He gave away everything. Then he found he had everything to praise.
Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was born in Assisi around 1181 to a wealthy cloth merchant. His father nicknamed him Francesco—“the Frenchman”—perhaps for his mother’s homeland or his father’s love of French culture. The name stuck. The young Francis lived up to it: he was charming, generous with his father’s money, and dreamed of knightly glory.
At twenty, he rode off to war against Perugia. He was captured, imprisoned for a year, and returned home sick in body and restless in spirit. He tried again—setting out for the Crusades—but turned back after a dream. Something was changing.
The turning point came with a leper. Francis, who had always found lepers repulsive, encountered one on the road. Something moved him to dismount, embrace the man, and kiss his hand. “What had seemed bitter to me,” he later wrote, “was turned into sweetness of soul and body.”
Shortly after, praying in the ruined chapel of San Damiano, he heard the crucifix speak: “Francis, rebuild my church, which is falling into ruin.” He began literally—with stones and mortar. The deeper meaning would unfold over a lifetime.
He renounced his inheritance publicly, stripping off his fine clothes before the bishop of Assisi and declaring that his only father was “Our Father who art in heaven.” He embraced poverty not as a burden but as a bride—Lady Poverty—and began to preach the Gospel in the streets. Brothers gathered around him. Clare of Assisi heard him preach and founded a sister community. Within a decade, thousands had joined.
In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis crossed enemy lines to meet Sultan al-Kamil. He sought martyrdom; he found conversation. The sultan, impressed by his simplicity, let him go in peace.
Near the end of his life, on Mount La Verna, Francis received the stigmata—the wounds of Christ appearing in his hands, feet, and side. He was nearly blind, often in pain. And it was then, at San Damiano, that he composed the Canticle of the Creatures: praise of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Fire, Sister Water, and Sister Bodily Death.
He died on October 3, 1226, naked on the ground at his request, singing Psalm 142. He was canonized less than two years later.
What God Did
God took a young man intoxicated with dreams of glory and gave him a different glory altogether. Francis heard Christ speak from the cross—“Rebuild my church”—and spent his life obeying, not primarily with stones but with the witness of radical poverty, overflowing joy, and kinship with all creation.
The transformation began with a leper’s embrace: what was bitter became sweet. This became the pattern of Francis’s entire life. Poverty, which the world calls loss, became freedom. Suffering, which the world calls tragedy, became communion with Christ. Death, which the world calls enemy, became sister.
God conformed Francis so completely to the Crucified that he bore Christ’s wounds in his body. But the stigmata was the fruit, not the root. The root was dispossession: Francis held nothing, and therefore could receive everything as gift. He saw Brother Sun and Sister Moon not as resources to use but as siblings to praise. He saw the leper not as object of disgust but as Christ in disguise.
What God did in Francis was to create a new kind of saint: not withdrawn into a monastery, not locked in a scholar’s study, but walking through the world singing, weeping, preaching to birds and sultans alike, showing that the Gospel could be lived literally—and that such a life produces not grimness but irrepressible joy.
Walk With This Saint
Practices suggested by his life:
- Praise as first response—begin with gratitude, even in difficulty
- Simplicity in possessions—give away what you do not need
- Reverence for creation—see sun, moon, water, fire as kin
- Move toward what you avoid—the “leper” you have been fleeing
- Let joy be visible—“not appear outwardly as sad and gloomy hypocrites”
Dispositions he models:
- Joy in poverty, not despite it
- Littleness as freedom
- Kinship with all creation
- Peace-making across enemy lines
- Humility before the Eucharist
He is especially helpful for:
- Those who need to recover joy
- Those burdened by possessions or complexity
- Those who feel disconnected from creation
- Those for whom gratitude seems impossible
- Those who need to make peace—with others or with themselves
Prayer
Most High, glorious God, You made Francis a mirror of Your Son and filled him with joy in poverty.
Teach me his way: to praise You in all creatures, to hold nothing that holds me, and to find sweetness where I expect only bitterness.
When I am burdened, show me what to release. When I am joyless, remind me that You are all Good. When I forget my place among creatures, let me hear the sun and moon calling me brother, sister.
Francis, pray for us who have too much— and teach us that less is the path to more.
Amen.
From His Own Hand
“The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance in this way: for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I showed mercy to them. And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body.” — The Testament, 1226
“Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day and through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor; and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.” — The Canticle of the Creatures, 1225
“You are holy, Lord, the only God, and Your deeds are wonderful… You are Good, all Good, supreme Good, Lord God, living and true.” — The Praises of God (written for Brother Leo)
“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor disturbance. Where there is poverty with joy, there is neither greed nor avarice.” — Admonitions, XXVII
“Let the brothers be careful not to appear outwardly as sad and gloomy hypocrites but show themselves joyful, cheerful, and consistently gracious in the Lord.” — The Earlier Rule, Chapter VII
Sources
Primary:
- Francis of Assisi: Early Documents — ed. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap., et al. (New City Press, 3 volumes)
- The Writings of Francis: Testament, Canticle, Admonitions, Letters, Rules
Secondary:
- Augustine Thompson, O.P., Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Cornell, 2012)
- André Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint (Yale, 2012)