Focus on Lay Spirituality
Franciscan Spirituality: To Embrace and To Let Go
by Susan Burke
"Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up to now we have done little, or nothing. " (St. Francis of Assisi, as he approached the end of his life—I Cel. 103).
How is it possible to love the world so fully that even the lowliest rock is treated with courtesy and respect, yet at the same time to relinquish all holds on the world and its pleasures; to honor all of creation as an emblem of God's immanent presence, yet to abandon the need to possess even the smallest portion of it; at once and at all time to embrace and to let go.
This paradox is the task and the grace of those who choose to follow in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis, born more than 800 years ago, historically has been one of the saints with whom we most easily find kinship, because he rejoiced in the world we rejoice in from the beginnings of our consciousness as children.
Thomas of Celano, in his Second Life of Francis, writes: "In every work of the artist, he praised the Artist...He embraced all things with a rapture of unheard of devotion, speaking to them of the Lord and admonishing them to praise him. He spared lights, lamps, and candles, not wishing to extinguish their brightness with his hand, for he regarded them as a symbol of Eternal Light. He walked reverently upon stones, because of him who was called the Rock...". "He forbade the brothers to cut down the whole tree when they cut wood, so that it might have hope of sprouting again...He removed from the road little worms, lest they be crushed underfoot; and he ordered that honey and the best wines be set out for the bees, lest they perish from want in the cold of winter" (2 Cel. 165).
This was not cloying sentimentality, but unfettered sacramentality. Francis thoroughly integrated the secular with the sacred. Franciscan spirituality is very concrete, and the desire to experience such intense unity with creation is based on a profound understanding of the connectedness of all things with God their maker and with each other. Once this experience of relationship is gained, it is much more difficult to appropriate the earth and its creatures in a thoughtless and violent manner. Instead, the Franciscan hopes to become engaged with creation in a spirit of mutual usefulness and nourishment, not presuming "ownership," but rather serving as caretaker and receiver.
But it would be wrong to imagine that Francis cared only for non-human creation, or just the pretty parts. He himself says in his Testament that he was first led to penance—that is, to live a life of conversion, of constantly turning to God—through relationship with people. It was a difficult first step for him to take: "While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of body and soul" (Test. 1-3).
Francis was particularly repelled by lepers, but one day, trusting in God's promise, he opened himself to grace when he met a leper on the road. Despite his horror, he got off his horse and kissed the leper. By abandoning his defenses, he was able to enter into unity with what had previously disgusted him, transforming the bitter into the sweet. When he embraced the leper, he let go of his fear.Imagine the freedom of that act.
Because of his utter joy, his unrelenting faith, and his natural charm, Francis soon attracted followers, and his community began to be formed. Again, establishing relationship with people was a crucial step in Francis's spiritual journey, as he documents in his Testament: "And after the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I should do, but the Most High Himself revealed to me that I should live according to the form of the Holy Gospel" (Test. 14).
The whole foundation of the Franciscan life is the Gospel—the account of God on earth, Jesus, the incarnation of the Most High. The Way of Life in the Rule of the Secular Franciscans begins: "The rule and life of the Secular Franciscans is this: Co observe the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by following the example of St. Francis of Assisi, who made Christ the inspiration and center of his life with God and people."
His Life with God and people
Francis's brothers were essential to him, as his friends, his supporters, his companions on the journey. He was God's instrument for them, as they were for him. Yet, while he embraced them, he was able to let them go. His description of "perfect joy" to Brother Leo was to return home to the friary from a journey in the dead of a winter's night, muddy and cold and hungry; and after knocking at the gate, identifying himself, and asking to enter, to be turned away by the brother porter answering the door— not once, but three times, with abusive words and insults and even beatings (Little Flowers of St. Francis, chap. 8).
"I will tell you this," he said to Brother Leo. "If I had patience and did not become upset, there would be true joy in this and true virtue and the salvation of the soul." Notice that the joy would arise not from the abuse but from his patience—from letting go of the need to be honored or loved or even recognized by the brothers he had embraced. Here is humility, founded not in self-loathing but in self-emptying, as Christ emptied himself. Here is detachment, based not in apathy but in joy.
Francis also detached himself from possessions put of a desire to emulate the poverty of Christ. Francis was starkly poor, owning nothing, even eating little. But the essence of Franciscan poverty can be enjoyed by anyone. We are called to detachment rather than deprivation, always to be moving further into the spirit of poverty by letting go of attachment to one more thing. This process reveals the difference between what we happen to have and what we need, or must have, which in the end is only God.
We come to know God through those very things we are letting go, because Franciscan spirituality is incarnational. The Eucharist, to which Francis had great devotion, perfectly expresses his conviction of God's presence in the physical, as well as how we receive the gift. It is bread and Christ's body and the living spirit of God, which we receive, consume, and receive again. Just as an organism exhibits and continues life by breathing—taking in air, absorbing nutrients, releasing what isn't needed—so the spirit grows by taking in the world's sacramentals suffused with God, absorbing the divine, and releasing what isn't needed. This is faith—stepping from the known to the unknown, letting go of security, letting go of our breath, not identifying with anything but allowing everything to work in us to reveal God's presence and essence.
The four primary charisms of the Franciscan life—ongoing conversion, poverty, minority or humility, and prayer— are entwined. They require paying attention, being conscious of God's presence—which is a way to describe prayer. As Celano said of Francis, "He was not so much a man who prayed, as a man who had become a living prayer" (2 Cel. 95). The Franciscan's incarnational prayer involves an embrace, then letting go.
Francis's exhortation quoted at the beginning addresses the whole life, but perhaps particularly expresses the process of ongoing conversion. As Jesus healed the lepers and sent them on their way, so every moment is a beginning, which requires a leave taking of the moment left behind. What is called for now has yet to be accomplished. If we cling to past growth, we cannot attend to the growth made available in the present.
Thus, the Franciscan way is ultimately a way of poverty, which translates into freedom, always the fruit of embracing and letting go—no defense of "possessions," no defenses against intimacy with other people and with all of creation. Paradoxically, letting go allows us to encounter and relate to all things, all people, all life.
Francis gloried in every facet of existence—light and dark, life and death, summer and winter, water and earth, wind and fire, birds and rocks, music and silence, friars and lepers—knowing they were a reflection of the essence of God. He gives us freedom to live fully in the world we love, by showing that everything we see and know and feel can be a fruitful way to seek God. There is no need to fear any of it.
Susan Burke is member of the Portiuncula Fraternity, Secular Franciscan Order in West Virginia.