By Brother Walt
I sat there for hours in the crypt beneath the grand Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. People moved slowly down the center aisle toward the stone sarcophagus of Francis. Some carried candles. Many had tears in their eyes. Four of his earliest brothers are buried in the corners nearby.
Eight hundred years later, they still come.
That’s what has stayed with me.
They come from around the world to stand, if only for a moment, before the remains of a man who wanted almost nothing. A man who spent his life moving away from status and possession and toward simplicity, poverty, relationship, creation and God.
The irony of the place is impossible to miss.
Francis would almost certainly have hated the grandeur built around him. He would have railed against it. The basilica is magnificent, but it’s also the very opposite of the life he chose.
At the end of his life, Francis asked his brothers to strip him even of his simple habit and lay him on the bare ground. He wanted to die with nothing between himself and the earth.
And yet above him now rises this vast monument.
It’s not the grandeur that draws people though. It’s Francis.
Even during his lifetime, his movement grew by the thousands. He had no social media. No platform. No strategy. No brand.
He simply lived in a way that people found compelling.
Francis Bernardone, Francis of Assisi, was a simple man who spent his life trying to live and proclaim the Gospel. He didn’t merely talk about love, humility, peace and care for creation. He tried to embody them.
He had the audacity to take Jesus at his word.
People saw that. And they still do.
I was drawn to Francis when I was a teenager. I’m not sure I could have explained why back then. Maybe it was the simplicity. Maybe it was the tenderness. Maybe it was the radical freedom of someone who seemed so uninterested in the things the world tells us should matter most.
Whatever it was, the Franciscan thread never left me.
It’s run quietly through my life for decades. And now my vows of simplicity, fidelity and humility have become touchstones for me. Not accomplishments. Certainly not virtues I’ve mastered. More like markers that keep pointing me back toward the person I hope to become.
Francis keeps calling me back.
I think that’s part of why he still matters.
We live in an increasingly anxious and fearful world. We’re surrounded by abundance and yet often feel impoverished. We’re connected to everyone and still lonely. We consume information constantly and struggle to find wisdom. We accumulate things and worry that we don’t have enough.
Our culture teaches us to promote ourselves, protect ourselves and prove ourselves. Our politics increasingly teaches us to fear one another. Even Christianity can become preoccupied with power, influence and winning.
And then there’s Francis.
Not the sentimental garden saint with birds perched on his shoulder. The real Francis was much more demanding than that.
He moved toward people others avoided. He crossed boundaries. He embraced the leper. He sought peace in the midst of war. He saw the sun and moon, wind and water, animals and earth as kin. He wanted the Gospel not merely believed, but lived.
Maybe our hunger for Francis is telling us something about our hunger for another way to live. A simpler way. A gentler way. A life less defended by possessions and status, less frightened of the stranger, more attentive to the earth beneath our feet and the people standing beside us.
I haven’t mastered that life. Far from it. But Francis has been calling me toward it since I was a teenager. My vows of simplicity, fidelity and humility still call me back when I wander, as I often do.
Eight hundred years after his death, perhaps that’s why the pilgrims keep descending into that crypt.
Francis still reminds us that another way is possible.
Happy Feast Day, Brother Francis.
