St Francis of Assisi by GK Chesterton

[opening page]
"... the full and final spirit in which we should turn to St Francis [is] in the spirit of thanks for what he has done. He was above all things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He knew that the praise of God stands on its strongest ground when it stands on nothing. He knew that we can best measure the towering miracle of the mere fact of existence if we realise that but for some strange mercy we should not even exist..."

p.15 He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He was a lover. He was a lover of God and he was truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation. A lover of men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the pedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself.

p.26 [The end of the Midle Ages] was the end of a penance; or, if it be preferred, a purgation. It marked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had been finally worked out and certain spiritual diseases had been finally expelled from the system. They had been expelled by an era of asceticism, whih was the only thing that could have expelled them

p.47 He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking

p.57 He realised thatthe way to build a church is not to become entangled in bargains and, to him, rather bewildering questions of legal claim. The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else's money. The way to build a church is not even to pay for it with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.

p.58 He was truly building up something else, or beginning to build it up; something that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuilding; a church that could always be built anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation-stone, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

p.78 He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth; we might almost say the cold truth.

p.80 ...We are not generous enough to be ascetics; one might almost say not genial enough to be ascetics. A man must have magnanimity of surrender, of which he commonly only only catches a glimpse in first love, like a glimpse of our lost Eden.

p.81 He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.

p.103 It was the whole calculation, so to speak, of that innocent cunning, that theworld was to be outflanked and outwitted by him, and be embarrassed about what to do with him. You could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast. You could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary, for he was already a beggar...You could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in a halo.

p.128 There may be something in the suggestion that the holy man was unconsciously protected among half-barbarous Orientals by the halo of sanctity that is supposed in such places to surround an idiot...Finally, there is perhaps something in the suggestion thatthe tale of St Francis might be told as a sort of ironic tragedy and comedy called The Man Who Could Not Get Killed.

p.152 St Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God

p.156 He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He knew that the praise of God stands on its strongest ground when it stands on nothing

A Mended and Broken Heart: The Life and Love of Francis of Assisi

p. xv If we know him only as the man, then he might as well be known, to borrow from Chesterton, as the world's "one quite sincere democrat." If we know him only as the saint, then he is a ghost who inhabits a spirit world beyond the reach of ordinary people. If Francis was anything, he was real. He was hopelessly anchored to real life.

p.xxv "Francis of Assisi is not a man who can be calmly observed, " says the great scholar Jacques Dalarun. " He is a man who must be confronted, with sympathy and commitment." Dalarun urges us: " Never give up on the quest for the historical Francis."

A man has as much knowledge as he executes-- Francis of Assisi

Reluctant Saint Continued

p.149 Ugolino and Francis represent two approaches to reality that are by their very nature in tension: the prophetic witness of the charismatic individual and the longer arm of the Church's tradition, which is able to foster and disseminate what is good by means of social structures not available to an individual. It is also important to keep in mind that Francis himself was a product of the Church: it was precisely the 1,000 year old tradition of prayer, of proclaiming the Scriptures, of worshiping God-- and the documentation of this tradition in books and manuscripts-- that had fed his soul and had led him onto the path of sainthood

p.164 Francis's insistence on radical poverty, on simplicity of life and the fundamentally lay organization of his society were aspects of his thinking that were understood by neither the official Church nor by society at large.In fact, he caused considerable irritation and displeasure everywhere; his way of life contradicted much that was avidly suported by the Church and the culture.

p.185 When questioned about the meaning of following in his footsteps, Francis referred to the last sections of the Rule he had drafted in 1220 and 1221-- the document rejected and diluted by the fraternity. Thesense of his words was clear:

* God is the absolute good and must have priority in our lives.
* Our lives themselves manifest the praise of God
* We give thanks for the beauty of the world.
* We long to believe fully in the triune God, Who created, redeemed and will finally act in love to save us forever
* We long to desire nothing but God, on Whom we depend and in Whom we hope.
* We want to love God because He has first loved us.
* Doing penance means constantly turning to God
* We are poor because God alone is rich, and everything good belongs to Him. Therefore, we need not be concerned about ourselves, our honor, our earthly goals. We can abandon ourselves and leave ourselves open to him Who gives us everything. He is not unfeeling or indifferent, but He constantly draws near to us, speaks to us, saves us.
* For all these reasons, we are also concerned for the well-being and salvation of all mankind
* We prefer the celebration and the living out of faith rather than disputing about it-- hence we go among unbelievers and preach to others mostly by example.

Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi

p.3 Assisi was frequently referred to as a new Babylon, a place of wild debauchery, where murder and street fights to the death were commonplace. Revenge was considered a right, vendetta almost a sacred duty.

p.39 Now in his 22nd year, Francis found nothing to be of much consequence and, as his earliest chronicler records, "began to regardr himself as worthless."

p.41 Then, not quite conscious, Francis heard a voice asking him where he intended to go. Francis described his plans for battle and knighthood, and then he heard the question " Who can do more good for you-- the master, or the servant?
"The master," Francis replied.
"Then why are you abandoning the master for the servant, the patron for the client?"

p.47 [a short Prayer Before a Crucifix]: " Most High, glorious God: enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me true faith, certain hope and perfect charity, sense and knowledge, Lord-- that I may carry out Your holy and true command."

p.54 At the moment of disrobing, Francis was in fact engaging in the ars concionandi, the craft and skill of oratory-- the popular medieval method of argument and persuasion in the public assembly, or concione, where citizens discussed and decided matters of importance to the commune. This technique aimed to persuade not so much by rational discourse or verbal rhetoric alone but by a dramatic manner, by the physical actions that accompanied the words and finally by some gesture that would attract an audience's attention.

p.57 Precisely at this time, money was becoming more than simply a social convention, a medium of economic exchange. People were beginning to pursue money as a primary goal; and the amount of money one acquired determined one's status in the community. Society in the 21st century, in fact operates on the same tacit assumption that began in the 13th-- namely, that money can indeed buy happiness, or at least rent it.

p.59 His care, in other words, meant more than merely not showing revulsion. It meant a willingness to be with them precisely because they were outcast. It meant taking with grave literalness the standard of the Gospel that to minister to the needy was to minister to the lonely, naked and dying Christ.

p.63 The letter T, found in both the Hebrew and Greek alphabets (as taw and tau, respectively), symbolized the fulfillment of the message of the patriarchs and prophets. Ezekiel the prophet had been commanded to place this mark on the foreheads of all those who hated iniquity...Quite naturally, Christians viewed T as the mark of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which itself was believed to be the fulfillment of everything promised to Israel. By the time of the Middle Ages, the tau in the form of a cross appeared widely in manuscripts and was a popular motif in art...
Francis not only adopted this widely popular sign for his own emblem and signature, but often knelt with arms outstretched, consecrating himself in imitation of the crucified and offering himself entirely to God

p.65 Above everything, however, saints keep God firmly in sight.

p.69 He and his companions, he said, " must be careful not to be angry or disturbed at the sin of another, for anger and disturbance impede charity in [ourselves] and others."

p.71 The random opening of the Scriptures for spiritual advice was a common but not entirely sanctioned practice in the Middle Ages: called the sortes apostolorum, it was a custom based on the devout (if somewhat superstitious) belief that if one by chance turned to the same or similar passages three consecutive times, it was a clear sign of God's plan.

p.113 When Francis returned, Angelo prodly told him what had occurred. "You've behaved like a man with no religion at all," Francis responded, and gathering some of the bread and wine he had received as wages that day, gave the food to Angelo and told him to take it to the robbers." Serve unfortunate men with humility and good humor until they are satisfied. Then--and not until then-- tell them to stop robbing and killing."

p.140 He saw that those who suffer participate even more deepply in the lot of the poor and the castaways of the world.

p.141 Francis did not reject suffering as something undeserved or offensive, he went through the pain to a consideration of God's inscrutable and mysterious love. He did not try to intellectualize or theologize, to explain it away or to find a rational means of dealing with suffering. His model in this, as in all things, was Christ his Lord, who abandoned himself to the unimaginable mercy of God -- and who was finally vindicated and taken up forever into new life.