Tranquility

While plodding my usual two-mile lakeside circuit this afternoon, I passed a statue of St. Francis of Assisi holding a shallow birdbath.  A young deer nudged Francis’ modest habit as part of the statuary, and tenderly looked up at his face.  This is how most of us think of St. Francis: an animal lover.

I stopped, having walked by this figure many times without paying attention to detail, and studied it.  I’d read a book about St. Francis several years ago, and knew there was a lot more to his story than birds and squirrels.

Born into wealth in 1181, the young Italian (actually Giovanni Francesco Bernardone) was overcome with compassion for the unfortunate.  He turned from opulence to poverty and a simple life, bare feet, and rough garments, believing nature to be the mirror of God.  Wherever he went he preached to ordinary people, urging them to repent and cherish the eucharist: Christ’s own body and blood.  This was unusual for the time since he was not ordained to the priesthood.  Followers grew, and he founded the Franciscan Order for men, the Order of St. Clare for women, and the Order of St. Francis for men and women not living monastic lives.

But there’s one other little detail I find interesting.  St. Francis was the first to create a crèche or nativity scene – a living nativity in a town where the Franciscan hermitage was too small to hold the congregation for the Midnight Mass.  So Francis set up a manger in a rough cave near the center of town and filled it with hay.  An ox and donkey stood nearby as he passionately chanted the Gospel story.

A certain soldier had a vision that night of St. Francis picking up a sleeping, very alive baby from the manger, and embracing him in his arms.  In the weeks that followed, the hay from that manger miraculously healed gravely ill livestock.

Two years after his death, Francis was pronounced a saint - one destined to become a venerated historical figure. Some say no other single person in history has imitated the life and work of Jesus as authentically as St. Francis.

I remembered all of this as I inched closer to the statue, tiptoeing gingerly over muddy puddles and past a lawn statue of the Blessed Mother Mary.  With an umbrella shielding me from the drizzle, I watched raindrops dimple the water in Francis’ birdbath, and studied his reverent facial expression.   

He seemed hardly adult, but rather quiet, composed, and serene – characteristics reminiscent of sleeping children.  I recognized the sculptor’s rendition of inner tranquility, a quality of life reflected in Francis’ famous prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury,pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen