{"id":58084,"date":"2020-10-04T17:30:48","date_gmt":"2020-10-04T15:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/?p=58084"},"modified":"2020-10-29T17:34:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T15:34:05","slug":"francis-of-assisi-a-saint-for-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/francis-of-assisi-a-saint-for-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Francis of Assisi, a Saint for Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

by card. Gualtiero Bassetti<\/strong><\/p>\n

When an Italian poet who was a madman and seer, Dino Campana, talked about his \u201cpilgrimage\u201d to La Verna, he portrayed Saint Francis as \u201cthe shadow of Christ,\u201d as well as one who had made a renunciation at the same time \u201csimple and sweet,\u201d and sung a \u201chymn to Nature with faith.\u201d An \u201cItalian Saint,\u201d who in that holy mountain, \u201csolitary and wild\u201d (as Count Ottavio depicted it), received the stigmata, and put into practice the rule he himself had given his brothers: living in the obedience of the Lord, while not keeping anything for oneself.<\/p>\n

The Catholic feast of Saint Francis, October 4, along with the Pope\u2019s visit to his Tomb in Assisi the previous day \u2013 October 3, 2020 \u2013 showed that such past events and words remain exceptionally nonconformist and modern. Nothing is more modern, in fact, than Saint Francis\u2019 life and teachings. Some years ago, in a catechesis, Benedict XVI called him a \u201ctrue giant in holiness,\u201d whose experience of joy \u201cstill fascinates so many people, of any age and religious creed.\u201d There actually is an indissoluble relationship between joy and sainthood \u2013 and \u201cGod\u2019s Jester\u201d bore the most precious witness to this by means of his life.<\/p>\n

The nickname was used by no less than Pope Pius XII when, in 1939, he declared Francis the Patron Saint of Italy, together with Saint Catherine of Siena. He stressed the \u201cunsurpassable examples of Gospel virtues\u201d the Poverello<\/em> [Poor Little Man] provided \u201cthe inhabitants of his own, often troubled era\u201d with. It strikes that, nowadays as well as in those days, we can talk about a \u201ctroubled era.\u201d In this sense, an Italian biographer of Saint Francis and thinker, Giulio Salvadori, invited us to experience our time by feeling \u201cawakened by the shocks of reality,\u201d acting as believers not so as to follow novelties or want to change the world, but rather, to \u201creform ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, in this Gospel perspective, in an era in which the Church is described and interpreted exclusively through the categories of \u201ccrisis\u201d and \u201cscandal,\u201d the ever-modern Saint Francis gives a practical example of life. Two words among Campana\u2019s mentioned above, and among the very many that might be chosen, would deserve to be long meditated upon: \u201crenunciation\u201d and \u201cfaith.\u201d Francis\u2019 renunciation, \u201csimple and sweet,\u201d actually means something upsetting, scandalous to the human beings of all epochs. To renounce everything, to leave the earthly goods behind, to forget about one\u2019s career and worldly success in order to start a \u201cnew life\u201d (as Giuliano Agresti wrote), and at the end of one\u2019s life, to find oneself \u201cbare on the bare ground\u201d \u2013 all of this means something inexpressible still nowadays. How many men and women would be ready, now, to choose a life like that, leaving their safe ground in order to embrace \u201cSister Poverty\u201d?<\/p>\n

Then, \u201cfaith,\u201d that basically is our current answer to the questions of all times. Faith, which in Francis also became amazing obedience, and which marks the fundamental line between heresy and salvation in the Church. One of the major steps in the Poverello<\/em>\u2019s life, much meaningful to our today too, consisted in his relationship with Pope Innocent III, whom Francis asked for the \u201cpermission\u201d to live the Gospel. Francis does not demand, does not get on the pulpit, he simply asks, and humbly so. This is the so-called Franciscan \u201cgrace of the origins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francis\u2019 faith is the simple-hearted faith of a Christian who saves the Church and reforms it from within. He all too well knows the sins of the men of Church, but loves Christ\u2019s Bride fondly, up to giving the whole of himself for her. In his deeds and words there is no pride or arrogance, no fraud or cross-purposes, no wish for power or ideology; just charity and love. This very purity of heart, yesterday as well as today, makes us recognize God\u2019s work in the works of humanity.<\/p>\n

After Pope Bergoglio\u2019s visit in Assisi on October 3, 2020, a long series of Franciscan commemorations will take place, 2021 to 2026: the eight hundred years after the approval of the Regula non bullata<\/em> [Rule still without the Papal seal], the writing of the Canticle of the Creatures<\/em>, then Francis\u2019 stigmata, and death. They will be years fit for reflecting, celebrating, and planning conferences. But above all, a time of prayer for the Church, Italy, and the whole world.<\/p>\n

Giorgio La Pira, a Catholic politician who also was Franciscan Tertiary, used to say that we should \u201cturn faith into life.\u201d Modern Man, on the contrary, often idolizes himself, hungry as he is for power and money. But such a hunger can only be satisfied by the one bread of life, God\u2019s Word. This is why we should meet the world as the Saint of Assisi did: with joy, with Jesus\u2019 disarming love on our faces. Even in our little everyday actions, in fact, we can perceive how extraordinarily Francis is a Saint for today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(translation by Dario Rivarossa)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by card. Gualtiero Bassetti When an Italian poet who was a madman and seer, Dino Campana, talked about his \u201cpilgrimage\u201d to La Verna, he portrayed Saint Francis as \u201cthe shadow of Christ,\u201d as well as one who had made a renunciation at the same time \u201csimple and sweet,\u201d and sung a \u201chymn to Nature with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":57946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58085,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58084\/revisions\/58085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavoce.it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}