St. Francis of Assisi: Divine Fool

Francis of Assisi stands as a symbol that peacemaking is a thinkable endeavor even in a war-wracked world such as ours. Doing so, however, requires us to exchange the world's wisdom for divine foolishness. The world will not understand.

Early on, Francis did not understand either. Growing up in a bellicose era, his aspirations fitted the temper of the times. He bedecked himself in human armor and fought with human weapons. In time, however, he experienced a conversion. Thenceforth he no longer battled flesh and blood with physical weapons. He fought instead against war and its causes with charity and humility and persuasion.

Francis' world, so like our own, suffered interminable pangs of violence and war. He grew up in a home whose walls were decorated with implements of war and whose rooms resounded with tales of knightly daring. Francis the child, doted on by a rich and indulgent father, played the war games children his age played. Francis the youth, therefore, dutifully donned resplendent regalia and marched off to war when the powerful Perugian militia threatened. Unhorsed and taken captive, he spent a year or more in prison. But when Assisians mounted a new campaign, against Apulia, the undaunted Francis prepared to join the battle.

Here, however, the bubble burst. A lengthy illness and now perhaps a dream the night before or the sight of a poor knight in tatters pricked it. Whatever the causes, the erstwhile knight dismounted, undressed, and gave horse, armor, and all to the poverello, and traipsed off to the fields to pray and to dream about another kind of warfare--one fought not with human arms but with love and persuasion.

Francis discovered in the Gospels the evangelical principle of non-resistance to evil. Better stated, he learned to surrender himself into God's hands for the overcoming of evil. Thus he set out on his own crusade, as Bonaventure said, "not to kill, but in hope of being killed."

Francis died, of course, long before Europe's senseless strife came to an end. What value, then, was there in Francis' resistance? Did it count for something or for nothing? More to the point for us, does such "foolishness" matter now?

Historians cannot speak dogmatically here, but I would venture these comments. Francis acted as what I would call a "horizonal" person. In the new perceptions that came with his conversion he embodied an outlook which many others felt but could not articulate, an outlook from beyond the horizon of his own age. What was important was that he acted with faithfulness and resoluteness on the light he possessed. Obviously he could not pursue his plan on the basis of a proven outcome. Had he waited for the action to prove itself, he would have done nothing.

Fortunately, in the midst of a confused and complicated set of circumstances, Francis came to know not only Lady Poverty but also Lady Simplicity. He cut through the labyrinth of rationalizations and analyses which paralyze human action and attached himself to Jesus' command. More than anything else, he yearned to follow Jesus. "The only weapon which he would use against the wicked," Sabatier wrote, "was the holiness of a life so full of love as to enlighten them and revive those about him, and compel them to love." He learned to live by dying.

Francis' bold effort to convert the Sultan al-Kamil in Damietta perhaps epitomizes his outlook and offers some insight into the value of peacemaking efforts today. On the surface Francis seems to have failed. Certainly he did not win the sultan. However, as John Holland Smith has noted, Francis at last felt an inward satisfaction: "He had come one step closer to Christ and the Apostles." And he gained new insight into himself. "Until this moment, he had never known the limits of his courage; now he knew that he would dare anything for Christ."

We can have no assurance of success. Yet, to echo Mother Teresa, we should act anyway, knowing that God did not call us to be successful. Rather, he called us to be faithful.

E. Glenn Hinson was professor of church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky when this article appeared.