Feast day: October 4

St. Francis of Assisi

Founder of the Franciscans · 1181–1226

Patron of Animals, ecology, Italy, merchants

Rich merchant's son who stripped off his fine clothes in the town square, embraced Lady Poverty, and rebuilt the Church with joy, preaching, and radical simplicity.

Francis was born about 1181 at Assisi, the son of a wealthy cloth-merchant, and spent his youth as the carefree leader of the town's young revelers, dreaming of glory as a knight. A spell as a prisoner of war and a serious illness turned him inward; then, praying in the crumbling chapel of San Damiano, he heard the crucifix say, 'Francis, rebuild my church.' He began by repairing the ruined building, selling his father's cloth to do it — which led to a public break with his furious father, before whom Francis stripped off even his clothes and gave them back, declaring God alone his Father.

Embracing 'Lady Poverty,' he set out to live the Gospel with literal simplicity, preaching repentance, kissing lepers, and owning nothing. Companions joined him, and from this little band grew the Order of Friars Minor — the 'lesser brothers' — approved by Pope Innocent III in 1209. With St. Clare he later helped form a second order for women, and a third order for lay people living in the world.

His was a faith of overflowing love for all creation: he preached, it was said, even to the birds, called the sun and moon and death his brothers and sisters in the 'Canticle of the Creatures,' and at Greccio arranged the first living Christmas crib to make the poverty of Bethlehem real to the people. He longed for martyrdom and crossed to Egypt during the Crusade to preach to the Sultan himself.

Two years before his death, while praying on Mount La Verna, he received the stigmata — the wounds of Christ in his own hands, feet, and side — the first recorded instance in the Church. He died in 1226, having asked to be laid on the bare ground, and was canonized just two years later. One of the best-loved of all the saints, he is a patron of Italy, of animals, and of ecology.

He created the first Nativity scene (Greccio, 1223), tamed the legendary wolf of Gubbio, and received the stigmata — history's most imitated saint.

“It is in giving that we receive, and in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
— St. Francis of Assisi

Image: Philip Fruytiers (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm