‘A Suffering Saint’
Today is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. So have a look at Paul Moses’s “A Suffering Saint: Francis of Assisi’s Shadow Side,” just posted to the homepage. It begins:
The fact that Francis of Assisi hated to be put on a pedestal does not stop us from doing so when his annual feast arrives today. He is fondly remembered for his love of animals and nature, and for his generous spirit — all of which deserve to be honored. But, as is often the case with saints, we would do well to take Francis down from his pedestal and get to know him as the man he was rather than through his pious image. Before I began researching a book about Francis, I’d had the idea that, given his powerful sense of God’s presence, he was always carefree and happy.
The truth is more complicated: Francis’s life was encumbered by dark shadows, to the point that he experienced long periods of anguishing separation from God.
Read the rest here.
“We should preach the Good News. Sometimes with word.” Few realize, which Paul points out in his book, that the reason for poverty was to prevent most other maladies because wars start over greed and material possessions. So much for the just war right? Certainly in defense. But most wars are over power and greed.
Terrific point out about the need for constant prayer. Prayer is the way out of the darkness of discouragement and despair. This is the reason that Paul urges us to pray constantly. Not out of piety but out of necessity. Prayer combined with caring for others is the way to happiness. If torturous times came to Francis they will certainly come for others.
Happy Feast Day.
Two Pauls. The first paragraph refers to the poster. The second to the Apostle. Both pretty good guys.
Frank Gallicho,
Thanks for advancing this perspective. It’s always refreshing to hear it again.
Catholic saints like St. Francis (and St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, etc., who also suffered from a “shadow side”) are oxygenating for the church today, so essential for its spiritual respiration as it were. We breathe in so much that is superficial, devoid of the Cross, and its redemptive “shadows.” The shadow side, however, has always existed in true disicples of Christ. One can go back in church history and find it in people like Dionyhsius the Areopagite and even in the Gospels themselves. In our own century, one wonders what “shadows” Archhbishop Oscar Romero faced, almost daily, and likewise Dorthoy Day and St. Mary MacKillop, who for a short time, was excommunicated (for insubordination).
Hopefully some day, there will be a “Theology of Shadow” as it were to complement the “Theology of the Cross,” one that will challenge our modern patterns of relgious thought, discourse and religious metaphors. Salvador Dali’s well known painting “The Temptation of St. Anthony” has the naked saint warding off advancing monsters with a little cross; we all are like St. Anthony, in a way; although sometimes our monsters are within, leaving tracks that frighten us, cast a shadow. St. Francis’ life, however, teaches us that grace flickers out in the present through the darkest shadows imaginable if we stay faithful to the Gospels, to the Master.
And Francis began the bottom up reform so needed then. so let’s keep an eye on the bottom, watching, waiting for the sign of spring again. To St Francis, we pray for the bottom to sprout again. A Franciscan sprout..
http://thegubbioproject.org/video
Thanks, Grant, and many thanks to Paul Moses as well. Lord knows St. Francis’s spirirt and example are always needed in the Church, perhaps no more than today. At the risk of annoying Commonweal regulars and being thought “weird”, which is certainly not my intent, I call your attention to John Allen’s new NCR piece on the current work of Capuchin bishops, including the one installed last week in Philly. John’s article is entitled, “In US, Capuchins punch above their weight”. I have been a big fan of NYC Capuchins over the years, so I had some issues with John’s pugilistic metaphor, as is reflected in my comment to John’s article under the heading “Movers & Shakers??”. John’s article is accessible by clicking on to http://ncronline.org/news/us-capuchins-punch-above-their-weight
Mother Teresa suffered the “Shadow” for most of her life. When she was young she had some extraordinary mystical experiences in which she was intimately aware of the presence of God. , but then the experiences stopped for many years. This caused her great anguish. Years later she was gifted with more such experiences, but they also stopped, and she continued to live in spiritual pain. Yet her love of God and the poor and her generosity seemed never to waver. What a saint!
There is a wonderful statue at ( I think) Subiaco of St francis Buffeted by a whirlwind. That and the incongruity of the portiuncula enclosed in a huge expensive church brought home how much the sweet saint who loved animals was not real.
This is really interesting. The two modern Teresas (Therese and Mother Teresa) went to great lengths in their teaching to insist on cheerfulness in the midst of spiritual trials. Such trials are part and parcel of sanctity, a sharing in Christ’s own agony in the garden, which has been understood since St. Maximus the Confessor (and doubtless before) as the process of the human will conforming itself to the divine will. From St. Paul (notably in II Corinthians) and St. John of the Cross there appears an image of the spiritual life as one bewildering trial after another, not for the sake of suffering itself, but for the sake of a) apostolic fruitfulness and b) purification of the soul.
What Moses’ essay shows me is that the “smiling theology” of St. Therese and St. Teresa can be understood in terms of the desert fathers’ term acedia. This is really interesting–thank you.