Respectfully Yours: Signed and Sealed, Francis of Assisi: Aspects of His Authorship and Focuses of His Spirituality

Chapter 9 - Open-ended Finale

Open-ended Finale 357 Chapter 9 Open-ended Finale Truly there can be no greater joy, as I see it, than that he who is the highest and the most powerful, the noblest and the most worthy, is also the lowest and the most humble, the homeliest and the most courteous.1 In the first days of October 1226, when Francis bade his last farewell to his brothers and friends, he was marked by the afflictions that for several years he had had to struggle with. He was especially a man marked by the stigmata, the signature of Christ who had appeared to him two years earlier. Forced by the circumstances of his life to sit or lie down, he reflected more than ever on what a person’s life is and what a person can be coram Deo, before God—“for what a person is before God, that he is and no more.”2 This reflection focused on the essential experiences of his life. Giving them voice, he sang in the Canticle of the Creatures not only of the beauty of God’s creation, but also—in the same spirit of grateful praise—of the dignity of human beings who, fragile and mortal though they be, have been called to shoulder their task in life. The image of Francis that has gradually revealed itself in this book is the image of a man who gave shape to the song of his life: the image of a man who was sick in the last period of his life and who was reminded every day of the exceptional thing that had happened to him on La Verna. His last years were one memoria passionis (“remembrance of the passion”): an unbroken memory of the One who, in his Church, is the mysteriously compassionate and empathizing One. Virtually all of the writings examined in this book date from the last years of Francis’s life: • The Testament • The Collection of Admonitions. As an artistic composition this was probably completed after September 1224 1 Julian of Norwich, Enfolded in Love: Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich (London, 1980), 57. 2 Adm 19: 2; cf. LMj 6:1. 358 Yours Respectfully: Francis of Assisi • The Salutation of the Virtues. Based on its relationship with the two poems that date from the time after the La Verna experience—the Praises of God and Admonition 27—is any other conclusion possible than that this didactic poem must have been composed in the last two years of Francis’s life? • The Rule confirmed by the Pope at the end of November 1223. This text holds the central position in this book. It is, to a large extent, the work of one who had returned from the Holy Land with a chronic illness and who already had had to endure many disappointments within the brotherhood. The image of Francis emerging from his earlier writings requires some modification in view of these later writings. Out of necessity, Francis’s activity had been severely curtailed. In this book, less attention is given to the man who did simple work for simple wages and who from time to time set out to do the work of peace.3 In this respect also, the presentation we give here of his spirituality is incomplete. Our approach mainly concerns the mature person who sees the end of his life drawing near, who feels the urge to think deeply about the best of what he has received and to pass it on. He does this for the benefit of generations to come, for whom his vision of Christ, the new Person who lives on in the Church, could be meaningful. In this chapter we will deal with the following questions: 1. How did Francis bid farewell to life; how did he welcome “Sister Death”? 2. Had there been earlier encounters with death? 3. Can Francis’s pre-modern spirituality, in which “humility” occupies an important place, be considered relevant to our time? 4. How closely is the awareness of being mortal connected with frankness for him? 5. What Franciscan perspective can be offered for our time? 3 LR 5:3; Test 20. Open-ended Finale 359 Farewell of a Marked Man The way Francis, in the last days of his life, stage-manages his transitus (transition, or “passing on”) can be considered an act of deliberate traditio (“transfer,” or “passing on [something to someone...