Present in-deed through joyful service

Deeds speak louder than words. Gestures, even the simplest and seemingly insignificant – like giving a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, as Jesus assures, (cf. Mt 10:42) – can be worthwhile.  Actions can be revealing, that is, they uncover a deep, inner meaning and hidden truth that no words can describe adequately. They pertain to the rich texture and complex context of human communication. Nevertheless, the intention, even more than the meaning, expressed in the language of actions and gestures, not infrequently requires to be discovered, deciphered and discerned, unless the person carrying them out declares his or her intention lest this be misunderstood.

A striking example of this is the declaration made by St Francis when he stripped off his clothes in front of the bishop and townspeople of Assisi and his father, Pietro di Bernadone, an affluent cloth merchant:

Until now I have called you father here on earth, but now I can say without reservation, Our Father who art in heaven (Matt. 6:9), since I have placed all my treasure and all my hope in him.” (St Bonaventure, The Life of St Francis, Ch. 2, 4)

His whole life “was perfect poetry in action,” as Simone Weil rightly says. This poetry, however, stemmed from his stark awareness of God fathering the world’s beauty, rather than, as Weil stated, “in order to have immediate contact with the beauty of the world.” (Waiting on God, Collins, 1971, p.116.)

Without Francis’ declaration of self-dedication to God, what would this gesture have been – an act of sheer foolishness, a display of exhibitionism, an expression of disrespect to shock the sensibilities or prudish sense of the people of his time, an assertion of self-determination for freedom, an exaggerated attitude of perfectionism or outright rebellion against his family, especially his father?

Perhaps it was all of this, for human beings are notoriously driven by motives that are very complex and conceal energies tangled in a skein of unruly emotions, disordered desires and passions that cloud a clarity of mind so that genuine effective action becomes impeded. The poet T.S. Eliot pointed perspicaciously to a shadow that falls mysteriously between and fragments the different components of our experience in living, which should be held together as an integral whole instead of becoming unfulfilled through spiritual and psychological disintegration in an, as it were, twilight zone of paralysis or dreamlike futile condition of inertia, infertility and impotence (cf. The Hollow Men, V). Despite its nothingness and insubstantial vacuity this shadow paradoxically thwarts the deep potential etched into being human to participate in God’s creative act of bringing about his kingdom of love, for which Jesus taught us to pray not with a monotonous multiplicity of empty words to impress others or ourselves that we are praying, but, rather, to make our work prayer – and, moreover, for we ourselves to be pray-ers, worshippers in spirit and truth whom the Father seeks (cf. Mt 6:7; Jn 4:24).

The new orientation in Francis’ life sprang not from his seeking for meaning, but from profoundly realizing that he was being sought by God. Thus, even in the medley of whatever were Francis’ mixed motives, his words state a decisiveness about the transformed direction in living he was impelled to undertake, a direction inspired and sustained by grace that was utterly Godward.

A new shrine is now being inaugurated in Assisi in order to commemorate Francis' act of stripping himself naked. Yet, there is always a danger of clinging to threads of memories… or even of being attached to tattered material keepsakes, such as the relics of the garment Francis discarded or the mantle with which he was covered by bishop Guido… Jesus, after all, commanded Mary Magdalene not to cling to him for he was risen and going towards the Father… He told Thomas, however, to approach and touch his wounds as a lesson to find him in suffering humanity.

Francis enacted the double command encapsulated in ancient Israel’s teaching about loving God and neighbour (cf. Dt 6:4 and Lev 19:18). He discovered how to live in perfect freedom and joy through following Jesus, the divine Word made flesh, who showed how love is indivisible (cf. Mk 12:29-31). The disciple of love, John, grasped and articulated Jesus’ whole teaching thus: ‘If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also’ (1 Jn 4:20-21). Francis not only refers to this teaching and incorporated it into his Letter to all the faithful (first version) (cf. Chapter 1, paragraph 1), but he lived it fully.

This crucial teaching continues to offer us today a challenging lesson about being present and joyously free in serving others. In encouraging and bestowing his blessing on the bishop, the entire diocesan community and pilgrims about the opening of the new shrine in the city of the Poverello (“little poor man”), Pope Francis recalls what he said on his first visit here on October 4, 2013:

The new Assisi Shrine is born as prophecy of a more just and supportive society, while it reminds the Church of her duty to live, in the footsteps of Francis, despoiling herself of worldliness and clothing herself in the values of the Gospel. I confirm what I said in the Hall of Spoliation: “We are all called to be poor, to strip ourselves of ourselves; and to do this we must learn to be with the poor, to share with one deprived of the necessary, to touch the flesh of Christ! A Christian is not one who fills his mouth with the poor, no! He is one who encounters them, who looks at them in the eyes, who touches them.” Today it is more necessary than ever for Christ’s words to characterize the path and style of the Church. If in so many traditionally Christian areas of the world estrangement from the faith is verified, we are therefore called to a new evangelization. The secret of our preaching is not so much in the force of our words but in the fascination of our witness, sustained by grace.  

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Image above:

Scene of Francis’ stripping himself

Fresco in the Upper Basilica of St Francis, Assisi

(attributed to the school of Giotto)