pray.

  At last one night even he came to feel that his suffering had become more than he could bear. The hours before dawn, when vitality is at its lowest, can be hard to endure even for the sighted, but they can find comfort in watching for the sunrise. For the blind these hours are the worst of all because they know that even when the sun does rise it will make no difference. Francis, though he had looked into God’s face of love at Alvernia, actually began to wonder if God was punishing him because he was such a great sinner. He said, “My God, I am worthy of this, and even of worse.” And then, and all sufferers will know just how he felt, the suffering itself began to feel like sin. It seemed like a dark cloud that separated him from God and he prayed, “My Lord Jesus Christ, thou Good Shepherd . . . grant to me, thy little lamb, that no pain, however great, no infirmity or anguish shall ever separate me from thee.” There could be no greater misery than this, separation from God. When that thought came to him the anguish had reached its peak and began to ebb. He could realize again that God was with him, always had been with him and always would be. He heard the interior voice talking to him and began to glow with a return of the joy of Alvernia. The voice asked him, if all the beautiful things of earth, the rivers, the sun, the hills, and the sea, were made of gold and balm and precious stones, and if he could find a treasure more precious still than all these, and he were offered it in place of his suffering, would he not rejoice and be content? And Francis answered, “Lord, I am unworthy of such a treasure.” And the voice said to him, “Rejoice with all thy heart, Francis, for such a treasure is life eternal which I have in keeping for thee, and even now promise to thee; and this thine infirmity and affliction is a pledge of that treasure.”