Francis, renouncing everything for the love of God
In preparation for teaching Resources for Radical Living with my partner in crime, Mark Van Steenwyk, I’ve been re-reading Paul Sabatier‘s ground-breaking Vie de S. Francois d’Assise, though in a new, annotated English edition. This is The Road to Assisi: The Essential Biography of St. Francis, ed. with intro and annotations by Jon M. Sweeney (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2003)–well done and informative in its many annotations.
Since in Resources for Radical Living we are using Francis as a case study in penitential living, I have been looking for material in Sabatier on the penitential life. Plenty of suggestions show up early in Sabatier’s text about why Francis lived the way he did: he was a party animal early in life with too much money and not enough sense, who eventually had a serious illness and came to see the emptiness of his former hedonism. Then, impetuous in doing good as much as he had been in his frivolities, he turned to Christ for answers, and he took the Gospel message not just seriously, but literally.
Sabatier tells all of this in his chapter six: “First Year of Apostolate (Spring 1209 – Summer 1210)”:
After hearing the gospel passage preached to him about selling all you have, going, and following Christ, “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff” (44),
The very next morning Francis went up to Assisi and began to preach. Continue reading
Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
Grateful to the dead 