The Death of Saint Francis of Assisi (La muerte de San Francisco de Asís), by the Spanish artist José Camarón Boronat, housed in the collection of the Museo del Prado anddeposited at the Real Basílica de San Francisco el Grande in Madrid.
By Br Millard
A Word Before Beginning
This was written for the Transitus of 2026, the eight hundredth anniversary of the death of Francis, and it is set down here for two kinds of reader. The first is any sibling who has been asked to preach at a Transitus service, or is thinking of offering to, and privately suspects they are not qualified for it. I am not qualified either. I am a newcomer to this family. I do not claim to be an expert on things Franciscan, and I do not play one on television. What I have is a Rule, a stack of sources, and a growing suspicion that the argument of this piece applies first to the person making it. Francis picked up the stone that was in front of him long before he understood what he was building. A sermon is a stone in front of somebody. Pick it up. The second is anyone who wants to dig a little in the soil under this tradition, which runs deeper and richer than its garden-statue reputation suggests. I have tried to show my work: naming Celano where an account is early and Bonaventure where it is a later reading, giving the Umbrian of the prayer before the crucifix and the Latin under the vows, and letting the Rule of the Community of Francis and Clare hold the whole thing together. The headings are there so the piece can be raided for parts. The texts and the reading list at the end are there so nobody has to take my word for any of it, and where I have got something wrong, and I am certain I have got something wrong somewhere, I would be glad to be set right by siblings who have been walking this road longer than I have. One practical note. It is written to be spoken on the night itself. The habit laid out, the candles around it, and the bread about to be broken are really in the room, and the present tense means what it says. And a word about what all of it is finally for. The goal is not information, and it is not even instruction. It is to be spiritually present with Franciscan siblings across the centuries who have gathered in that simple room with our beloved Brother and Seraphic Father Francis as he passed from death to fuller life. Eight hundred years of them have knelt there already. This night exists so that we can kneel there too. Everything else in these pages is scaffolding around that one thing.
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