A Book Review of "Francis of Assisi" by G.K. Chesterton
In 1939, Gilbert Keith Chesterton published an account of
the life of St. Francis of Assisi, titled simply “Francis of Assisi”. It,
having been written in 1939, was intended for 1940s Christians. Chesterton
often uses old English references that require some thought to understand. The
content, however, is relevant in all ages. There is always a difficult dynamic
between religion and business. The relationship Saint Francis had with his
father, is emblematic of this dynamic. In many respects, anyone could be the
“next” Francis of Assisi. Even though the life of Saint Francis seems extreme,
he lived simply by the Gospel, in light of Heaven. We may not be called to
renounce the world to the same degree, but no less we should seek to live as
much as possible by the Gospel, in light of heaven. Francis’ life is living
proof that the Gospel can be lived. In another work Chesterton has said, “The
Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found
difficult; and left untried.”.[1]
Both the life of Francis and this quote call us to live lives transformed by
God. Principally, if there is one thing that Francis wishes to demonstrate is
that the Gospel can and should be lived. Chesterton was inspired by this saint
so in love for Christ that He spared nothing in His service. Having understood
this, even if the publication would have been most easily read by 1940
Catholics, I feel Chesterton was eager to share the life of someone who was fervent
to share Christ (few are so quick as Francis of Assisi).
Chesterton feels, and indeed I believe it is true, that one
cannot understand Francis of Assisi apart from his relationship and love for
God. After understanding that Francis lived his life as much as possible
according to the instruction of Christ in the Gospels, one comes to realize
that to interpret Francis’ life apart from the New Testament is to think of a
businessman without a career. Chesterton often reflects on other biographies of
Francis doing just that. Chesterton goes so far as to insinuate that one cannot
give a worthy account of Francis without having been Francis himself. If all
Christians sought to live as God would invite them to, their lives too would
make no contextual sense apart from a relationship with Christ Himself and His
teaching. Chesterton uses very colorful language to describe to the best of
nearly anyone’s ability to understand Francis’ life. He summarizes Francis in
saying Francis enjoyed nothing the same as all if not anyone else. This
witnesses to the uniqueness of Francis, that Chesterton desired to capture. In
Chesterton’s view, the one thing Francis might have wished to convey with every
moment of his life was the Gospel. Francis lived to demonstrate that “He was
ready to own himself wrong about anything else, but he was quite certain he was
right about this particular rule [of life].”[2]
As Chesterton first enumerates, there are three possible ways
to dictate the life of Francis. The first: without any religious reference,
second: with only religious reference, and third: a combination of the two (He
uses this method). Francis was one passionately in love with Christ, whether he
found Him in sacraments (prayer, the Eucharist, etc.) or sacramentals (created
things, but especially men). To Francis, religion was not a theory but an act
of love. Chesterton, then, establishes the context of the Saint’s life, the
Middle Ages. After explaining man’s fallen state, he reveals that during
Christendom man’s worst sins are today’s lightest. As he begins to account for
the beginning of Francis’s life, Chesterton stops to discuss that often modern
history, would seek only to write the conclusion without an introduction or
even part of the body. Francis’s name was more of a nickname because His father
was a businessman and thereby Francis had gained access to and a love for
French poetry. His life would later become the poem and Christ the poet. During
his life, before he had discovered what it meant to be Catholic, Francis was
moved to give to a beggar what the beggar was not owed. However, he had lost
the beggar, and left his parents’ merchant booth without a care except for this
beggar and went in search. This would become an allegory for the rest of His
life. Francis then joined the fight for Assisi and was captured. Yet in the
presence of the person who may have been responsible for their capture, Francis
was as if he were everyone’s greatest friend. Francis was moved by the honor of
chivalry and dreamed of arms. However, a second dream came to contradict the
first and led him back to Assisi. On his way back he met a leper, whom he dared
to kiss, and this leper too disappeared. After his loss of esteem, he prayed at
a shrine of St. Damien and was called to repair it, as Jesus spoke through a
crucifix. After dedicating some of his father’s goods to this end, his father
took legal action against Francis. At this moment all his life had been put
asunder, he then moved to serve the Lord and the Lord alone. He threw the only
clothing and money he had in his father’s direction and turned his back on
society, as he sent himself into an exile surrounded by frosty wilderness. He
went about it singing. In his exile, he worked to restore the church of Saint
Damien. He then went about restoring additional churches.
For Francis, he encountered everything as though it was a
product of its Source i.e. God. He never considered a created thing a product
of accident, but as a character in God’s story. In doing so, he lives as a
witness to God’s transcendence and he sought to transcend life and death
through Christ by recognizing himself in God’s poetry. Though he encountered
many even at the same time, Francis never saw society as a single creature but
saw many images of God and all of them unique. His radical life was a cause for
delay in approving his order. Pope Innocent III was only accepting of Francis’s
way of life after he had a vision of Francis holding the Lateran Basilica, and
a Cardinal advocated for the lifestyle of Francis. This cardinal defended the
life of Francis by asserting the Gospel is livable and Francis may be proof. Francis,
being born of sin and worldliness then finding the heights of penance
desirable, serves as a witness to Christ in a way hitherto unprecedented by a
living witness. He sought martyrdom by Muslims but was only made to be heard
and kept alive for such audacity, both by miracle and charity. He mirrors the
life of Christ in a way that all men are called to but few understand. However,
he did not seek only that he might become so, but he led his brothers that they
may be so with him. In regards to the Crusades, he might have wished they come
to an end, however not by blood but by the realization of truth in the heart
and mind. Francis was given a mountain (Alverno of the Apennines) when
intruding upon a knighthood ceremony for the sake of spreading the Gospel.
Francis, in an ecstatic vision on this mountain, received the stigmata. After
such a vision he began to lose his sight. However, all these aspects of his
life are yet presented simplistic and quantitative as opposed to actual
(qualitative and quantitative).
If the fact the Francis was driven by the supernatural was
unapparent in his life it would be in his death. He had followed Christ at the
glimpse of a vision, abandoned wealth for the sake of Christ, and even became a
living mirror of the crucified Christ. In his death throes, he had the
semblance to insist upon leaving the world in the same way he had initially
left it, upon the ground will nothing on but a hair shirt. Like Christ Himself,
Francis seemed to be giving life to God the Father not just in reparation of
sin but to give life to something new. Like Christ Himself, he began his
journey in the humblest of ways and ended it likewise. Yet, he did so without
being divine, hence there is no doubt it was God Who sustained Francis in all ways.
He then is a wonderous proof of the life we could live; a life and death for
love of Love Itself with no concern but the coming kingdom.
I have scarcely come to know a saint without reading their
own writings. However, while reading this account one comes to stand halfway in
the door of St. Francis’s life. The way that Chesterton describes aspects of
St. Francis of Assisi’s life is nothing short of colorful. His account evokes
emotion and understanding of Francis. This book gives the reader an image of
watching an older sibling accomplish the greatest of things. This creates a
three-fold cause of joy: 1) knowing that his accomplishments were difficult but
possible, hence I discovered I can open my mind to live the Gospel more openly,
joyfully, and without reference to the world, 2) having that loving pride as
one watches someone you love to receive what they had so much longed and worked
for, and 3) knowing they accomplished it amid trial and tribulation all the
while obeying all of what Christ said while receiving all He promised.
I have come to understand the worth of writing a documentary
of something often reiterated, i.e. a saint’s life and even a famous one, such
as Francis. In fact, for the very reason, I mentioned above; that Chesterton
was eager to reveal the life of someone unhesitant to not only share but live
the Gospel. I would be compelled to say that to speak of St. Francis is to
speak of Christ, especially in terms of the path to heaven.
I had initially questioned why I should read and write about
someone I already know so much about and yet don’t understand. However, by
analyzing the life of St. Francis, I have come to understand him well enough
that I comprehend what further knowledge of him would require, death. Through
Francis, and this essay on his life, I have come to know vicariously why one who
would live the Gospel should do it not holding to anything but God Himself. One
comes to realize what the Carmelite reformers had as their precedent. Teresa of
Avila has recalled a time when the cloister was nothing more than a wall to see
through. However, in their efforts, it became only a briefly and scarcely open
window into their way of life, primarily their principal dedication, prayer. In
this way, the religious orders reformed themselves in a method first
demonstrated by Francis: that is the acceptance of poverty resembling and
consummating the turning away from the world that monasticism and living the
Gospel truly requires. St. Francis has also witnessed by his love of creation,
that nothing worldly should be dealt with unless it is dealt with for God.
However, not dealt with just for love of God, but for the care of that which is
His, in Francis's first case the Church of Saint Damien. This may be an
allegory for the entire Franciscan mission and life; not only that the
buildings in which God can be found present (the Church, churches, and man)
need rebuilding for their own sake, but also for the sake of their role in
God’s all-loving, all-encompassing plan.
