Francis had what today we would call a primary school education. He had studied enough at the local parish school to know how to read, write, add, and subtract to be able to work in his family’s cloth business. He embraced all the cultural norms and practices of his time during his adolescence and early youth. He did everything that the culture at that time said that a young person should do to be a success and obtain happiness: school, work, business, gain money, parties, friends, patriotism, glory, fame, army, and war. After several years of filling himself with those cultural ideals, he discovered that all that left him empty and even physically sick.
After recovering from his sickness during his time as a prisoner of war, he decides to continue along with the same lifestyle and the same cultural norms: he decides to go back to the army and war. He decided to repeat the same old way of life. On the road back to the army, he had a vision and abandoned the road to war and fame. This is the beginning of his conversion. He begins to listen to the Word of God. Slowly but surely, he abandons norms and ideals of his culture and begins to live in radical poverty and service to the extremely poor and abandoned. Initially for Francis this is a personal experience of Jesus Christ in his life. One life lived with contagious joy based on conversion, the Word of God, communion with the Church, communion with creation and all people, and union with Christ. Francis emptied himself to the extent that all the culture norms and objectives were gone out of him and only Christ remained – that was Christ crucified. He radically gave up everything and eliminated everything in his life that hindered his life with Christ. He was a living example to the joy of being united to Christ. This one life, one conversion, blossomed in such a way as to transform the Church and society.
So, this one conversion became the center point for the Franciscan orders, the Poor Clares, and the Secular Franciscans. Francis also contributed to the promotion of peace and the fall of the medieval system, especially its form of warfare. Francs incorporated lay people into the Church in a new way. But, for me, Francis recentered life in the Church towards a process of conversion through a relationship with Christ, the Word of God and local community. Conversion, joy, and service to the most abandoned stand out in the life of Francis. This is what made the Gospel real and believable in the lives of so many people who had contact with Francis.
Francis is not an anomaly in the history of the Church. He was a man of his times who responded to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and lived a true life of conversion. He made the joy of the Gospel real in the time and culture of his life. All of us share that same common radical Christian vocation whether we are single, married, ordained, or lay.
We are all called to do the same in this moment of history, this place and this culture where we live. As an individual, family, and local faith community how are we living out our conversion? How are we signs of conversion, joy, and service to the most abandoned?
Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome…
Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.
Image: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-francis-of-assisi-614