Sister Mary Ann Spanjers, Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity, continues plumbing the profound depths of St Francis of Assisi’s spirituality. As Francis lived his conversion he became more like Christ Crucified…. But it was not only the suffering Christ he experienced. But also a mysterious love of God, and of Jesus as a human person Are you called to be Franciscan?
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In his book, The Gospels According to St. Francis, Hilarion Kistner, OFM explains that as Francis lived his conversion, he continually grew more and more into the image of Christ crucified. He so identified with the sufferings of Christ that the marks of that suffering, the stigmata, appeared on his hands, feet and side and into his heart during a time of profound prayer on Mount Laverna two years before he died.
However, it was not only the suffering of Christ that he experienced but also a mysterious love of God and that love of the human Jesus as well as a desire to save the world, that became so real to Francis, that it would find its external expression upon him. Francis so identified with the suffering of Jesus that he received the wounds himself.
In the Letter of Francis to the Faithful, he tells us that “those who love God are happy and blessed. They do as our Lord himself tells us in the Gospel, “Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and soul.. and love your neighbor as yourself” Francis goes on to say that this what you do when you love God and your neighbor. You don’t indulge in vices and sins, but love God, yourself, and others. Furthermore, you receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. “So we notice right away how Christian living, is closely connected with the Eucharist. This is very important in Francis’s mind, because then you go on to produce worthy fruits of penance. Jesus brings about change from a life of selfishness and sin to a life of doing penance. Penance here is not so much about giving up chocolate, but it is about changing from a selfish viewpoint to living for God.
What Francis is saying is that God’s relationship to us in Christ is not just that God did something for us in giving us his Son, and that we should be grateful because eventually, if we’re lucky, we’ll get to heaven. Rather he is saying that God plunged himself into us, into our lives through Jesus Christ, who suffered and died on the cross. Through his passion and resurrection Jesus enabled us to live the very life of God, so that God is really our Father and he loves us more than any human father or mother. God loves us in Christ and joins us to himself in an intimate way, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are one with Christ and through him children of God, our Father.
We are brothers and sisters of Christ when we do as Jesus did, the will of the Father. Which is to love. And to bring others to the Father through our love.
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