In 1204, Giovanni Bernardone or “Francesco”, as his father called him, became disenchanted with his reckless youth and materialistic values. He struggled inwardly in prayer and meditation. This new spiritual sensitivity prepared him for two events that would forever change his life. The first was a pilgrimage to Rome, where he knelt beside a leper to give him alms and kiss his sores. The second event was the revelation that Francesco received at a little church in San Damiano on the outskirts of Assisi. Here a voice from the crucifix ordered him to restore the church building. Convinced that Francesco was insane, his infuriated father denounced him, and Francis began his life as the povercello, the “little poor man.” I was profoundly impacted by Francesco’s response to his father’s rejection of him, when he removed all of his clothes in the middle of the town square of Assisi, renounced all of his earthly possessions and proclaimed to his father and all the towns’ people “Heaven is not here on earth. Man is a spirit. He has a soul. I am not your son any longer. What is born of flesh is flesh, what is born of spirit is spirit. I am now born again. We are no longer earthly sons and daughters. We no longer have earthly fathers.” Upon these words Francis left Assisi and returned to the ruined church at San Damiano.

The heart of Francis’s message was poverty. To renounce wealth was to find true freedom to serve God and needy people, more specifically, the lepers. Francis ascribed to a freedom from the bondage of liturgy; focus on the obligation to the statues, law, control of the religiosity, and to be free from the enslavement of material things. He chose to go against the grain. In his life and preaching, Francis emphasized simplicity and poverty, relying on God’s providence rather than worldly goods. He and the brothers of Friars Minor (or the Franciscans) along with Clare who, with the encouragement of Francis, later founded the sisterhood of the “Poor Clares” at San Damiano worked or begged for what they needed to live, and any surplus was given to the poor and to care for the lepers. Francis turned his skills as a troubadour to the writing of prayers and hymns.

Francis did not wish to ‘found’ and/or ‘order’, but in time the brotherhood did become more organized and structured. As large numbers of people, attracted to the preaching and example of Francis, joined him, he had to delegate responsibility to others. And in so doing, in spite of Francis’s pleadings, the friars eventually entered the political realm and the intellectual life of the universities. With the direction of the order beyond his control, Francis retired to the mountains to live in secluded prayer. It was there he received the Stigmata (the wounds of Christ) on his body. Combined with the rigors of self-denial, which caused his health to weaken, and after extended illness he died at the age of forty-four. He was canonized two years later as St. Francis of Assisi. As for myself, along with thousands of others who have been drawn to the “Seraphic Father”, Francis, because of his simplicity of life, sincerity, piety, humility, and compassion and joy, I have been most drawn to St. Francis of Assisi because of his actions in seeking to follow fully and literally the way of life demonstrated by Christ in the Gospels.

Bonaventure who became known as the “seraphic doctor” and was the highly respected predecessor of St. Francis of Assisi emphasized “primacy of the will” and “purification” through prayer, humility, obedience, self-sacrifice and zeal for God, however he was much more ordered, intellectually educated, and was considerably more administrative than St. Francis. Bonaventure (1221-1274) regarded theology as faith and reason brought together and made compatible by love. Like Augustine and Anselm he said, “I believe in ‘order’ to understand.” But unlike St. Francis of Assisi, for Bonaventure reason or nature alone could not lead one to God, although they displayed God’s glory. Human knowledge was dependent on divine knowledge and truth, which were gifts of God’s grace. He helped to develop the Franciscan order’s constitution through his commentary on the rule of St. Francis and his biography of the founder to the original order, the Friar Minors. In fact, in an attempt to restore unity and bring together diverse elements of disagreement that had arisen among the Franciscans, it was decreed in 1266 that all “legends” of St. Francis of Assisi before that of Bonaventure writings “should be forthwith destroyed.”

I question this decree administrated by Bonaventure, as have many others, as a deliberate attempt by him to close the primitive sources of Franciscan history, to suppress the real Francis, and substitute a counterfeit order in it’s place. To be put in more simple terms, to gain control. However, Otbers and others have regarded the decree in question as a purely liturgical ordinance intended to secure uniformity in the Franciscan order and that this edict was nothing more than another heroic attempt on Bonaventure’s part to wipe out the old quarrels and start a fresh. Nevertheless, regardless of the regretful circumstances of this decree, it would be unjust to accuse the general chapter of the Franciscan’s of “ literary vandalism” in seeking to prescribe the latter. Bonaventure’s mysticism has been described by many as much more joyful, less doctrinal, and less cloistral than that of many other mystics of the past.

St. Bonaventure's mystical writings reflect a fidelity to the message of the Gospel. He characterizes the work of conversion and repentance as a process involving the eradication of vices and the cultivation of virtues. He agrees with the Eastern Fathers in that regard and notes that prayer is sometimes accompanied by states of ecstasy. St. Bonaventure urges us to respond to God for these experiences with thanks and humility. He also cautions us to not cease in our efforts to attain perfection if we are blessed with such experiences because the process of conversion continues throughout our lives.

Whereas, Franciscan mysticism, so-called, is concerned with the individual person's spiritual ascent through various stages of awareness of God's presence--at first in His creation and ultimately in the individual. This is a process of continuous conversion. The individual's response to the gift of being intimately united with God through theosis is the integration of active and contemplative forms of spiritual statement. A person in this state experiences a death of self, living only to love and serve God:

“Whoever loves this death can see God because it is true beyond doubt that man will not see me and live. Let us, then, die and enter the darkness; let us impose silence upon our cares, our desires and our imaginings. With Christ crucified let us pass out of this world to the Father so that when the Father is shown to us, we may say with Phillip: it is enough for us. Let us hear with Paul: My grace is sufficient for you. Let us rejoice with David saying: My flesh and my heart have grown faint; you are the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion forever. Blessed be the Lord forever and all the people will say: Let it be; let it be.” Amen. (The Soul's Journey into God from Bonaventure, Paulist Press edition, p. 116.)

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