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

Chapter 2 - Francis's Sermon on the Mount: The Collection of Admonitions

Francis’s “Sermon on the Mount”: Admonitions 55 Chapter 2 Francis’s “Sermon on the Mount”: the Collection of Admonitions In our search for the power lines of Francis’s spirituality we tracked down how he translated, in different places of his writings, the twin concepts of “penance” and “faith,” which he had borrowed from Jesus’ call (Mk. 1:15). Believing is sometimes akin to praising, thanking, and adoring. Doing penance becomes concrete sometimes in having mercy, sometimes in giving, forgiving, and persevering in doing the right thing. The Canticle of the Creatures turned out to be a sermon-in-song, following the sermon outline recommended in the Rule of 1221. It is therefore praise-in-action in accordance with the succinct directive in the chapter on preachers: “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.”1 For praising God is an act of acknowledgment of who God is. In this context, too, Francis takes the liberty of modifying the sermon outline and making it concrete. Where one would expect the word penance, the Canticle speaks of bearing whatever weakens and depresses us. This suggests that Francis, in that phase of his life in which he composed this Canticle and the Song of Exhortation for the Ladies of San Damiano, began to see doing penance as bearing whatever unavoidably befalls one and which one is not able to change. Does this concept of “bearing” occur elsewhere in Francis’s writings? If so, could “bearing” then perhaps be called one of the core words of his spirituality? In particular, what attitude towards life is evident in the use of this word? In this chapter, it is mainly in the collection of Admonitions that we will search for answers to these questions. First, we shall attend to whether there is any particular structure in this collection and whether it is more than just a random collection of texts grouped together without any intentional order. We suspect that the power lines of Francis’s spirituality that we have discovered were guiding principles when he composed the collection of Admonitions. 1 ER 17:3; cf. LtOrd 8f. 56 Yours Respectfully: Francis of Assisi We limit ourselves to the following questions: 1. Are there any demonstrable connections between the Admonitions? Is there such a thing as a ground plan for the entire collection? 2. Where does “to bear” (sustinere) occur in the writings, particularly in the collection of Admonitions? Does it have any connection there with “to believe,” “to praise,” or similar concepts? 3. On the basis of our findings, what does the ground plan of the whole collection look like? The Admonitions: the Marrow of Francis’s Spirituality For one who wants to go deeper into Francis’s spirituality there is every reason to pay attention to this collection of sayings. Researchers have established repeatedly that in them lies the very “marrow” of what Francis had to pass on. Esser, for one, called the Admonitions the “Canticle of inner poverty and the Canticle of Christian brotherliness.” He also characterized them as the magna charta of what Francis meant by brotherhood.2 Cuthbert of Brighton considered the collection of Admonitions to be the “Sermon on the Mount” of the little poor one.3 Manselli, too, believes that what we have here are “Francis’s essential thoughts.” The Admonitions, he feels, belong among the writings which “aim at summing up the experiences of his whole life.”4 The least one can say is that we are dealing here with an exposition of a vital core element of Francis’s art of living. Indeed, the question arises whether the word “admonitions” covers the full meaning of these texts. If they are the fruits of a long search for authentic religiosity and purified wisdom, then “admonitions” is too scant a description of their content. It is important to note that historian Manselli tends to date the collection of Admonitions in the last years of Francis’s life. For us, interested as we are in a possible connection between the matrix of the Canticle of the Creatures—which dates from his very last year—and the wealth of thought which lies hidden in the collection of Admonitions, the dating is important. 2 Die Opus, 121. 3 Documents, I, 36, note 6: Vie de Saint François (Paris, 1927), 534. 4 Raoul Manselli, o.c., (1988), 303. Francis’s “Sermon on the Mount”: Admonitions 57 Traces of...