SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to Catholic in America, a podcast in partnership with OSV News. I'm Jason Atkins. This October 3rd, 2026 is the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi. The church celebrates it as the 800th anniversary jubilee of his transitus, his passing over into eternal life.

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St.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Francis of Assisi remains a popular saint for people inside and outside the Catholic world as an inspiration of peace, humility, and care for creation. Some of the great stories of his life live on to illustrate these great themes, including the Lord's call to renew the church. Now we may think we know these stories in and out and some of the wisdom they offer, but perhaps there is more to these episodes than meets the eye. And perhaps they are deeply relevant to cultivating discipleship today in the United States, not just in 13th century Umbria. With us on this episode of Catholic in America is Capuchin Franciscan Father Bobby Barbato. A California native, Father Bobby serves as rector of the National Shrine of St. Francis, which describes itself as a sanctuary of peace in the heart of San Francisco, California. Father Bobby was received into the Franciscans in 1977 and served as vice provincial of Our Lady of the Angels Province of the Capuchin Franciscans. Father Bobby is an expert in the life of Saint Francis and has a special gift for sharing why this medieval state still very much matters today. Father Bobby Barbato, it's a pleasure to have you on Catholic in America. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I think you have some important lessons to share for us about the significance of the life of St. Francis of Assisi and how it can help shape our discipleship today. But let me just get us going before I ask you some questions about your own background and entrance into the Capuchin order. What is the enduring significance of Saint Francis of Assisi today? Why does he remain so popular 800 years after his death?

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Well, I think um even in his own time, people had that question. And one of his brothers, Brother Masseo, once asked him, he said, Why after you? Why after you? You know, you're not that great looking, you're not that articulate, you're not well educated. Why are people running after you? And Francis's response was very powerful. He said, Because they can see in me what the Lord could do. If he could do something with me, the worst sinner in the world, then he could do something with anybody. And I think that legacy endures in the fact that Saint Francis, all the saints, of course, are, but Saint Francis is such a human saint, both at the same time very dedicated, and yet in his life we see both the joys and the struggles of trying to figure out what God wants you to do. And I think the other thing is Saint Francis definitely had a personality that was very dramatic. And he knew it. So he did big gestures, and the big gestures are was still speak to people. Um, and I think he would be glad to know that, in the sense that if it leads them to reflect on God and their own lives, uh, he'd be very happy about that. And so, still, 800 years later, we're still talking about him and all the stories and all the different things that he did, and just one final word there. He really, all the stories and things we have about him were only in 20 years, because he really didn't start following God seriously until he was about 24, and he died at 44. So, in those 20 years, there was a lot that was packed in there, and he was able to respond in such powerful, dramatic, and humble ways to what God was asking him to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

You are rector of the shrine of St. Francis in a city named after St. Francis, Saint San Francisco, California. What do you do with the shrine and what is the significance of the shrine for those who wish to keep alive memory and devotion to the witness and example of St. Francis of Assisi?

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Well, a shrine church is a church that's designated specifically to help people enter into the reality, the spirituality of a particular saint, or some shrines to apparitions or titles of Our Lady. And again, the shrine is like any other church. It's meant to lead people to God. But it's especially then meant to do that by leading them through the example and spirituality of a particular saint. So our shrine is designated by the bishops of the U.S. as the National Shrine of St. Francis. And we are in the city of San Francisco, which is also celebrating its 250th anniversary of the founding of Mission San Francisco. And so our mission is to help people know the spirituality of St. Francis and also St. Claire. She's an important part of our shrine. And then through those, through those encounters with St. Francis to come to the mercy and the compassion of God. So among the things we do, obviously, are prayer and sacraments, we have confessions and mass. We also have the church open for people to come in, we give talks to groups. And the other thing is also then trying to make that a living, living witness. So we also have a couple times a week, we have volunteers that help us to put sandwiches together, which then we take out to the people on the streets in San Francisco. And part of that is to do that, not just to make food and kind of deliver it to people without compassion, but actually to try to make those connections. And the brothers often, you know, get to know people's names and their stories, and they ask us to pray for them. So in many different ways, the shrine of St. Francis is trying to embody his spirituality in the church and help other people then to bring that spirituality out to the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

The shrine is a place of pilgrimage. What are the pilgrims who come to the shrine seeking? So today, of course, uh pilgrimages are becoming more and more popular among people who aren't even Catholic or necessarily religious. Many people travel the Camino in France and Spain. Um St. Francis has a universal popularity beyond Catholics and Christians. What are the what when you encounter pilgrims at the shrine, what typically are they seeking when they come there?

SPEAKER_02 6:33

That's an interesting question because I think some of them know what they're seeking, perhaps in the sense of perhaps um a deeper relationship with God, or maybe even coming to know God at all. Um, I think a lot of the people, um, the pilgrimage and the visits to the sanctuary start off with this would be a good thing to do, but they're not exactly sure what is going to happen. And I've seen many, many people come to our shrine and just ask, you know, tell me about St. Francis, tell me, you know, why, why was he important? Kind of the question that you asked at the beginning. And then what does that mean for me? And I always try to let the groups know that, you know, one of the things about Saint Francis is he's not calling you to be him. You know, we're not called to be Saint Francis, but as I said before, I think St. Francis says, look what God can do with my life and my gifts. And so one of the reasons, for that reason, I should say our shrine is centered first of all on Saint Francis, but also on the whole Franciscan uh movement and spirituality. So as I said earlier, Saint Claire uh has a major role in that life. But then we have other saints and images around of other Franciscans, including St. Bonaventure, St. Juniper Osera, uh one of my favorite saints, Saints Marianne Cope, who were Franciscans in various ways and really try to embody. And I think maybe maybe what people are looking for in this day and age, always, but especially in this day and age, and the Pope Leo may have captured that a little bit with reflecting on AI, is uh what makes us human. It used to be in previous centuries, the question is what makes us human compared to animals? Uh so we would talk about intellect and and those abilities, but I think these days, what makes us human as compared to machines, how do we live that humanity? And I think because of his dramatic life, St. Francis can help people look at that and say, oh yeah. And he still speaks, and of course, we'll talk about these things, but you know, his love of nature, his love of animals, but also his love of people and reaching out to lepers. So I think people are coming with the question what gives my life meaning? And I think the Caminos are kind of a way to do that. You know, we have our own little Camino uh here now from Mission San Rafael to Mission San Francisco, and they stop also at the shrine. And we've had a lot of people. It's only been going since last February, and we have a lot of people. So I think that idea of our life is a pilgrimage, what does it mean? Where are we going? Is what people are really looking for.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

How did you encounter the Franciscan, well, your Capuchin Franciscan? Maybe you could say a little bit about what that means in terms of the Franciscan family, and what drew you to become a Franciscan and dedicate your life to sharing and participating in his unique charism?

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Well, first of all, just uh to answer that first question, yes, the Franciscan family is very varied, and even among the friars, you know, there are different orders of the friars, uh, the OFMs, we call them, or the observance, and there's the conventual Franciscans, the Capiscian Franciscans, and other little groups too. And of course, the reason for that is that that vision of Saint Francis is so big that no one group in the end is able to capture completely. So there's always these little uh branches. I say we're basically cousins, we're basically brothers who you know often get along and sometimes fight with each other. Uh so one of the one of the branches of the Franciscans is the Capuchin Franciscans, uh, founded in the 16th century, just during the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. And um just so you know, the drink cappuccino was named after us, and not the other way around, and also the monkey. So um, but I came in contact with our branch of the order because I went to our high school. We have a high school down in Southern California named Saint Francis. And I'll admit, I always tell our novices and others this I didn't join the order because of St. Francis. I knew something about him. I was learning about him, but when I encountered the friars and especially um the novitiate and the life of quiet and just the beauty, because I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles, you know, with noise and all that going on, I really something moved my soul. And then as I joined the order, which I did out of high school, then I came to know more and more about St. Francis and really fell in love uh with him and with his vision. And also I think one thing that helped me with St. Francis is to realize his context. In other words, um, you know, how he lived his faith in his time and how he tried to capture the essentials of his faith while living in 13th century central Italy, and then how he inspired other people to follow that in their own ways. And so I have um been a capuchin now for almost 50 years, and I'm still learning, and still learning about St. Francis, but just very grateful for the opportunity, and also grateful for all the other kinds of Franciscans that uh exist in the world. There's also secular Franciscans, used to be called the Third Order, and they are very much alive and part of the church, also. So it's it's it's a powerful movement that still has life, it's not just a relic. St. Francis, I'll just say this for us Franciscans, maybe not, but probably more than maybe for other orders. For us Franciscans, when we talk about Francis and Claire, uh they're not historical people, they're in the room with us. And so um, they're still a very much living part of the legacy that I am very grateful to be able to make my little uh part in in this life.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Wonderful. Francis, he is so alive and present, and there are these popular images of him that appeal to a broad variety of people. Sometimes that's helpful, I think, and sometimes it's less helpful in the sense that we might get the lessons of Francis wrong. You're an expert in Saint Francis, uh, his life and legacy. How do we separate fact from fiction in the life of Saint Francis? Where do we begin in parsing those details out?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Well, that's always the question, isn't it? And and for the last 800 years, um, that remains the question, especially for those of us who want to follow Francis. The question is Um, who was he and and how do we follow him? And I think one of the gifts, but one of the difficulties in following Francis is that he had a very um great ability to bring together what are not necessarily contradictory things, but at least things that are intentioned. So, for example, um, you know, Francis very much wanted to be part of the church. He made his order um, you know, obedient to the Pope, and he was very much part of the church of his time. He did not want to separate himself from the church, which if he had decided to, he would have had many, many more followers than Luther ever had just because of his personality. But he realized that he had received the faith and the gospels that he loved and the contact with the Lord Jesus Christ through the church. So on the one hand, he was very much a son of the church and very much wanted to be obedient and part of the church. On the other hand, he had a great sense of his own mission. So when he started his order of friars, uh, nothing like that really existed. There were the monasteries and there were the clerical orders, but there was nothing such as the friars that he and also then Saint Dominic with the Dominicans started. And many people said, You should just become a monk. And Francis at one point got up and kind of told the people, he said, No, God has called me to be who I am. I'm called to be a new fool for Christ, excuse me, a new fool for Christ. That's the way he put it. And so he had very much a sense of what he was to do in the church. So he brought those two things together. He brought together someone who was very, very active in preaching, in taking care of the sick, in reaching out to the poor, and yet spent at least half of his life up in mountains and hermitages, you know, praying in contemplation. And so how you bring those two together, he was able to integrate those in his life in a very powerful way. Although that doesn't mean he didn't have struggles. But then those of us trying to follow him, how do you integrate all these different things? So this brings up an example that probably uh most people would at least have in mind. If you talk about St. Francis, you mentioned St. Francis to almost anyone, not just Catholics, not even just Christians. Oh, he's the guy with the birds, he loved the animals. You know, we call it kind of the birdbath Francis. And there's two lessons there. One is that we have to be careful of, you know, looking at St. Francis as just some kind of uh, what do like people call like a nature hippie or something that just you know kind of fell for animals and love little doggies and and and kitties and all that, which, you know, because then if you reduce that to just these nice feelings, uh, you can really miss the point. On the other hand, you can't deny that St. Francis had a great connection with creatures. There are just too many stories of him, not only that he would reach out to creatures, but they would reach back to him. And I think that came from not just a nice sentimental feeling of how wonderful all these creatures are, but really going back almost to the beginning, because when the Lord created, you know, um the human beings, he created us as part of this whole creation. And St. Francis had this very real sense of I am part of creation. I am not. I was just talking with a group the other day, um, and they had this great line in their little statutes. This was a group called the Lake Knotions, and they said, we have to move from being um the center of the universe to being part of the universe. And that's really what Francis learned from the beginning of his life, like all of us, he wanted to be the center. And he came to the profound sense of I'm part of the universe, all of it made by God, and therefore what I need to do is realize what is my role, what is my relationship. So we'll talk later, I think, about the cannical of brother's son, his cannical of creatures. But one of the things he says there is he calls creatures brothers and sisters. And he does that also with the different animals. And as St. Bonaventure will tell us, he said he realized we're all part of the same family, we all come from the same God, and therefore that connection is what we need to emphasize. So this is why Francis would say, Yes, you know, it's lovely to love the dogs and the cats. I think that's fine. We love to have people come to the shrine and bless them. But you would also say, and are you also grateful for the mosquitoes and uh the skunks and the other animals that maybe you don't like? And that's a profound spirituality that sometimes gets lost in the image. So, you know, I used to be as a younger friar, I was like, cut the birds, but I realized the birds are important as part of the bigger picture of who he is. So he's very much the gentle saint, but he's also the saint who takes very seriously what it means to be a child of God and following Christ. Um again, those images. So one of the images, also, I think, maybe just to bring this to a little bit of a close here, is he's very often known as for his great humility. And this is very true, but it's a humility that recognizes what he says about humility in one of his admonitions is you know, what a person is before God, that's what the person is. No more and no less. So, in other words, humility is not saying, you know, I have no gifts, I have no calends, I'm nothing. Humility is saying, these things have come to me from God, so therefore, how does God want me to use them? And because of that, Francis could both be very humble and say, I'm nothing, and yet he would write a letter to all the faithful, and he would tell them at the end of the letter, anybody who copies this letter and sends it to others is blessed. In other words, the words I'm writing are important. And so he mixes the true humility in with a very strong sense of what God is asking him to do. So, you know, it's very hard to reduce St. Francis to, you know, a birdbath or sitting there with a skull in his hand, or many of the other images. They're all trying to capture something. He's so much bigger than all that, which is true of any of us, but he kind of epitomizes it. So I don't know if that helps.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, we can't reduce him to one image or story or anything else. Um, he's multivalent, if you will. Um I I want to jump into the way in which each of his some of the significant episodes in his life are lessons for discipleship today. I think 800 years after his transit to he has many things to teach us here as Catholics in America. But first, let me ask you this question. It's often said that the most popular saints of any age are the ones who are the biggest signs of contradiction to that age's culture or society. In what ways do you think Saint Francis is a sign of contradiction to Catholics and people in the United States today?

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Well, looking back, looking back um, first of all, at his own context, and um there's one thing I think is important to say when you're talking about Saint Francis and his own age, is that Saint Francis was not alone in the sense that the church at his time was in the midst of, and maybe we can identify with this in a in a particular way. In the midst of a struggle for both continuity and renewal. There were church councils, there were movements. St. Francis was not by himself. It's not as if the church had lost the gospel and all of a sudden St. Francis found it buried in a cave or something. He was very much part of the reform movements of his time. And part of that was this is what the church, especially in the 13th century, was struggling with. Our own struggles are, you know, can be somewhat similar, but also very different. But what were some of the struggles? Well, the church by the 13th century, you know, 1200s, early 1200s, when Francis was living, had basically in Europe become um part of the structure of society. I mean, you know, first of all, going way back to Constantine and legalizing the church, and then the church becoming the official uh church of the M of the Empire, official faith, and then, and there were some very good things about this, but there were also problematic things. As if you look at any, you know, any history of the church, you know, you're gonna see the good things, but you're also gonna see the problems. So what St. Francis was trying to deal with was how do you bring out the authentic gospel of Christ, both going back and looking back, but then also not rejecting the ways God continues to work in the church. So, for example, and I think what St. Francis did was he said, um, I'm gonna do this for myself within the church, but I'm not saying that necessarily everybody has to do what I'm doing, but um he did want to be a sign, and he knew he was a sign. St. Francis knew his personality was big. So, for example, with poverty. So, one of the problems in the church was how do you use money and the wealth that comes to the church eventually because of being an institution? And um, you know, it was always the traditional ways the church uses money is to glorify God through through churches and liturgy and everything to uh help the clergy keep them up so that they can minister to the Lord and the people, and then also to help the poor. Well, these things all continued, but unfortunately, there was also an emphasis sometimes on the ornateness of the churches and on the on the splendor even of the clergy. And um the monasteries, for example, at this time always had a problem. The problem was a reform would start in a monastery, and the monks would be very simple and just living their life, and then people would be attracted, and people would give gifts, and the monasteries would become more powerful and more rich, and then the question is you know, how are we observing the poverty of the Lord? So Saint Francis says, I don't want a monastery, I don't want possessions, and so that became a big contradiction to the idea that wealth of itself, you know, is a sign of God's, is a God's love. It's not that Francis and see, this is one of the contradictions. Francis didn't say we don't need things of the earth, we do, but Francis um basically saw them as we have to keep them in perspective. So perhaps the best way to talk about that is his own relationship with money. So Francis famously, after his conversion, would not touch money. Now, this was um basically rooted, first of all, in his own experience, because when he decided to serve the Lord, he sold some of his father's cloth and even the horse in order to finance the building of a church. We'll talk about that church in a little bit. But he he sold um some of that and got the money. Well, the priest wouldn't take the money, so he had the money, and his father demanded it back because his father did not was upset with him. He didn't understand this religious vision of his son. And so basically, his father, in front of the bishop, demanded that Francis give everything back. And this is where we see Francis the dramatic, uh the dramatic person, because we know, and and of course, this is one of the famous scenes, is he decides he goes into the bishop's palace and he comes out with the money and all his clothes in his hand. So basically he comes out naked in front of the whole town, because the whole town is there, this is entertainment, and so he's holding that out to his father. And I think in his heart, one of the things he was asking his father was, What's more important to you, this money, or your son? Well, unfortunately, his father answered the question by taking the money and the clothes and walking away from him. And so Francis realized the problem with money is that it can take the place in our hearts of true love, first of all, of our relationship with one another, and then, of course, our relationship with God. And so he decided to live in contradiction to an economy that was valuing money more and more. And the other thing, um, again, to go back to the humility, he grew up in a society, including himself, that was seeking prestige and power, and and and you know, he wanted a position. And that's why when he gave that up, he said, we don't need any position. That's why he told his friars, I don't want anybody to be called superior, I don't want anybody called prior, because prior means the guy who comes before, not even abbot as father. He said, the friars shall be called ministers, and that was really, in a sense, a contradiction to the power structure that was all around him. And again, he didn't do that and then condemn the bishops and you know tell them. He just said, we'll do it this way and let people see what happens. And of course, we as his followers have always struggled with it, but it's a great gift and also a great challenge to us. So in many different ways, he was living. And, you know, I think very similar in our world. We're at a time of great promise, great, great, great energy, but also then great temptation uh to make something other than God the center of our lives, to make something other than love of God and of others as more important in our lives. And I think even with our um our environment, I mean, St. Francis with the animals, again, why is that a beautiful image? Not just because it's nice, cute, and warm and fuzzy, but it's because Francis realized we're part of this world, and therefore the way we treat the creation around us is a reflection of our relationship with God, with ourselves, and with one another and with all creatures. And so that idea of saying brother, son, sister, moon, or preaching to the birds was really going against this idea of we're the center of everything, and everything needs to revolve around us. He would never say we're not part of creation, we're not gifted by God, we're not graced, but he always say, We're not, it's not all about us. It's all about the goodness of God in all his creation. He tried to live that in so many different ways and dramatically, so that that's why people remember him.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

You've noted that Francis went from a man seeking power and prestige and popularity to a man of uh pardon, uh, penance, prayer, and peace. That starts really with his failed attempt at knighthood, uh, and I think uh sets him on a journey that culminates uh his embrace of the leper, which we'll get to. But uh talk about that journey that that began when uh he was asked in a dream whether he wishes to serve the master or the servant, his failed experiment to knighthood and his journey toward that moment when he embraced really the lowliest of the low and the real peripheries of 13th century uh uh uh Italy.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Okay, well, I think maybe just to sketch how he got to that point first was Francis, like all of us, was looking for what gives my life meaning. And in his earliest years, um you mentioned he really Francis's great temptation was always to want to be the center of attention. So because he was rich, he could become popular by throwing parties and becoming really known as the Bon Bant and everything, and that didn't quite fulfill him. So then he started looking into politics and power because the CC was going to war. And he decided I need to be part of this political movement because that's going to give my life meaning. And they went to war against Perugia and they lost. They lost very terribly in a battle. He was in prison for a year, after that, he was sick for another year almost. So that was a shattered dream. And finally, the last thing that he had in his mind before turning to the Lord was well positioned. You know, Francis was see Francis was what we would call middle class, he was the son of a merchant. So there was still in his society this idea of the nobility, the mayores, and then kind of everybody else who would be called the minores. And he thought it's very interesting because, in one sense, the merchant class and all those people looked down on the nobles. They said, Oh, you know, they don't do anything. But on the other hand, he wanted to be one. It's often in our lives, the one thing that maybe we despise is the same thing we aspire to. So he thought, if I could get position, that would fulfill me. So he was on the road because the only way a merchant's son could become a knight, in other words, a noble, was by attaching himself to a noble and proving himself in war. And so he was on the way to join a man called Walter de Brenn, who was leading an army, defending the Pope and the Papal States, and he thought, if I join this Walter, um my life will have meaning. But as he's on his way, he goes to this town of Spoleto. He's got all this armor that his father bought for him and all this. But then he he, first of all, two things happen. One is he starts thinking about it, and he remembers what war is like. So, of course, you know, in his earliest life, like like many people, he had this kind of glorious image of war, glorious image of the knight defending. He'd been in a war, he'd seen violence, and that came back to haunt him. Some people, in fact, um would say that maybe from the war, Francis had um symptoms of PDSD, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder. That that that, but as he's thinking about it in his mind, he just can't embrace it, but he doesn't know what to do. And that's when he has this dream, and whether it was an external voice or the voice of God speaking within his heart, the dream speaks to him. I always find it interesting, the dream speaks to him as a merchant, because the voice says to him, Francis, who can do more for you? The servant or the master? Now, Francis, being a good merchant, says, you know, you cut out the middleman. So Francis says, Well, the master, of course. And then the voice says, Well, why are you serving the servant? And this makes sense if you remember that the title of the Pope was a servant of the servants of God. Walter De Brenn was a servant of the Pope, and so Francis wanted to be a servant, so he said, I'm going to be a servant of the servant of the servants of God. Cut out the middleman. So Francis says, What shall I do? The voice says, Go back home and you'll find out. So Francis abandons that quest. And it must have been very difficult because he'd left Assisi with all this fanfare, with this beautiful suit of armor that his father had bought to him, bought for him, and he was going to go out and show his valor, and he has to come back to Assisi. And there's this beautiful statue now in front of the basilica of St. Francis and of Assisi, of Francis returning to Assisi on his horse, and both he and the horse have their heads bowed down because it was such a humiliation. But Francis said, it's more important for me to find out what God wants. And that's when he started really praying, Lord, show me where you are, show me where I can find you, show me how I can serve you. How can I serve the master?

SPEAKER_01 35:59

And so he kept listening to that voice, and eventually it led him in his uh horse riding to that place of the leper, and that famous scene that many uh scholars and Franciscans believe was really that ultimate conversion moment, that metanoia that sent him on the path of becoming the Francis of Assisi we all know today.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Yes, well, the the fortunate thing actually is we not only have uh other people saying this, Francis himself says this. He left a writing toward the end of his life called the Testament, and in the this is how he begins the testament. This is how the Lord gave me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance. In other words, to begin to take God seriously, my life. He says, When I was in the world, so before I was serving God at all, it seemed bitter to me to see lepers. Now, this makes perfect sense, not just in general, but especially for Francis. Lepers in the time of Francis were a very, very similar situation to lepers in the time of Jesus. They had to live outside of town, they had to live apart from other people, they had to have their own utensils, their own uh their own place to stay, they had to have a bell with them and ring the bell to warn people. In other words, lepers were shunned by society. Now remember, one of Francis's um great dreams was to be popular, was to be the center of attention. So for Francis, a leper then was the symbol of the worst thing that could happen to you, not just the physical, that was bad enough, but also the societal rejection. And so for him, a leper, we could say, was a great symbol of the absence of God. And so here Francis is riding on the plains of Assisi, he's outside of town in the woods, probably going to one of his family's properties to make sure that everything's okay. And he's distracted, he's riding his horse, but he's got his head down trying to think, God, what do you want me to do? God guide me, God help me. And all of a sudden, and this is where you see, be careful what you pray for, because God will give it to you. God guide me, and he gives, he hears the bell. And he looks up from his horse, and there standing right in the middle of the road is a leper. And he hadn't paid attention to the fact that he was getting close to the leper hospital. And his first temptation was to turn that horse around and gallop out of there. And we know that the biographers say many times before, if he knew he was getting into lepers, he'd ride miles out of his way just to avoid them. So that was his first temptation. But in the midst of that prayer, God touched his heart. And I think that we don't know this for sure, but I think this is where Francis first started to take the gospel seriously because he might have remembered right at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, a leper comes up to Jesus, and that leper says, you know, if you want to, you can heal me. And the gospel tells us, not only did Jesus say, I want to, but it says Jesus reached out and touched that leper. And I think maybe God brought this to Francis' mind, and maybe he thought, with God's grace, let me try it. So he gets off his horse, and his first temptation is just to take the money belt and kind of put the money on the ground and say, Here's a donation. No, no, that's not enough. He says, I've got to go up and put it into his hands. And this is where we see the dramatic Francis. So the Francis takes the money, grabs the leper's hand, which of course is bleeding and deformed, puts that money in that hand, kisses his hand, and then embraces him. And Francis himself tells us what happened. He says, When I was in the world, it seemed bitter to me to be lepers. And the Lord led me among them, and I showed them mercy, and what was bitter was turned into sweetness of soul and body. And after a little while I left the world. In other words, what he's saying is the place that he would have told you was the biggest absence of the presence of God was where he encountered Christ, where God started answering that question. Because his question was, Where are you? You're not in popularity, you're not in money, you're not in power, you're not in prestige, where are you? And Jesus said, Here I am in the poor, here I am into the outcast, here I am in the beggar on the side of the road. And Francis from that experience said, If that's where you are, Lord, that's where I want to find you.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

I want to seize on that description of leaving the world and worldly thinking, too, right? Um say a little bit more about that, what he means by I left the world.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

Certainly he didn't leave the world, but what is he referring to when he says, see, that's that's one of those, that's one of those um phrases and and powerful things that we use as Christians um that has the double meaning because obviously we're called to leave the world, and yet we believe God made the world. So, how do we understand um you know what it means um, as some uh writers have said over the centuries, to be in the world but not of the world? And I think Francis shows us, shows us in a powerful way, um, how do we let our thinking, our attitudes, and our actions be formed, first of all, by our Christian faith, by our gospel values. And that can be done in many different ways. I think what Francis was saying was I needed to do it very dramatically. You know, there are there is a religious vocation within the church. Um, but I think Francis would say, you know, religious are not the only ones, obviously, to follow Christ. I always say, actually, God calls some of us to religious life, not because we're better, but because we're worse. We need more help. We need the help of these structures. But what Francis would say is leaving the world means leaving that mentality of seeing everything from any other perspective than the eyes of Christ. And see, that's what he learned in embracing the leper, because the world within him and the world outside of him as society told him, this leper, yeah, we'll put him in the mercy of God, we'll give them food, but basically, we don't want them around. The worldly judgment was don't get anywhere near them, you'll get sick, don't get anywhere near them. Um, you know, if you go near them and serve them, you're going to be in trouble. And again, the world also told Francis: most important thing is what you have, your possessions, whether it's material possessions or money or position, or remember again, his father took away with him not only his money and his clothes, but why did Pietro, his father, do that? Because he felt Francis was disgracing his name. And this is where Francis said, but this society is. Got its values upside down. And the reason I know that now is because God showed me He's present there in a leper. The sweetness of God came to me, and He came to Him in embracing the leper, not in His mind and his conception. You know, so what Francis tried to do then is how do I form my life that the gospel values are always going to be there and I'm going to remember them. And so for him, letting go of money was the first one because he knew money would tempt him again and again to look at things and people and worth by the value the world put on them. And that's why he says later to the friars, you know, part of our life has to be serving the poor, but not just serving the poor, but being with them and listening to God speaking through them. Because again, our world, back in the 13th century and now says the only people worth listening to are we would call them now the influencers. And while there certainly may be some very good things that people can tell us that way, what Francis would say, but the real influencers need to be the poor, need to be those who appear to be of little value to the world and yet God loves them as much as us. So, you know, one of the ways the church has expressed this, especially, you know, in maybe later years of the century, is that preferential option for the poor. That means not that the poor are the only ones that have value. What it means is the world automatically gives value to people, certain classes of people, and ignores others. And the gospel calls us not to ignore them. And I think Francis, and he said, I have to do it dramatically. I can't, Francis could not go halfway. So he said, for other people, they can live their lives and their families. I mean, that's great, that's beautiful. They're Christians, but I can't do it that way. I have to do it in a dramatic way where I show people that Christ is the center and the gospel is the center.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

I think this episode of St. Francis and the Leper and your explanation of it helps us understand more deeply the application of those lessons to our own age, which was tried by a Pope we had who called himself Francis, even though he was a Jesuit, St. Ignatius. He called himself he called himself Francis, and he talked about the peripheries, and he talked about the poor, and he talked about the encounter and thinking about how we encounter the gospel and live the joy of the gospel, another Franciscan theme when we go to the peripheries, when we are amongst the poor and the outcast of society. And as many as much as folks would quibble with some of his pastoral outreach or gestures, and he had many grand gestures, much like Francis, we really had a Franciscan pontificate of themes that really find their source and their most deepest understanding, I think, in this episode of Francis and the Leper.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

Yes, I agree with that. Just a funny aside, when he was elected, somebody pointed out that we have, you know, a Jesuit pope dressed like a Dominican, uh, taking the name of Francis. Um, the interesting thing was um that he chose that name for Francis of Assisi. You may remember there's a little speculation beginning, was it Francis of Xavier or Francis Borgia or Francis of Assisi? And it came out very clearly that I forget one of the other cardinals told him, Don't forget the poor. And that probably solidified his desire to take the name Francis. And to me, the most powerful image that he left was right at the beginning when he came out on that balcony and said hello to all of us, and then asked us to pray for him and bowed his head while we prayed for him, the whole world round. And to me, that said, yes, this is a man who's gonna have his own approach and bring his Jesuit training to all, but really wants to capture that same spirit. And I think he really did. And of course, you know, he named um two of his major encyclicals, you know, Laudato Si, after the canticle of uh brother son, the cannon of the creatures of St. Francis, and the other one, Fratelli Tutti, which again was a phrase that Francis used in his letter, you know, that we're all brothers. And he really did try to emphasize that reaching out. You know, nobody's perfect, and there can be all these different quibbles about particular things, but I don't think anybody can really say that Pope Francis didn't try his best within his position um to follow the name that he chose. That I really think he was inspired by God. And I think I'm hoping and and and uh sure that he and Francis up there are having a great little talk together, you know?

SPEAKER_01 49:12

Indeed, and we'll return to that theme of Laudato C and the canticle of creation. But I I wanted to just hit on another one of these words that I think is important, and you said penance, a word that uh uses in the testament. And I was just dropping my son off at Franciscan University of Steubenville, uh, and all of the summer orientation leaders had t-shirts that said, live penance. Now, I think most people think of penance as mortifications. Uh-huh. Um, and certainly that's part of penance, there's no doubt about it. And Francis mortified himself uh throughout his life in in some significant and very austere ways. But uh he had a deeper vision of penance, though, as that uh turning away from sin, turning away from the world and its allures, uh, power, prestige, popularity, and toward the love of God and the joy of the gospel. So say a little bit about that broader understanding of penance and what it means to live penance, not just in the sense of bodily mortifications. Pope Francis would say he doesn't want any sour pus saints. We don't need people smugly um full of sackcloth and ashes with sour pus looks on their face. But what does it mean to live penance in that broader sense of the term?

SPEAKER_02 50:24

Well, first of all, you remind me of what I think Saint Teresa said, you know, uh a sad saint is a sad saint. Um yes, so that's a very good question because you know, when we think of penance, we do automatically go to acts of penance and mortification. And as you said, uh these are part of the bigger picture, and I'll get to that in a little bit. But um I think maybe um to understand a little bit about what it means to live penance is to go back to the Greek word um metanoia, which literally means going beyond your mind. So, like metaphysics is beyond physics, metanoia, your noia, your mind. So I always say, in one sense, to be a Christian, to be a good follower of Christ, you have to go out of your mind. But really, if you look at what that means, that means what we were saying earlier. How do you develop, how do you develop the attitudes, the actions, the thoughts that flow from a gospel vision of the world rather than from a um what we would call worldly or mundane? And that's what Francis, that's why the life of penance is not just for religious or for some people that that can practice extreme mortifications, that can be a powerful witness. But the point of a life of penance is a life of conversion. So thinking conversion, turning, turning with. With who? With Christ. In other words, we constantly have to keep our vision looking at the world with the eyes of Christ. And the great temptation that we have is to turn away and not look at the world with the eyes of Christ, but look at the world with only our own eyes without Him. And so penance is how do we do those things that help us to develop the attitudes, you know, the actions, the thoughts, all the different things that flow from seeing the world with the eyes of Christ. So those can be expressed in many different ways. Um, first of all, probably the center of any life of real penance is making prayer an essential part of your life, because there's no way to be able to continue to look at the world uh with the eyes of Christ if you're not in connection with Him, you know, and especially through prayer with through Christ to the Holy Trinity and to really do. And of course, then how do you let your worldview be formed by Scripture, by what our faith teaches us, by the sacraments? So all those are elements of a life of penance, of conversion, of metanoia, of constantly trying to get away from our natural tendency. Again, what's our natural tendency? We begin as babies as the center of the universe. And when you're a baby, you have to be the center of the universe. But what do we say means to be an adult, to actually move away from being the center and being a part? Well, um, you know, as many people say, and we've got memes on the internet, you know, adulting stinks. It's you know hard because I want to be, I still want to be the center. So one of the ways that can be expressed, of course, are in acts of mortification, but again, with a proper attitude and a proper relationship. So for example, uh, one of the big things, and I'll I'll talk in a minute in a story about St. Francis, I think helps us with this, is food. Now, first of all, we need to eat, and that's not some human, some human um you know, development that came after the fall, because even before the fall, God gave them everything in the garden to eat except the one tree. You know, that's a that's another question. But so eating is not a bad thing. But how do we keep ourselves focused on, first of all, thanking God for the goodness of food, which is why I think you know, saying grace before meals is not just a nice pro forma thing. It's a moment to stop and say, hey, if if if I'm eating it and if this food is gonna help me, thank God. It's the way he made us. I mean, I always love it when Jesus appears after the after the crucifixion, when he rises from the dead and they don't know what to do, and he says, Do you have anything to eat? So eating itself, but what do we do with it? Well, you know, what we do is the attitude of two things. One is the attitude of if a little bit is good, a lot is better. So if I eat a hamburger, that's good. Well, that can be very good. If I eat three, well, maybe not so good. But, you know, so and we can do that with anything, but with food is kind of the great symbol of that. Um again, making food tasty, that's not a bad thing. I remember one of my mom, my one of my mom's complaints when she got older was because you know she wouldn't eat, she was getting too thin. And I said, Mom, you've got to eat. And she says, Yeah, but nothing tastes good anymore. So if you can't taste, all it is is work. So taste again is a gift from God. But, you know, if we focus on that exclusively, we lose perspective on why are we eating? We're eating to nourish ourselves. You know, and I'm uh I'm you know, I'm as much uh in favor of ice cream over broccoli as anybody else, but I have to eat broccoli too. I have to eat vegetables. So part of mortification, and so if you do it in an extreme, fasting is a dramatic way to remember, you know, why you're eating, what it's for. The other point of fasting, though, is in the Christian tradition, it's always tied with prayer again, but also with almsgiving. Because one of the problems with our approach to food is that this is mine. And if I see somebody hungry, well, too bad, or I'll give them a little crumb, I'm gonna eat what I'm gonna eat. So part of fasting is also this is a gift from God for me to share. And of course, where do we see that um sacramentalized so powerfully in the Eucharist? You know, that the that the food of heaven is given us to share, communion. But to avoid the other extreme of making fasting or mortification an end in itself, or something that leads you to say the world is bad, I think there's a beautiful story. So St. Francis had a good friend named Lady Jacopa. She was a noblewoman uh from Rome. She was a great, she was a widow and she used a lot of her resources to build hospices and hospitals for the poor. Whenever St. Francis came to uh Rome, you know, she would help him out. And but one of the things they tell us is he had a soft spot for her almond cookies. So when he was dying, he wanted to send a message to Jacopa because she was a good friend of his. If you want to come and see me, please come. And if you would bring the candles for my funeral and the other things for the funeral, but also bring some of your almond cookies, which she did. And apparently he had one of them and he loved it. And this is this is my challenge, it's a challenge to me, definitely. My challenge to penance with food. So, for example, in Lent, don't give up cookies, eat only one and taste it. Because the trouble is we gobble things down. So even if it's something we like, and I find myself doing this all the time, I have to slow myself down because we gobble and gobble. The gift of taste is to be cherished and thank God for. So Francis could eat, he probably found the smallest cookie and just ate that smallest cookie, but he really enjoyed it because he knew how to taste in the Lord. But that came from a life of fighting the temptations to make everything again about him and all that. So penance, penance is turning to God. The things that we do as acts of penance have to always be seen in that light, but in that light they can be very important. That's why we have a time of Lent. That's why we have those things to remind us, you know, that yes, food is a gift from God, and how does God want us to use it, including being thankful for it, savoring it, and sharing it.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

That's an interesting point. Here in America, we eat to repeat a sensation uh over and over again, because our food is just not that great. But in historically Catholic cultures with good culinary cultures, when you eat well, you don't have to eat a lot. So a lesson I think to be drawn from that. I want to turn uh in our time together to the episode of San Damiano. So Francis encounters the leper, uh, he uh then goes to the church, the crumbling uh church in ruins, uh, where those who were in quarantine were served, and he receives the famous call uh to rebuild his church from that uh cross that you can still see in the Basilica of Santa Chiara and Assisi. Uh some people say, well, this is this is of course God's call to renew the whole universal church, and uh there certainly is that uh type of renewal that was called and needed for as you discussed. But maybe the the lesson was actually a little bit more mundane. Maybe he really did need to build the church of San Diamiano. Unpack that story for us, Father Bobby.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

I will, because that's become um something that I really reflected on and focused on lately because, okay, so basic story as you outlined. So he's met the leper, he's got this serious call of God. He ends up going into the church. This is before his break with his father, because he goes into this church at San Damiano and he's praying in front of the crucifix. So he's got this general sense, Lord, you want me to follow you. But what does that mean concretely? You know, does it mean you want me to go to a monastery? Does it mean you want me to become part of the clergy? Does it mean you want me to go home and just be a good merchant? And he's not sure. And he's praying in front of this crucifix in this old church, which, as you said, was originally the quarantine church for the city of Assisi, so it's outside of town. Uh, it's dilapidated. It's not completely abandoned, but it's dilapidated, it's falling apart. It belonged to the Benedictines from them, but they had all these chapels that were falling apart because they didn't have enough manpower or resources to keep them all up. So he's in this church, Lord, what do you want me to do? And he hears a voice that says, Francis, repair my house, which as you see is falling apart, or all being destroyed, depending on how you want to translate the phrase. Now, almost all the sources say that Francis understood it in a material sense, but what God really meant was the church, the institution, the broader church. They're both there. And I think that there's a real lesson in Francis responding to that concrete moment of asking God's will, because there were several factors that went into Francis rebuilding that church that taught him how then he was to go as his life went on, and it became part of the broader, say, movement of renewal within his life and within the church. So, first of all, uh Francis decides, okay. So he starts begging stones. This is when he sells his the cloth, and his father gets mad at him, so he gives the money back, but he's gonna build. And I've always wondered why would Francis, the son of a cloth merchant, know how to build a church or rebuild, more importantly. And the reason is when Francis was in the war, the people of Assisi kicked out the nobles and the German guard in the fortress and tore it down and rebuilt their walls. And Francis was part of that rebuilding of the walls of Assisi. So, first of all, I think God was showing him take this gift that you have, this talent that you've learned, and instead of using it for violence and destruction, use it for good and use it for building up. Secondly, I think what this taught Francis more than anything else is Francis, you're gonna repair and build, but this is not your church. You didn't lay the foundation. This church was already here. The church has been here for hundreds of years, and I want you to be part of its ongoing building. So Francis was able then to learn how to build on the foundation already there, which of course will transfer to his being part of the church and part of the renewal rather than starting his own. I think it also showed Francis he needed other people to help him because he was not that strong. And so he started asking people, first of all, for gifts of stone, but then he also said, if you want to help me, that would be great. So other people helped him to build the rebuild that church, and he discovered it's not all you, it's you as part of this whole thing. Um, finally, also he was building and not for himself. He did not make the Church of San Damiano the headquarters of his order. That's where he ended up bringing St. Clair. So, in all these different ways, I think God was teaching him through that concrete action of listening to Jesus and building the church so that as he went on, he could continue that same theme. So I think he definitely, if he had not worked on building the Church of San Damiano, he never would have found out what God's call was. But in responding in that concrete moment, he began the journey that continued for the next 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:23

A couple lessons, I think, in that story. One, understanding the gifts that God has given us through the life experiences that we've had and cultivating those gifts and then sharing those gifts. But also the need to live discipleship in the context of community, whether we call it uh fratelli, tuti, communion, uh anything else, that the work of discipleship is not something that we do alone. We're not saved by ourselves, we're saved in community. So say a little bit about the importance of uh cultivating our gifts and discerning our gifts and discipleship, and then uh living those gifts in the context of our community, which is the church.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

Well, I think basically we are the body of Christ. Jesus calls us in that. Jesus calls us into community. It can have different levels. I mean, the community of the church, or perhaps community of family, community of a religious life, or the community of you know, a group in a parish, or people that work together. And it's always been the experience of the church, even the hermits, I always find this fascinating. Even the hermits of the church never were actually by themselves all the time because they would draw other people to them who wanted to learn from them. And the true hermits, while always trying to preserve their quiet, also realized they had to also share with the church. And so this call to community is a call to recognize that not one of us is the body of Christ because all of us together are the body of Christ. You know, St. Paul gives us a great image of the one body with many parts. And St. Francis had that experience also. And see, this is where, again, in Francis' life, he didn't sit down and say, gee, you know, I'm going to found a religious community. What he started doing was living what he felt God was calling him to live. And a few other people from Assisi, some young men, came up and said, I like what you're doing. I'd like to be part of it. And Francis, rather than saying, well, you know, go take care of yourself somewhere else, said, Well, let's figure this out. And so that was the beginning of the religious life. But there are two things about working in community, living in community, being in community in the church, in family, wherever it is. And the so St. Francis says in that same testament that we quoted earlier, and the Lord gave me brothers. And I always say you could say that in two ways. And the Lord gave me brothers. Isn't this wonderful? They helped me, they helped me round out my vision. We talked to each other and learned. Having brothers is such a wonderful gift. You know, and later to embrace St. Clair and sisters. Isn't this a wonderful gift? On the other hand, I think you could say that line this way, too. The Lord gave me brothers. In other words, his friars, his own brothers, and the other people around him were a great gift and a great trial. His brothers didn't always agree with him. They didn't always do things the way he wanted. And like anybody in life, Francis wanted to have control. And he wasn't getting it. The brothers were annoying the heck out of him at a certain point in his life. And I think that that's part of it too in our life and in the church, you know, that we are called to be together, both to support one another and to teach one another to love by having to put up with one another. So I always tell people this why does God, why can't we just pray and watch the Mass virtually? I mean, it's a great gift if you can't get out of the house and it connects you. That's, you know, thank God for that. But why is it so important to be together physically? Well, first of all, to support each other, but second of all, to put up with each other. You've been in church. You know, you're next to the guy that's coughing half the time, you're next to the lady that's saying everything half a second off the way the priest is saying it, you know, the baby's crying and all those things. And I don't think God is there despite all that. I think God is all there, you know that. And Francis had to learn that. He, at the end of his life, he went up the Mount Laverna because he was so sick of the brothers and so this disappointed. And Jesus said to him, They're your brothers because they're my brothers. So you do what I ask you to do and don't worry about them. And Francis came back down from that mountain and went back to the brothers. That's the important thing. He didn't say, You people forget it, you're not listening to me. Goodbye. He didn't always agree. That doesn't mean they didn't always have their, but he came back and he died in their midst, forgiving them and saying, God lets you do. So that's part of community in the church, any community. You know, if we're only looking for the comfort and the support, we're gonna leave. Not that it's not there, not that there aren't great things that happen, but if that's all we're if that's the only thing we want to find, then the minute we have trouble, well, I'm out of here. But that's not what God does. You know, look at look at the apostles, they had to put up with each other, you look at the gospels, they weren't always on the same page, but Jesus didn't dismiss them, and he also didn't say, Well, you can stay and you go because you don't agree. And I think Francis learned that. And the great gift of brotherhood then is how do I, again, how do I see beyond myself? I'm not gonna see, so I can see in prayer the way God sees, but how do I see the world how God sees, also through other people's eyes? That's the beauty of the church. That's why there's so many different religious orders, that's why there's such a variety, because God says, Hey, I'm infinite. Here's some different ways to look at things so you can all come closer to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:33

You mentioned earlier a different Pope, Pope Leo, in his encyclical magnifica humanitas. And one of the big themes of that is that the the beauty of our humanity is actually in our limitations. And I think you're unpacking that as part of community. It's uh it's our limitations and our humanness uh and our need to get along with one another. And it's it's also it seems to me a different way of building. And so he also talks in that encyclical about how AI or technology can become like a tower of babel. That's the way the world builds. It builds these great towers. But yet in the life of Francis, we see a man who actually lowers himself and accepts human limitations and learns to work and love and live those human ta limitations as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

Yes, I think that that's that's exactly true. And um, I love that image of the Tower of Babylon. Um in the sense that um that's what Francis was trying to see um Francis realized there's two ways we so we believe that we're made to be like God. We believe that that's part of part of our faith. But there's two ways to try to be like God. One is to pile up thing upon thing, possession upon possession, power upon power. That's without our Bible. Let's let's get up to heaven. So if I have enough riches, I'll be more like God. If I have enough power, I'll be more like God. If I have enough influence, position, whatever it may be. And human history, and Francis' on history, and I dare say, you know, everybody's history always shows it doesn't work. Because no matter how much you have, you want more. I mean, why does why does somebody who has a billion dollars need two billion? You know, because there's something in it that way doesn't work. And what St. Francis discovered in Christianity, in Jesus Christ, is that there's two ways to become like God. One is to try to pile thing upon thing, power upon power, and it never works. What is the other way? Francis looked at Jesus and he remembered what St. Paul said. Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God, something to be grasped, but emptied himself. And so what Francis learned that's the that's the basis of humility, is I want to be like God. But the way Jesus has shown us to be like God is the path of humility, the path of forgiveness, the path of letting go, the path of service, all those different aspects, that's how you become like God. And that's why in the end he was able to die letting go into God's hands, because he says it's all yours anyway. And, you know, so all of us, all of us do not have access to riches, power, fame, and money. All of us have access to being able to serve, to being able to let go, to being able to find God in the world around us, in the most simple creature around us, or in our own breathing. All of us can do that. And I think that was Francis' insight following Christ, because that's our Christian message. That's not just Francis, but he he kind of showcased it in a way that that still makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:57

Transhuman or transfigured, which will we choose? A choice for the tech bros, but um increasingly for all of us as well in a world of uh uh uh technology at our fingertips through our iPhones. Uh interestingly, I think it's a good segue into the canticle of creation. And oftentimes people think that uh Francis's eco-spirituality to use a term as something new, fresh, uh interesting, was an anomaly in the Catholic Church of the time. But uh really the break was with uh Francis Bacon, a different Francis, who uh sought mastery over nature and to control it rather than to receive it uh as a gift. Tell us about why Francis Assisi wrote the Canticle of Creation and is it really an outgrowth or an expression of a spirituality extant at the time that we just need to rediscover today because it seems so alien to us, um, or was it really something different?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:52

It was both. That's what you're always gonna get when you talk about Francis. But I think to understand it, first of all, you have to understand the context of when he wrote it. So I don't know if you remember the movie Brothers on Sister Moon, which of course tries to incorporate some of the canticle into it, but you've got Francis running around the hills of Umbria, this young man, and you know, among the flowers and how wonderful and everything. That's not when he wrote it. He wrote it when he was near death, probably in the year 1225. So he died in 1226. At the time he wrote it, he was in terrible pain because of a disease that he picked up in the Middle East or somewhere that affected his eyes. So basically, he couldn't be out in the sun, and he even had our time with fire. So he was in this little hut next to St. Clair's monastery, um, and he had to sleep basically with his back to the fire, and it was cold, it was in the middle of winter. Um, and yet, as he was as he was going through all this, he kind of said to the Lord, Lord, I'm I'm I'm trying, I just can't do this. Just just help me. And God gave him it's an interesting vision. God said, now, Francis, think of this. If all the world's stones were diamonds and all the rivers were perfume, and all the mountains were made of gold, wouldn't that be a great treasure? And Saint Francis says, Well, of course. Then the voice said, Well, rejoice, because the gift that you will be given when you enter into through Sister Death, we'll talk about that, when you enter into death, it'll be greater than that. And Francis all of a sudden came up with this canical. Now, what's the connection? I always try to think what's the connection. It wasn't looking down on this world, it was saying, This world is the stepping stone into God. And we turn away from God when we don't see it that way, when we don't live in thanksgiving, and when we don't look again at the world, at creation, at all around us, with the eyes of faith and the eyes of God. So again, this is not Francis being some sort of pantheist and just do everything makes up God. No, he's looking at and saying, This is God's creation, but we're ungrateful because this creation of itself mirrors God, leads us into God. Now, how did Francis come up with that? This is actually the center of our Christian spirituality, just as that image of Jesus emptying himself. St. Paul says in the letter to the Colossians, Jesus Christ is the firstborn of all creation. So, of course, the center of our faith, and the hard thing, it's hard for us to hold it together, is that Jesus Christ is at the same time divine, the Son of God, fully divine and yet fully human, a creature. Now, Jesus holds those together in himself. But what St. Paul then says, if you want to look at the model for creation, and this is what St. Bonaventure will run with, the model for creation is Jesus Christ. So all creation makes sense in Jesus Christ, not just angels, not just, you know, saints, not just uh the ethereal things, all creation. St. Bonaventure at a point will say, even the stones reflect something of the Holy Trinity, even the stones reflect something of God. So Francis has got this in his heart after living it all these years and realizing, and he said to the brothers, you know, we don't give God enough thanks for this world around us. And that should, we should, we should be sorry about that. So I'm gonna, he composes this song because it originally was written to be sung. We don't have the original music, although there's a lot of different reconstructions and of course a lot of different versions of the canticle. Um, but I want you to sing this to people and then preach to them about being grateful to God. And so he writes this canticle of brother's son. And I, by the way, I specifically refer to it as that. It's also known as the canticle of the creatures, but that's not the title Francis gave it. Francis called it the canticle of brother's son. And why? I think because he wanted to say all creation mirrors God because of the incarnate Jesus Christ. And so what is of all the creation, and it's all part of God's creation, it's all revealing God, but what is the one that we could say is the center of that revelation? And thinking of the scriptures, beginning with Genesis, where God says, Let there be light. And if you look to the Psalms, you look to the Old Testament, you look to the New Testament, especially the gospel, Jesus says, I am the light of the world. So this canticle starts off with, Praise be you, my Lord, for Sir Brother's son, who is the light and who is the day, and through whom you give us light, and he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor. So all creatures like the sun, but the sun becomes the symbol of it all, because Francis says it bears signification of you. The sun becomes a symbol of how all creation praises God by being what it's made to be. So the sun gives light, it's praising God. Now remember, this is when Francis can't bear the sunlight. See, I think this point is so important. The sun is no longer helping him in that sense, it's no longer giving him joy. And yet he's able to say, because of his faith and his life, it still bears the likeness of God, whether or not I'm enjoying it. You know, that's why I said every creature bears something of God, even if it annoys us. And then he goes to all the other creatures, and I think this is essential too. So, one essential point to understand about the canticle of brother's son is nowhere in that canticle does Francis mention Jesus. Jesus' name isn't in there. And you would think, well, he didn't believe in Jesus, he was a pantheist. No, no, no, no, no, no. Jesus was the center of his life. The gospel of Jesus Christ was the center of his life. He didn't need to mention Jesus because you can't understand that canticle without Jesus. Without Jesus as the light of the world, it makes no sense to say that the sun is bearing signification of God. Without Jesus, does the moon and the stars and all don't make any sense without Jesus? And we see this most clearly at the end, where after he praises God for sun and moon and wind and water and fire and earth, he comes up with a question. How do we praise God by being what we're made to be? And again, St. Bonaventure will say, you know, some theologians like to talk about what life would be like without the fall in Eden. Bonaventure would say, nice, but it doesn't make any difference. We have to live in the world where we are. So who teaches us how to praise God by being what we are in this world? He says, Praise be you, my Lord, for those who forgive and those who bear infirmity and suffering. Blessed are those peacemakers who are by you most highly will be crowned. So the canical doesn't make any sense if you don't know that Jesus Christ is the model for being human. But once you know that the canical is this great call to say God is being praised by creation. And I think finally, the important thing is creation praises God by being what it is, not because it tells us of God. But we were made by God to rejoice in that creation. I always say creation is like an orchestra, and we're like the orchestra leader. So we don't have to be all the instruments, but we're the ones. So God's beauty is out there, and then He made us to be able to appreciate that beauty and share that beauty. And isn't that a wonderful thing? And that's like that's why it's so much part of Francis's vision of the world. Again, people, oh, this is just you know hippie, and this is just you know tree hugging and stuff. However, you want to look at all that. This is Francis saying creation is valuable because God made it, not because of the value it has for us. And if we want to know how to be part of creation, look at Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:13

At the end of the canticle, he invokes praise for sister death. And I again that's just uh counterintuitive or uh a sign of contradiction. What tell tell us about his invocation of sister death and praise for sister death and what it mean might mean for us today to live uh a life of theonymy rather than autonomy, uh being the center of the universe.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:36

Um basically, so first of all, he he throughout the canical, he's using the phrase that Pope Francis uh took up, laudato si, which means basically may you be praised. And often he uses the adject uh the preposition pair, so by, with, for, through it, they all work together. So he's not praising sister death in itself, but what he's doing is recognizing that God is praised by every creature, and death in that sense is a creature. See, ultimately, we usually think of death, we have that hooded image with a sickle and you know the skeleton, and death is this horrible thing, and in that sense, we almost we almost conceive of it as you know, death or evil are on an equal par with life and God. And of course, what we believe is that no, they're not equal. Therefore, what Francis says is even death is a creation of God, and the tradition has always been as actually a beneficial creation, because in the book of Genesis it says if they live forever without connection, because of the college of knowledge, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, um, life will be a complete drudgery. So, what Francis has come to realize is death is that gate that God has given us into life now and beyond now. And that's why he does have that phrase, which is very important. Death is that focus on do we want to choose God or not? He says, Woe to those who die in mortal sin, because you're not choosing God. But blessed are those who find it, we find in your most holy will God, for by you they will be. The second death will do them no harm. In other words, death does not have to be this horrible, it's not the contradiction of God. It's a gift from God if we embrace it. And see, Francis, so he was singing towards the end of his life, and he was singing his canical, including, Praise be you, my Lord, for sister death. And some people were scandalized. Shouldn't you be preparing for death? And he As I am, by praising God for it. Because God is the author of everything, God is the ultimate point. And that's why he was able then to say, as he said, welcome, Sister Death. And by the way, just as an aside, some people try to read into it. I have no idea linguistically, but it's sister death because in the Romance languages, Moore's is a feminine noun. So it's not making some judgment on sister and brother, and which is it's sister death because that's that's the way it is. But calling death sister, that was that was the innovation. So in a very real sense, the spirituality of the canical is a continuation and a focusing of the Christian spirituality that's there. But it was naming it in a new way. Interestingly enough, just at the same time as the temptation was being given, as you alluded to, and Francis Bacon might have of um Roger Bacon, not Francis Bacon.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:10

Roger Bacon. No, it was France. Roger Bacon's a Franciscan fan, but even I was thinking about France.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:15

Francis Bacon did the culmination. Even Descartes, the trouble is you start divorcing the thought from the reality. And no, Francis, so that Francis was not doing something, it wasn't something an innovation in the sense of this has never been part of Christian theology before, now it's a part of Christian theology. No, what Francis did was let me give it to you in a new way. I mean, that's what Francis' life was. You know, here's the gospel, let me show it to you again in a new way. Because in one way, Francis lived the gospel very much. In another way, he was not, he didn't go back to first century Palestine. He lived Jesus' teaching in 13th century Europe and central Italy. So what he was doing was not saying, I'm giving you a new gospel, but let me show it to you again. And that's what he does with the canical. This is the spirituality of the incarnation, this is the spirituality of our Christian faith. But we can lose sight of it, so let's do it again. And yes, I wish, you know, that some of the philosophers had seen what they were doing in making nature a mechanical, a mechanical thing, because we are part of it. And we see just the challenge to us now in a dramatic way is we see it. In the 13th century, I mean well, when Francis Bacon, like the 15th or 16th, whatever 16th century. In the 16th century, you could say, yeah, we're part of nature, but we're to have mastery. Well, in the 16th century, because the technology was where it was, you didn't see a lot of the effects of it. Now we are. Now we're seeing that our relationship with this world does not just have positive good things for us, it has negative impact if we're not aware of it. That's why Pope Francis was calling so much, you know, for that care of creation, because we've discovered, I mean, in a great sense, we discovered the truth of this. In a bad sense, we want to deny it. We have an impact on this world, and that impact is not always good. The gift is God has given us brains to be able to try to deal with that. The bad part is God has given us brains to figure out how we can get around it. But the more we try to get around it, the more we're gonna be in trouble. That's with the AI again. Is it a gift? Yes. Can it be used for good? Yes. Is it automatically that? No. And if you don't, here's the trouble with technology. If you don't use technology to build a human world, technology will use humans to build a technological world. I think that's what the Pope is trying to say. So it's not, Francis wouldn't say just reject this thing wholesale, but he would say, be very careful. You know, when you make a decision to use AI for a business or whatever, is it helping the poor? Is it helping people? Those are hard questions because nobody wants to. That's that's the trouble with the saints. They keep asking us questions that we don't really want to answer. You know, that was that was that, but on the other hand, Francis shows us that the answer doesn't destroy you. See, what are we celebrating this year? The 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Francis, not just his whole life, that's part of it. But there was when when Pope Leo first designated this year as the year of St. Francis for the 800th anniversary, there was one of the readings in scripture, it was just a reading of the day, but it was from the book of Sirach, and it said, Judge no one until you see how they die. For how they die shows what was central to their life. So, how did Francis die? In the midst of his brothers, down in the middle of the woods with the poor, in near his church that he loved, praying, loving the brothers and sisters. You know, so in other words, the saints show us, and Francis in a very dramatic way shows us, Jesus said, If you follow my words, even if you die, you'll live. And Francis says, Yeah, that's how he died, and he lives. And that's why we remember the 800 anniversary, not just of his being around, but of how he died, so that we can say, God, help us to believe.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:46

Well, what a beautiful way to end this very edifying conversation. Father Bobby Barbato, you've given us an exercise in Resource Mont, returning to the sources, and we see in Francis a model of the another to invoke another pope, the model of a hermeneutic of reform in continuity. Yeah. So thank you for that, and thank you for your witness. Where can pilgrims and other wayfarers go to get the benefit out of this Jubilee year of Saint Francis's transitus? What's what does the church offer us in this year if you visit a place uh such as the shrine of Saint Francis, for example?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:21

Well, so Pope Leo gave us a great gift during this um Jubilee year of being able to receive a plenary indulgence by visiting uh church run by Franciscans or churches that are designated. So each diocese has certain designations, um, and he didn't put a limit on the limit of a plenary indulgence is always once a day, but he didn't put a limit on how many times in the year. So technically, somebody could could come. And of course, uh plenary indulgence can be applied either to yourself or to the souls in purgatory. So we could help a lot of a lot of people in purgatory during this year. Uh for the transitus itself, most places that have Franciscan communities, whether brothers, sisters, or seculars, um, celebrate the transitus. So St. Francis died on the night of October 3rd, 1226. Uh, because the evening was considered the beginning of the next day, that's why his feast days on October 4th. Uh, one of the things I think is kind of neat and interesting is that the weekdays of this year are the same as they were in 1226. In other words, when Francis died on October 3rd, it was a Saturday. So, what we Franciscans do is celebrate, it's celebrating his death, but it's celebrating his death as his transitus, his passing over into the fullness of life in Jesus Christ. So we usually have ceremonies, prayers, readings from the time of his death from St. Bonaventure and other of the biographies. We take prayers. Um, so that usually happens on the evening of the third, and then of course on the feast day, the fourth of St. Francis, I'm sure all the Franciscan churches and I don't know about other churches, um, but it's it's it's it's a great day. Our Archbishop Cordoglione is coming to celebrate Mass in our shrine of St. Francis. And by the way, I know you may be in different places, but I want to invite everybody to come to the National Shrine of St. Francis in San Francisco, not only because we have our beautiful shrine church, but we also have our little Porcioncola church called the Portiuncola Nuova. The Porcioncola was the third church that Francis rebuilt, and it was the one that he did make the headquarters of his order, and that's where he died in Assisi. It's still there inside a big basilica, but still that same little church. And we have our own little twin of that church, down to the down to the details, a little smaller, and you can always come and visit that church. So um, again, you can go to you can look up on your for your diocese what other churches are, but it's a great gift, and the year of St. Francis goes until January 10th, 2027. So you've got your you've got your chances. And again, I thank Pope Leo for the great gift. Again, here we have an Augustinian Pope giving us a great uh Franciscan. And by the way, one of St. Francis's closest friends and companions with Brother Leo. So read into that what you will.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:34

Amen. Wonderful. Father Bobby Barbato, thank you so much for joining us on Catholic in America. It was a wonderful and edifying conversation, and we wish you, all of our listeners and myself, prayers and blessings as you continue your ministry. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:47

Well, thank you. And if you don't mind, I'll just give the blessing of Saint Francis. Please. May the Lord bless you and keep you, turn his face towards you and have mercy on you. May shine the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace. And may Almighty God bless you now and always, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:07

Thank you very much. Amen. Thanks you. Glory be to God. Take care. That discussion went on longer than our usual podcast length because the person of Saint Francis is endlessly inspiring, and Father Bobby is a wonderful interpreter of this great saint. I first heard Father Bobby talk about Saint Francis a few months ago in a morning of reflection and was delighted to have him come on and share his thoughts with this audience. In Father Bobby's words, in Saint Francis, we have someone who met Christ and opened himself to meet him again and again. And following Christ, Francis did not set out to start something new. He built on others' foundation. Thus, his charism is really at the heart of the church. But he had unique gifts and life experiences that also allowed him to innovate and renew the church. He learned, however, that he needed brothers to accomplish his mission. From my perspective, the episodes in the life of Francis, much like the gospels to which he was conformed, give us richer food for prayer. The story of the encounter with the leper shakes us in our comfort zones and invites us to go meet Christ in the outcast and on the peripheries. And when our hearts are turned like Francis's was, we must listen to understand how we can cultivate our gifts and find brothers and sisters to help us accomplish our mission in the world. That's daunting for sure, but it highlights the adventure of discipleship when we abandon ourselves to the Lord and his providence. A reminder, our listeners, in this Jubilee year, you can gain a plenary indulgence each time you visit a Franciscan shrine and follow the usual conditions. It is a great act of charity to souls in purgatory. And I will have information about this, particularly at the shrine of St. Francis, linked on our show page. Thank you for listening to this episode of Catholic in America. I hope the gospel burned in your heart as we dove into the life of St. Francis. Remember that saints take others with them, as Francis does still today. So God bless you.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:02

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