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Throughout the week, I write daily reflections for paid subscribers. Sundays are my opportunity to open the doors a little wider and share something with the whole Sacred & Secular community.
Today, I reflect on Francis of Assisi, the saint we associate with animals and nature, and the far more challenging life behind the familiar image.
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There cannot be many Christian saints available from an ordinary garden centre. But a closer inspection of my local branch reveals that Francis of Assisi is an exception. You can place him beside your birdbath, surround him with flowers and allow a stone sparrow to rest permanently on his hand. He looks gentle, harmless and entirely at home among the begonias.
I kind of like the image, I might even buy it. There is something attractive about a saint who appears to enjoy the garden, and Francis really did possess an extraordinary love for the natural world. Yet it is difficult to look at one of those statues and imagine the alarm the living Francis must sometimes have caused.
Yesterday marked exactly eight hundred years since his death on 3 October 1226. Today is his feast day, and around the world, churches will hold services at which people bring their pets to be blessed. There will be dogs, cats and from experience, at least one exotic animal that probably should not be in a church.
It is a joyful way to remember Francis. But I wonder whether it also reveals something about what we do with people whose lives challenge us. We do not reject them, but keep the parts we find beautiful, make them familiar, and in time leave the more demanding parts behind.
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The Francis we find easier to love
Most people know something about Francis, even if they know very little about Christianity. He loved animals and preached to birds. He called the sun his brother and the moon his sister. He has become a symbol of gentleness, peace and care for the earth.
None of that has been invented. In his Canticle of the Creatures, Francis praises God through Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water and Mother Earth. The natural world was not simply scenery to him. It belonged within his understanding of a creation held together by God.
Yet even that canticle is less cosy than we sometimes remember. It moves from the beauty of sun, stars, water and fire to forgiveness, suffering and “Sister Bodily Death”. Francis was not writing from a comfortable retreat after an agreeable walk through the Umbrian countryside. By this point, he was seriously ill and nearing the end of his life.
The birds do belong in his story, but they are not the whole story. His delight in creation grew within a much larger attempt to live as though the teachings of Jesus were actually meant to shape a person’s life. That included some teachings many of us might prefer to admire from a safe distance.
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When Jesus’s words become practical
Francis was born into a prosperous merchant family. His father dealt in expensive cloth and appears to have expected his son to inherit both the business and the comfortable life it could provide. Francis initially seemed willing to enjoy that life. He liked fine clothes, dreamed of honour and took part in the military adventures of his city.
Then something changed. It happened gradually, as Francis began to give away what he had and sought a different kind of life. The conflict with his father eventually became public, and in the traditional account, Francis stood before the bishop of Assisi, renounced his inheritance and returned even the clothes he was wearing.
Eight centuries later, it sounds heroic, but I suspect it felt considerably more complicated to the people involved. If somebody we loved announced that they were giving everything away and intended to live without money, we might not immediately congratulate them on their spiritual insight. We might even wonder whether they had really thought this through.
But St Francis had thought it through, specifically the words of Jesus. Jesus told his followers to give to the poor, travel without relying on possessions and trust God for what they needed. Francis seems to have asked what would happen if someone stopped treating those words as inspiring ideas and tried to live them out.
His answer was extraordinarily demanding. The Rule he gave his friars said they should not claim a house, a place or anything else as their own. They were to work, accept what they needed and care for one another, but they were not to build their security around possessions. In doing so, Francis challenges us to ask an awkward question: how much of what I call necessity is actually my desire to feel protected from needing anybody else?
Despite his choices, Francis did not give his brothers permission to judge people who lived differently. The same Rule that demanded poverty told them not to despise people who wore fine clothes or enjoyed good food. Apparently, it is possible to question possessions without turning the question into another way of feeling morally superior. Francis directed the uncomfortable examination back towards the person who had chosen to follow this path.
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The people he once avoided
Near the end of his life, Francis wrote a short Testament recalling how his journey had begun. He did not begin with birds, poverty or the dramatic confrontation with his father. He began with people affected by leprosy.
Francis admitted that he had once found the sight of them unbearable. The language is uncomfortably direct: seeing them seemed “bitter” to him. People with leprosy lived outside ordinary society, carrying both the suffering of the disease and the rejection created by fear of it. Francis had kept his distance.
Then, as he remembered it, God led him among them, and he showed them mercy. What had seemed bitter became sweet. Soon afterwards, he wrote, he “left the world”, not by physically disappearing from it, but by walking away from the values that had previously organised his life.
Later biographies told more dramatic versions of the story. They describe a particular encounter, Francis getting down from his horse to kiss a man with leprosy. Those accounts may preserve genuine memories, but Francis’s own words are simpler. He went among people he had previously avoided, and something happened to him there.
For me, that feels important. We often imagine that compassion begins when a good person decides to help somebody less fortunate. Francis’s account is more challenging because he is the person who needs to change. He approaches people he has found difficult to look at and discovers that offering mercy changes him too.
His story makes it harder to leave compassion at the level of an admirable idea. The people he had avoided became part of the place where his life changed. Perhaps it is no wonder that we prefer the image of him with the birds. They are less likely to ask whom we struggle to see.
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How radical people become safe
Perhaps this is simply what happens after somebody has gone for long enough.
The sharp edges become smoother. Their words are separated from the arguments and choices that gave them meaning. Eventually, we are left with a figure almost everyone can admire because very little remains to get under our skin and disturb us.
It happens beyond the Church as well. We remember campaigners and protestors through their most agreeable quotations and moments while forgetting how unpopular they were when their protests interrupted ordinary life.
Christians can do something similar with Jesus. We remember his welcome, kindness and compassion, as we should. But we can detach those qualities from his teaching about enemies, possessions, forgiveness, status, and the treatment of people pushed to the edges. Jesus becomes the person who told everyone to be nice, which is much easier to manage than the Jesus people actually encountered in the Gospels.
Francis seems to have recognised the difference. He did not believe Jesus’s teaching was merely there to be admired. He attempted to give it a visible form, sometimes with a literalness that even other Christians found difficult to swallow. His movement grew rapidly, and the question of how thousands of friars could live without owning anything created tensions that continued long after his death.
These questions became part of his legacy. His ideals were demanding enough to raise real questions about money, buildings, security, and what institutions need to survive.
A harmless Francis would not have created those problems.
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The saint beside the birdbath
There is nothing wrong with blessing somebody’s spaniel today; I am sure Hank will be first in the queue.
Francis’s tenderness towards creation was real, and the bond people share with their animals can be one of the places where love, gratitude and grief become visible. A church making room for that has got to be a good thing.
But perhaps the blessing should not be the end of our remembrance. The Francis who delighted in creatures also gave up the security of wealth, moved towards people he had once avoided and tried to live the words of Jesus rather than merely agree with them. His love of creation was part of a life in which fewer and fewer things existed simply for his possession or convenience.
That is much harder to turn into a garden ornament.
The statue can remain beside the birdbath. The birds genuinely belong there, and perhaps Francis would be glad of their company. But every so often, we might allow the figure in the garden to recover something of the awkward person he once was.
He might ask how much of what we own has begun to own us. He might ask whom we find easier to avoid than to know. And he might ask whether we are putting the words of Jesus we admire into practice.
I suspect the real Francis would be pretty challenging. So for now, the stone version might have to make its way into my garden.
But I might not look at it in the same way ever again.
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Thank you for reading today’s reflection.
Paul
Wow, I really loved your perception of his story ❤️✨. I'm someone who has very little knowledge about Christianity, but it was genuinely amazing to learn about Francis's story through your article. And I think this world could become a little better if every human, regardless of their religion, could reflect on his story this way .
Great writing, BTW 🙆✨
A couple of days ago, a friend offered me a statue of the Virgin Mary. I declined to place her among the overgrowth of weeds in my garden. St. Francis is not alone among the begonias!
I do appreciate your biographical insights. The film Zeffirelli made about him in 1972 left the viewer with the feeling that he was slightly mad.