A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books.
With all his saintly austerities St. Francis was always a gentleman. Even the most admiring biographers cannot hide his humanness. The Lives of the Saints do not contain many such incidents as that in the chapter in “The Mirror of Perfection” entitled “How he comforted a Sick Friar by eating Grapes with Him.” It was a little thing to do, but I am sure that St. Dominic would never have thought of it. The friar had been overdoing the mortification of the flesh, and had fallen ill. “Blessed Francis said to himself: ‘If that friar would eat ripe grapes in the morning I believe he would be cured!’ And as he thought so he did. Rising early in the morning, he called the friar secretly, and took him to a vineyard near the place, and choosing a vine that had good grapes fit for eating, he sat down by the vine with the friar and began to eat grapes, that the friar should not be ashamed of eating alone.... And all the days of his life this friar remembered the pity and compassion shown him by the blessed Father, and would relate what had happened to the other friars.”
It was an age of miracles, but St. Francis never allowed them to clutter up his little world. They must keep their place. When Brother Peter died in great sanctity, he was immediately worshiped as a saint. Great crowds came to his tomb, and many miracles were wrought. This was well, but there must be a measure in all things. So one day St. Francis went to the door of the tomb, and his most persuasive voice said, “Brother Peter, in your lifetime you gave perfect obedience. Know that your brethren are disturbed by the crowds that come to your tomb. I command you, by holy obedience, that you work no more miracles.” And from that day Brother Peter abstained from any interference with the order of nature.
A true son of the Church, yet because of the unworldliness of his nature Francis from the first transcended the sphere of ecclesiasticism, and lived in the freedom of the spirit. In an age when ritualism was triumphant he chose an unsacerdotal ministry. At a time when the highest piety was supposed to manifest itself in the building and adornment of churches, he insisted on the higher grace of charity. When a case of need was presented to him, he said: “Sell the ornaments on the altar of the Blessed Virgin. Be assured that she would be more pleased to have her altar without adornment than to see the gospel of her Son any longer set at naught.”
Pope Innocent had many who came with ambitious plans. There were always monks who desired to be abbots, and priests who desired to be bishops. But one day Brother Francis came desiring that he and certain poor brethren might be allowed to live according to the rule of the gospel. They were not content to be poor after the conventional fashion of the great monastic institutions, where corporate wealth was married to individual poverty. Their poverty should be real. Almost everything had been organized around a treasury. They would like to organize brotherly kindness, patience, humility, and love according to their own laws.
And the request was made so simply that Pope Innocent could do nothing but grant it, though it made his own ambitions stand out in startling contrast.
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The life of St. Francis was very mediæval, which was but another way of saying that its idealism was not balanced by the scientific temper. Men in those days delighted in paradoxes, and were contented with no half measures. His experience was different from ours. He did not confront the poverty of the slums of our great cities. It was the poverty of Umbria. It was a poverty that was acquainted with hunger and which wore coarse garments, but it had the freedom of the fields and the open roads. We have problems to solve with which he was unacquainted.
Yet there is something in his daring paradox which attracts us. Beneath all its extravagance there is a vitality in the joyous worship of My Lady Poverty. For what is worship? It is, literally, worth-ship. It is the recognition of intrinsic values. It is just here that the modern man is beginning to be distrustful of himself. He has been marvelously successful in obtaining his desires, but has he desired the best things? In the height of his achievement he cannot help asking, “After all, is it worth what it has cost?”