The Man Who Loved Everybody

The Beginning

The town of Assisi, set in the hills of Umbria in Italy, looks just the same today as it did in 1181, when Francis Bernardome was born there.  His father Pietro was a cloth merchant, married to a gentle lady of French descent name Donna Pica.  There was a second son named Angelo, but Francis was his father’s favorite.
 
Now, Pietro Bernardone, by working diligently at his trade, had become rich.  Francis grew up in a house where everything by way of fine clothes and spending money was his for the asking.  The money was soon out of his pockets, for he delighted in giving lavish entertainments for the other young men of Assisi.  They ate the choicest food and drank wine that Pietro Bernardone had brought from France, while their host outdid them all in song and hilarity.  Francis knew by heart the verses of the most celebrated troubadours. And afterwards he led the whole company through the streets, pausing beneath dim balconies to serenade the most captivating girls of the town.  For this the people of Assisi dubbed him “King of Song.”
 
Some of the older folk in the town shook their heads over the future of this lively man.  Others smiled, remembering the bright days of their own youth.  Donna Pica was often anxious, and pleaded with her husband not to spoil the boy.  But Pietro laughed at her fears, declaring that the only complaint he had against Francis was a habit of wasting good money on beggars.  Francis was not content with having life pleasant for himself.  He wanted it pleasant all around him.  He was even willing to share his joy with beggars.
 
Pietro Bernardone looked forward to the day when Francis would put his mind to the business of buying and selling cloth.  For a time Francis did take his place behind the counter in the shop, and so profitably that Pietro made him partner in the firm.

Off to War

Now, Pietro Bernardone was ambitious.  He had climbed from peddler to merchant, which was as high as he could go.  But he had hopes that his son might enter the ranks of nobility, and become Sir Francis Bernardone.  His son rolled the title on his tongue and liked it very well.  He began to dream of folk bowing as Sir Francis rode by with a band of armed men at his heels carrying shields and banners emblazoned with his coat of arms.  A castle would be his, and servants and farms with tenants.  Then marriage with a noble lady as good as she was beautiful.  But first the son of the cloth merchant must be knighted, and this could be done most easily on the battlefield, after he fought with valor in the service of a great lord.
 
There was no lack of wars in those days, when every walled city had its own army.  Fighting soon broke out between Assisi and the neighboring town of Perugia.  So Francis went to war.
 
The night before he was to meet the enemy, he had a dream, and in this dream he saw himself in a vast hall.  The walls were lined with swords, shields and banners, trophies of a victorious army.  And a voice said to Francis, “All these shall belong to you and your followers.”
 
Francis took this dream for a promise, and the next day he threw himself into the thick of the battle.  But all his high hopes were dashed to the ground, for he was quickly surrounded and taken prisoner by the Perugians.  They led him away in chains to a dungeon, where many of his fellow soldiers sat bemoaning their fate.  But Francis remembered his dream, and he could not believe that this was the end for him.  He beguiled the other prisoners with the songs of the troubadours, and spoke so earnestly of Assisi that they plucked up heart to count off another day.   A weary year they marked off upon the walls before Assisi made peace with Perugia, and all the prisoners were returned to freedom.

The Master or the Servant

So Francis got safely back to his father’s house.  But he had scarcely arrived home when he fell sick of a fever.  Many months passed before he felt strong enough to leave his bed and walk out of the city into the countryside.  Now it was spring, of all seasons his favorite, and a bird sang in every tree.  Flowers carpeted the meadow, and the wind blew sweet.  But Francis found to his dismay that these had no longer the power to stir his heart.  Nor did he feel content as before with working in his father’s shop, nor in gathering his friends for entertainment and song.
 
Hardly had Francis recovered to the full when a herald appeared in the streets of Assisi, to announce that the great knight Walter of Brienne was gathering an army to beat back an enemy invasion of their land.  Francis quickly signed to go.  His father, who still hoped to see him a nobleman, gave him a warhorse of matchless spirit, and a suit of armor whose breastplate was inlaid with gold.  So for a second time Francis went to war.
 
He had galloped only a mile or so along the road when he met a knight who was also on his way to join the army of Walter of Brienne.  Now this knight had returned only recently from the wars against the Moslems in the Holy Land.  During his absence, his own property had suffered neglect, and he was reduced to such poverty that he had to go about in battered armor on a rack-of-bones horse.  As Francis rode along beside this knight, he began to feel ashamed of being mounted on a charger and wearing new armor, while a man who carried the Crusaders’ Cross appeared in this sorry state.  So he gave the knight his own horse and equipment.
 
That same evening, weary from his ride, Francis lay in his tent.  Suddenly he heard a voice call his name, “Francis!”  He trembled at the sound.  “Francis,” the voice went on, “who can do more for you, the Master or the servant?”  There was gentleness in these words that gave Francis courage to answer, “The Master.”  “Why, then,” asked the voice, “do you follow the servant instead of the Master?”  Then Francis knew it was the Lord who spoke to him.  He cried out, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”  The Lord said, “Return home.  You have misunderstood the former vision.  Through Me it will have a different fulfillment.”
 
In the morning Francis returned home.

Francis Looks for the Way

He told no one of his vision.  He went back to helping his father sell bolts of cloth, and to playing King of Song for his friends.  But nothing that he did pleased him as it formerly had, although he gave entertainments more lavish than before.
 
One particular evening, after the young men of Assisi had dined at his house, he led them singing through the streets.  Suddenly the whole company found that Francis no longer walked at their head.  They went back a little, until they found him standing like a man in a trance.  One of them cried, “Francis is in love!”  And Francis answered, “Yes, I am! But the bride I am going to win is nobler, richer and fairer than any woman you know!”  His friends all laughed, which they would not have done had they known that Francis would never again reign as king of their revels, nor lead them carelessly in singing through the night.  For in that street beneath the stars, he had been suddenly caught up and entranced by the love of God.  The bride of whom he spoke was Lady Poverty, whom he began to seek after from that moment.
 
In that night he had caught the first glimmer of the secret which was to be his and which he was to give the world.  He was to find joy not in having but in giving.  He would strip himself of all the things of this world which might turn is heart away from God.  Through poverty of body he would be satisfied with the simplest of food and clothing.  Through poverty of soul he would give up all desires except one…to do the will of God.
 
This freedom from earthly things he named in the courtly language of the troubadours his Lady Poverty.
 
After that Francis went out often to caves and secret places in the woods, and there he prayed, not only with his tongue, but with his whole body, and with all his heart and soul that God might unlock for him the mystery of His will.  When he thought of his past folly, he grew afraid that he was all unworthy to speak to God, much less to serve Him.  But then he thought of God’s mercy and he was comforted.  He not only gave more freely than ever to beggars, but he began to look for the sick to care for them.
 
But he could never bring himself to approach a leper, although he often threw them coins from a distance.  On a certain day, as he rode along a highway deep in thoughts of God, he saw directly in his path a beggar hideous with leprosy.  Francis first turned away.  Then in shame at this treatment of a brother in Christ, he dismounted and drew near the leper.  He placed a coin in the bleeding hand.  And then he kissed that hand.  In sudden joy of soul, he remounted for his ride.  But when he looked back, the leper had vanished. And then Francis knew that it had been the Lord Himself to whom he had shown charity.
 
Afterwards Francis wrote: “The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, the grace of beginning to do penance in this way.  That when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter to me to look at lepers.  And the Lord Himself led me among them, and I practiced mercy toward them, and when I came away from them, what had seemed bitter to me was changed to sweetness of body and soul.”