He told me I am to be a new kind of fool in this world…
- The Mirror of Perfection
The long narrow chapel, dark like the bowels of a galleon, had smooth white walls, which were barely perceptible in the dark of the evening. It had once been a barn, in its former life back in the late 19th century when it was part of a working farm, and so, it was a very simple and undemanding building (as is fitting for Franciscans). There was no ornate architecture, just the exposed wooden rafters, which, having been stained black, were hard to make out in the gloom. The small, plain, yet neatly ordered windows along the walls let in just a faint suggestion of moonlight. The chapel, sitting down low in the sweeping crook of a remote hill in the Dorset countryside, is one of those places that is secluded enough to not suffer the unfortunate glow of light pollution. All the interior lights were off so the space had an almost eerie feel as every available corner was swallowed up in darkness. I could not make out the far end of the chapel at all. All was quiet save the few muffled whispers outside of the chapel doors, no doubt making preparations for the imminent service, as well as the shuffling of sandals on the cool brown stone tiles, and the slow steady breathing of a few dozen people deep in silent prayer, or at least, attempting to be. A single row of unadorned pews lined the walls on either side, leaving the middle of the chapel with it’s diminutive and modest altar just about open to view.
For just over a century, Hilfield Friary has been a place of prayer, work, and retreat in the Dorset countryside, offering a serene haven from the throes of being human to all manner of pilgrims, waifs, and strays. I found myself one such pilgrim staying at Hilfield for a retreat in February of 2019.
The land on which the modest Friary is situated consists of several buildings, the majority of which, such as the aforementioned chapel, started life as agricultural buildings. There are also a number of cottages and guest houses, vegetable gardens lined with polytunnels - which provide year round sustenance to the community - and a small graveyard for the brothers. Its southern boundary is flanked by the wooded hill, but northward, save for the odd copse dotted throughout the landscape, the view is entirely taken up with arable fields.
The community consists of a small number of that rare breed of Anglican Franciscan brothers, as well as a smattering of volunteers, some young families, single people, married couples, and one or two octogenarians who it seemed were living out their final years glued to armchairs in the Friary’s library. Given that the brothers seldom seemed to don the woody-brown habit unique to the Franciscan orders, it wasn’t always possible to tell who had “taken the vows” and who had not. Whether this was deliberate didn’t matter to me. I found it to be a beautiful mystery that I could not so easily distinguish between the Friars and other members of the community. The rule of life that the brothers lived by, seemed to uphold the entire community regardless of whether or not all had taken the vows.
The Franciscans became a mendicant religious order in the 13th century, mendicant being the operative word, literally meaning “a religious order of beggars.” The Franciscan vows are, like most religious orders, a profession of commitment to a consecrated life of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. A rope with three knots in it worn about the waist of their habits, known as a cincture, reminds the Franciscans of their commitment to these three “evangelical counsels” as the Catholic church calls them. Franciscans, of all types, following the pattern of their namesake St Francis, seem to major on the first of those three counsels, poverty.
Before long, an elderly brother robed in a tatty brown habit entered the chapel gently swinging a small thurible. The incense was thick and filled the atmosphere within seconds hindering visibility even further and filling the nostrils almost to intoxication. Despite being someone who had once been well accustomed to having their lungs fumigated from years of cigarette smoke, the incense was so dense I had to stifle a cough in an attempt to not break the silence and serenity of the chapel. It now seemed as though not only light but also air had been forced out the building. But it wasn’t uncomfortable, quiet the opposite in fact. It was almost like an intense embrace, like a small child burying their face deep into the chest of their parent. I felt enclosed, safe, and warm, as though in utero.
Behind the smoking thurible, another brother followed bearing a single candle. That one candle was the only light present throughout the entire service. It’s delicate glow cast long kinetic shadows around the room as it flickered with the movement of the brothers’ footsteps, before settling still upon the altar. We were to celebrate ‘The Feast of the Presentation of Christ at the Temple’, also known as Candlemas, which concludes the Christmas-Epiphany season. That lone candle in the incense filled gloom was a deliberate symbol echoing the the apocalyptic invasion of Christ’s radiance into a world darkened by Sin, as recorded in the beginning of John’s Gospel;
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
- John 1:5 (RSV)
And, more specifically, the profession of old-man-Simeon in Luke’s Gospel upon taking the infant Messiah in his arms at the temple;
Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.
- Luke 2:29-32 (NRSVue)
I don’t remember much else about that service. I do recall that a slender and modestly dressed postulant from the U.S., probably in his late-30’s, gave the sermon. I can’t remember any of what he said, but I do remember thinking that it was one of the most affecting and yet simple sermons I had ever heard. I don’t necessarily think the best sermons are ones that are memorable, but ones that simply open up and exhibit the Gospel in all its glory and let it speak in the moment, memorability is an added bonus. Just as I don’t always remember what I had for breakfast a week ago, but I know it was good for me in some way, so too was this sermon nourishing to my soul.
I do remember his face as he spoke. The young soon-to-be-novice stood behind the candle, which glinted in his piercing eyes, and gave his big bushy beard and unkempt hair a warm glow. He spoke, in a soft north-western accent, without any notes, rooted to the spot. There were no dramatic stories, or wild hand gestures, or attempts to gee the small congregation up into a frenzy. It was restrained, considered, and delivered with a gentle grace. His skill as a preacher was letting the Gospel speak for itself. He did not get in the way of it, instead, he made a way for it.
Since the “rediscovery” in the mid 1800’s of the great medieval Saint (outside the Roman Catholic Church that is), St Francis has become arguably the most revered of medieval saints. The life and ideals of St Francis have been a prevalent feature in the Catholic Church’s religious orders since his death in 1226. But it was only in the last two centuries, at the dawn of the industrial age, that the resurgence of romantic sentiments towards medieval saints, especially Francis, has been felt in the protestant traditions. Francis’ legacy is now as wide as it is long with Franciscan orders of different denominations across the globe from South Korea to the United States. To try and understand the Franciscan tradition you cannot escape or ignore the man whose adoration and devotion to Christ, lead him to lead a life of wilful poverty and asceticism.
Francis’ historical situation is important when trying to understand and interpret his life. He straddled the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the dawn of medieval Christendom. In his masterful biography of the panhandling saint, G.K. Chesterton (best known as the author of the Father Brown books, but also an esteemed theologian and philosopher in his own right) described this epoch as the “twilight of the morning.”1 Chesterton noted three defining societal shifts which drew the world out of the so-called “dark ages” and into the “light” age of classical antiquity:
Firstly, the Feudal system was slowly taking hold. Those who were formally slaves became serfs, with more autonomy of their own land and property.
Secondly, reforms for parish priests introduced by Pope Gregory VII sought to reduce and eradicate financial corruption which was rife amongst clergy.
Thirdly, the Crusades in the Holy Land were well underway with young men being sent off to war seeking glory and martyrdom.
Chesterton used these early medieval movements as examples of the “penance that followed paganism.”2 It is in this atmosphere of penance that the young Francis appeared on the scene.
When I first arrived at the Friary, having recovered from the nauseating drive around tight winding country lanes, there didn’t appear to be anyone around, as most were out working tending to the vegetable garden, or in the nearby towns and villages. Unlike monastic orders, which stay within the confines of the monastery or the convent (the root word of Monk is monos meaning “to be in solitude and seclusion”), Friars go out “into the world”, travelling around, preaching the Gospel, raising money, and tending to the poor and needy, before retreating back to the Friary. Friars have an active presence in local communities, as of course the second most famous Franciscan in England after Francis himself, Friar Tuck from the legend of Robin Hood, made conspicuously clear (by that token it would appear that Franciscans also did a lot of drinking!)
It was a cool February afternoon, the trees were mostly bare, and the sky was grey with a distant threat of rain. On my hunt for life around the Friary I heard a creaking and snapping sound coming from the courtyard, which sat nestled between the brother’s dorms, the food hall, and the chapel. As I turned into the courtyard, there in one corner was a man in plain tattered clothes working on an object about six-feet-long atop two trestle legs. He looked up at me briefly and without so much as a sound or a smile he nodded and gestured towards the reception, before turning his attention back to his craft. The sound I had heard was that of willow rods being bent into shape and forced into place to create a wicker basket.
At the reception - which also doubled as a fusty old gift-shop selling wooden crucifixes and crosses “from the Holy Land”, vials of Holy Water, and cheesy Christian gift cards with flowers, puppies (?!), and Bible verses on - a white haired woman with thick glasses acknowledged me. She too seemed to be very busy doing some kind of inventory of the gift-shop. But, paying a little more attention to me than the solemn craftsman in the courtyard, she made a quick phone call to the brother who would welcome and show me around.
A youngish friar, who it turns out had not long joined the community, soon came and met me at the reception. His brown hair and beard, also unkempt, almost perfectly matched the colour of his brown habit. He was second in command to the Brother-in-charge, was very well spoken, slightly camp, and seemed to harbour a bundle of nervous energy. He showed me the hall where we’d eat together, the chapel, the library, the gardens, and finally to my room in one of the cottages. It was a diminutive and simple room with two single beds (fitted with the kinds of bedsheets you’d expect to find in a Grandparent’s house), a sink, a writing desk with a lamp, and a small window overlooking a field of sheep. There was nothing on the pale-blue walls save for a small wooden crucifix.
Before he left me, I asked the brother about the man in the courtyard. It turns out the stony-faced craftsman was also one of the brothers, in fact he was the only one who was also ordained as a Priest in the Church of England. I asked my host about what he was making, he told me that another of the brothers was in a nearby hospice, a middle-aged man, who had been part of the community most of his adult life, but was nearing the end of a long fought battle with cancer. The wicker “basket” that the priestly friar in the courtyard had been weaving, was in fact his brother’s coffin, who would soon join a generation of others in the small graveyard at the northern end of the friary, to become food for the worms, and to return to the “dust” from whence he came.
Two of the most significant characteristics of St Francis’ life were his love of poverty and nature; two distinct themes, yet for Francis, virtually indivisible from one another. We might think the former too morbid to enjoy the latter, but for the Italian saint, his love of nature grew out of his sense of call that he should live in poverty after the manner of Christ and the Apostles.
In his typical style, Francis personified both poverty (who he dubbed Lady Poverty, somewhat resembling “the personification of wisdom found in the biblical books of Proverbs and Wisdom.”3) and creation. Indeed much of Francis’ outlook, attitudes, and action, is to our modern minds difficult to comprehend, as Chesterton put it, he poses “a great challenge to the modern world.”4 Saint Bonaventure, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas and a Franciscan Catholic Bishop living the century after Francis, neatly summed up the Saint’s attitude to worldly and material goods when he wrote:
“No one was so greedy for gold as he was for poverty; nor was anyone so anxious to guard his treasure as he was in guarding this pearl of the Gospel.”5
Francis’ greed for poverty, came in stark contrast to his upbringing. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant and a noblewoman, it was said that in his youth he “threw money about both in extravagance and benevolence, in a way native to a man who never, all his life, exactly understood what money was.”6 Francis never understood it because in his youth he was never without it, and subsequently he also couldn’t fully comprehend poverty until he embraced it. Upon his conversion and calling by God money and wealth became completely alien and un-Christ-like concepts to him.
Perhaps the most significant motive for committing to a life of poverty occurred when Francis was taken to court by his own father. When praying in the ruins of the church of St. Damiano, Francis had a mystical vision of Christ, who told him to restore the Church. He set about it immediately, selling off his horse and several bales of his father’s cloth to pay for the restoration. Needless to say, Pietro Bernadone, Francis’ father, wasn’t in the least bit pleased about his son’s delusional and reckless religious fervour, and in a fit of rage he dragged him to court, where Francis is said to have first made his vow of poverty, renouncing not only his possessions but his father too saying:
“Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernadone father, but now I am a servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.”7
It is then said he left the court in nothing but a hair-shirt and went out into the cold winter of Assisi singing joyfully as he went, and for the remainder of his days Francis lived in abject poverty. He was of course inspired by Christ’s own poverty, he who “had nowhere to lay his head” and lived his life dependent upon the kindness and benefaction of others. Francis so idealised this christological concept of poverty, that to him it was the greatest of all virtues, and all others flowed from it.
The first rule of the Friar Minors made use of Jesus’ words in the gospel according to Matthew:
“If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.”
- Matthew 19:21 (KJV)
So important was poverty to the Franciscans that this verse was taken quite literally. The second rule says of any new brothers:
“If he be willing and able, with safety of conscience and without impediment, let him sell all his goods and endeavour to distribute them to the poor.”8
Having always lived in towns and cities, part of the charm and serenity of Hilfield was the silence. But it is not a quiet place per se, it simply lacks the noise and bustle of the urban environment. No mopeds speeding by like angry hairdryers on wheels, no tire roar, no dogs barking, no boisterous gangs of youths hanging out by the alleyway near your house, no sound of construction. I found that this more selective silence lent itself to an increased awareness of the sounds of nature.
Breakfast with the brothers was always had in silence, or at least there was no speaking. You had to come up with inventive ways of gesturing to someone to ask them to pass you the salt. Besides that there was the scrape of cutlery on cheap ceramics, the rustle of books and newspapers, and the sound of the brother’s masticating, some noticeably louder than others.
On one of the mornings, I was so engrossed in my book that the hall had pretty much emptied save for the Priestly Friar who sat reading a newspaper behind me, and another ancient looking brother with the kinds of thick lensed glasses that magnify ones eyes to comical proportions. He stopped over a bowl of sodden cornflakes, eating them at a painfully slow rate. All of a sudden, the calm quiet of the room was violently torn asunder by another “sound of nature” when this elderly brother let out a deep guttural noise out of his rear end that resounded throughout the room with a powerful timbre. I stifled a laugh only to find that both the remaining Friars in the hall proceeded to chuckle to themselves - it was the only time I saw the Priestly Friar smile.
I was gladdened to discover that farts are still funny even in religious communities.
The challenges and pressures we face are no doubt very different to those faced by Francis and his brothers, but the Franciscan attitude towards poverty poses a significant challenge to our world today. The culture of individualisation and materialism that we in the northern hemisphere have fostered, means that we have turned excessive wants and luxuries into needs or must have’s. But if, like Francis, we are to attempt to imitate Christ then there comes a point at which we must get back to those most basic, simple and intrinsic needs of life and steer clear of the superficial trends of the 21st century.
The virtue of poverty has other remedial properties for our hurried existence. It necessitates a certain kind of patience which we seem to be lacking in ever greater measure. Thanks to the technological advances of the past few decades, we can have everything we want, but we must have it fast, with next day delivery, despite the fact that someone, some-many no doubt, along the long line of production and delivery pays a high price for our impatience. Desires are not typically fulfilled swiftly for those living in poverty, who have to work harder and wait longer for even the most basic of necessities.
Certainly in Francis’ day the virtue of poverty made life slower, perhaps less predictable, but it also left open the space needed for the human imagination to “connect the dots”; that is, to recognise one’s dependence on those who grow your food, or make your clothes, or dispose of your waste, and especially ones connection to creation. Despite globalisation and technology, we have become less interconnected, less imaginative, less connected to where our produce comes from, and ultimately less human as a result of our desire to construct the lives we want quickly. It is a painful irony today that the cheapest way to live is also often the most damaging both to producers and the environment.
The vow of poverty also serves as a means of identifying with the poor, this was something that Francis himself certainly did as he worked amongst the outcasts of his day. The challenges the poor of today face may be very different from twelfth century feudal Italy, but even with state social care and support, that need for solidarity with the poor, to draw alongside those who have the least, is easier done when you aren’t distanced with property and possessions. Francis went after poverty wholeheartedly, as Chesterton put it:
“It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food.”9
And echoing the words of St Bonaventure, Chesterton also wrote: “He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.”10
Voluntary poverty is meant to be a joyful vocation. St Francis lived out the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:19: “Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal” (NIV). As he died it is said that he wished to be laid on the bare ground “to prove that he had and that he was nothing…
And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man.”11
He who was born into wealth and riches died dispossessed and penniless, and yet the happiest man there was. All this is not to say that we all need to become Franciscans and live lives of extreme poverty and asceticism, even Francis was aware of that, but the world would certainly be a much kinder place if, after the manner of Francis, we all at least shared his sense of needing nothing but relishing everything.
Francis’ life of joyous poverty is very much linked to his love of creation. “It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St Francis said…
“Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.”’12
Precisely because of his poverty Francis expected nothing, and precisely because of that he began to enjoy all of God’s creation. Francis viewed creation with an eschatological hope which had been enabled by his reverence of poverty. “An examination of his writings and biographies…” writes Timothy Johnson “…reveals him as the embodiment of Paul’s most fervent hope for creation. […] Nature will be set free only if and when humanity is freed in the flesh through the death and resurrection of Christ.”13 A key theme of Francis’ love of creation, of all things elemental, is that he recognised in it the humility of God. God, in his humility, accommodates himself to us in the incarnation. Christ in his humility accommodates himself to us in the Christian community, and in bread and wine. God occupies the elemental, he is in nature just as human beings are made in his image. It is in this light that Francis could use such familial language about the sun, or the moon, or fire and so on.
“The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things.”14
He did not enjoy creation for its own sake, but he enjoyed it because of its createdness, “the world around him revelled in the in-breaking of God’s grace.”15 As Richard Rohr put it:
“The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The first Bible is the Bible of nature.”16
Francis could almost be accused of being a pantheist, put the old pagan notion of the elements themselves being gods had been purged in the first millennia of penance since Christ’s incarnation. Francis was more akin to a panentheist, that is, he encountered the one God of Israel, the Father of his Lord Jesus Christ, through creation, not in it. The sun and moon were not the objects of his praise, but the channels of his praise, as he says in The Canticle of the Creatures: “Praise be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars”17
It’s no wonder that St. Francis was made the patron saint of ecology in the Catholic Church, and again it seems Francis’ affection for creation very much speaks into our reality in the present. As our world sleepwalks into a climate disaster brought about by human negligence, the voice of St Francis’ with his familial love of creation penetrates not just the Christian heart, but every human heart with any sense of responsibility. As Petà Dunstan puts it, “It is not nature in its richness but now in its fragility that makes an appeal via Francis still relevant.”18 Francis understood very well Paul’s words in the book of Romans:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
- Romans 8:19-21 (NRSVue)
He understood these words as his responsibility as a steward of creation, caring for it like it was his own family. This again is the challenge for Christians today as we respond to the needs of our world. Choosing not to respond is to subject God’s gracious gift of creation and all its creatures to the bondage of decay, which, given our dependence on the earth, means our own destruction. As Sam Wells put it, “Creation will recover regardless, it’s whether or not we will with it.” In order to love God through creation, as St. Francis did, creation needs to be allowed to flourish, it must be loved in that platonic familial way.
On my last day at the Friary, I took to wandering the path that had been laid down through the woodland on the banks of the south eastern hill. I had walked through that beautiful wood several times in the few days I had spent at the friary. The path wasn’t especially clear, but well trodden enough to make out nonetheless. Much like the rest of the friary, the woodland was serene, arguably more so as it was slightly removed from the complex of buildings where the community lived and worked. Here was a true place of solace. A perfect patch for what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing.” It was the kind of woodland, in the kind of place like a friary, where you could allow yourself the time and the space to pay close attention to your senses. I would close my eyes, and pay attention to the sounds; the rustling of leaves, the song of a Robin, the creak of the tree trunks. Then I would pay attention to the smells; soil, ivy, moss, bark. Finally, I would open my eyes and let it all flood in.
On this last day, as I ambled through the woods, I was trying to make sense of the experiences I had had over the last few days, reflecting on the community, their way of life, their life of prayer and worship, and their devotion to Jesus led by the example of St Francis. Part of me yearned to be here, to not leave and have to go back to my home. I wanted to summon my family to Hilfield and move into one of its cottages. I went over and over in my head romanticising and idealising the whole thing. But I felt a small sense of despair too, knowing that that wasn’t possible, that I hadn’t been called to this life.
As I let that realisation sink in, I stopped in front of a tree to pray and “bathe” again. I must have strode past that tree each time I had walked through the woods. And it was almost as if - but could in no way be possible - that what I then saw when I opened my eyes again to the tree had only just appeared there, just for me, for I had not noticed this striking feature before. As I looked up the length of the tree trunk my eyes caught sight of a figure, a body hidden amongst the ivy, his skin the same colour as the bark, moss creeping over his body, a crown of thorns upon his head, his arms spread wide, pinned open in an embrace of love…
I fell to my knees as I felt the weight of Christ’s apocalypse crash over me. And in that moment it all made sense, no matter where I went, or what I did, Christ would be there, waiting in every possible future reality, waiting to surprise me. I could appreciate and admire the community at Hilfield, I didn’t need to join it to experience life as they did, all I needed, like Francis, was Christ.
St. Francis was indeed “one of the strongest and strangest and most original personalities that human history has known.”19 His love of poverty is perplexing to any mind, but his denial of worldly goods, his asceticism, and his pursuit of simplicity and humility brought him a deep joy. He had removed many of the barriers that stand in the way of humanity and God. This wasn’t because Francis thought he could earn his salvation through self-denial, or merit God’s favour by doing good works, but because he deeply intuited and rejoiced in God’s superabundant gift of grace. His self-denying lifestyle was simply the obscure manner in which he responded to that grace. Through a life of owning nothing he was able to clearly appreciate creation in its fullness, and through which he offered God his praise. As we reflect on Francis’ example today, this Creationtide, we have much to thank him for and much which we can attempt to emulate, precisely because in this great saint we see the mirror of Christ. As Chesterton said:
“St. Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun, but it is also much nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more visible. Exactly in the same sense St Francis is nearer to us, and being a mere man like ourselves is in that sense more imaginable.”
Francis was so enamoured with Christ above all, and he sought always to never stray from living in Christ’s shadow. And so for us today, Francis unlocks some of the mysteries of Christ. Francis his life, his ministry, and his community, all reveal Christ to us in a measure of grace.
G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi (Nashville, TN: Sam Torode Art Books, 1924). p14.
Chesterton, p16.
Kenneth Boxter Wolf, The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). p31.
Chesterton, p21.
Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). p239-240.
Chesterton, p18.
Chesterton, p18.
Dwight Goddard and Z. El Bey, The Complete Writings of St. Francis of Assisi (XinXii, 2017). p. 59.
Chesterton, p33.
Chesterton, p43.
Chesterton, p44.
Chesterton, p40.
Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Francis and Creation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael J.P. Robson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). p. 143.
Chesterton, p40.
Johnson, p145.
Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media, 2008). p13.
St. Francis, ‘Canticle of the Creatures’, 1224, http://franciscanseculars.com/the-canticle-of-the-creatures/.
Petà Dunstan, ‘The Ecumenical Appeal of Francis’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, p285.
Chesterton, p45.