St. Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi and Pope Innocent triple (1161-1216). The former represented contempt of self and of the earthly city carried to the supreme degree of absolute detachment required by Christian perfection. The latter was the individual, human embodiment of the concept of Christendom, the range and the concrete, physical expression of a society, indeed a world, belong to God and faithful to Hi. Together they represent the Church ashamed and the Church politic (Freemantle 147).

Francis's apparent loathing of corporal matters seems conformable with a hardness of spirituality that may be intimately associated with absolutist religious doctrine. Yet the image of the stigmata as the crowning(prenominal) expression of self-denial is, in Francis, of a piece with the itinerant monk who preached to the birds and animals. Thus Francis's spiritual implement and indeed his experience of the Church is mystical, not institutional. On the other hand, Francis bring outlived a get off conflict between his view of what the spiritual Church should be, level off at an institutional level, as against the institutional Church as it was. As Wells puts it, "This struggle within the Franciscan recount is a very interesting one, because it foreshadows the great troubles that were coming to Christendom. . . . St. Francis did his dress hat to be a good child of the church, and his comment on the spirit of official Christianity was only implicit" (Wells 576). Wells's account of Francis's spiritedness illustrates the pattern of

Another prayer of Francis, c entirelyed "The Canticle of our Brother the Sun," is a celebration of the material world. But regular(a) this prayer puts God at the center of creation: "Praised be my shaper God with all(a) His creatures; and especially our Brother the Sun, who brings us the day, and who brings us the light: fair is he and shining with a very great splendour; O Lord, he signifieth to us Thee!" (Englebert 289).

It would be inaccurate to say that Francis's approach to life resulted in unalloyed bliss throughout life. The acknowledgment that it is necessary to inseminate love in a world of hate, and so on, in the prayer for peace is one index of this.

Further, the second pull up stakes of the prayer demonstrates that the one with the mission takes the whole of responsibility for the opposite who may be the object of that mission. Fulfillment comes from the activity of sacrifice, and faraway less from the achievements associated with the activity itself. The commitment to reach out on behalf of the Other is an absolute, and it is an aeonian commitment in its purest form. It is a repugn to the forces of darkness, which are all around those who sow faith, hope, light, joy. And it could be seen as a dangerous challenge because it is perforce insistent and unending and does not respect administrative details.

"Above all the graces and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ grants to his friends, is the grace of overcoming oneself, and accepting bequeathingly, out of love for Christ, all suffering, injury, discomfort and contempt; for in all other gifts of God we cannot resplendence, seeing they proceed not from ourselves tho from God, according to the words of the Apostle, 'What hast thou that thou has not sure 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.' Amen" (O'Brien 85).

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