Smith: CH750-c
By the Excess of His Love
Francis of Assisi, Stigmata, and his Cruciform Life of Poverty
Originally written for CH750 Paper 3, December 4, 2012
Bonaventure, a medieval scholastic theologian and philosopher commissioned by his order, the Order of Friars Minor, to write a biography of their founding father, Francis of Assisi, in about 1263. His became the official biography, and to this day remains an important document for understanding its preeminent subject. Francis, who died five years before Bonaventure was born in 1221, had accomplished a significant following even before his death and remains the most popular religious figure in world history, apart from Jesus himself, after whom he modeled his life of voluntary poverty. For Francis, the cross of Christ defines the very nature of humanity and becomes the lens through which he understands the entirety of the faith. Therefore, his life of poverty represented compassion for the poor, since God "for [our] sake became poor"[1] by entering human flesh and submitting to humanity's lot even to the point of death on a cross. Bonaventure reports that Francis received marks on his hands, feet and side paralleling Christ's wounds upon the cross that he calls stigmata, from the Greek stigma.[2] These physical manifestations of Christ's suffering were for Francis two things: death to self in the manner of a cruciform lifestyle, and living in Christ, whose glory is found in the crucifixion. Therefore, the relationship between his life of poverty and the stigmata was for Francis to be "totally transformed into the likeness of Christ crucified"[3] by bearing "the seal of the likeness of the living God, namely, Christ crucified."
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Bonaventure depicts Francis' lifelong reverence for Christ in cruciform. Toward the end of his biography of Francis, Bonaventure describes Francis' initial conversion—the incident with his father where "he stood naked before the bishop."[4] The themes of nakedness and poverty are powerful, but each derives from Francis' understanding of the cross. His adoption of extreme poverty and the gift of stigmata make no sense without the cross. For Francis, life ends and begins at the cross; Christ crucified defines the very nature of humanity and provides the lens through which Francis understands the human condition as revealed by God.
Upon the final consummation of his conversion he goes the second mile by stripping himself of all his personal attire and possessions—even his familial bonds. As in Christ's passion, Francis is beaten, stripped, and shamed. However, this humiliation is not the end for Francis, but the beginning of a life in Christ, a life of a man crucified. When the bishop's servants bring him a "cheap cloak of a farmer," Francis "marked a cross on it with a piece of chalk, thus designating it as the covering of a crucified man… Thus the cross strengthened him to entrust his soul to the wood of salvation."[5] Baptized Christians enter the body of Christ as a people crucified, and in so doing we entrust our souls to a cruciform salvation. It is Christ's "death on a cross"[7] that modeled for Francis a properly Christological compassion, built fundamentally on "the very nature of a servant."[7]
For Francis, therefore, poverty represents compassion for the poor, since God "for our sake became poor"[8] by his entering human flesh. The incarnation, if it is nothing else, is God entering the poverty of bodily humility. God enters the world of human beings in order to suffer with us and for us; compassion comes from a Latin word that combines com "with" and pati "to suffer." Divine compassion represented in the incarnation is a voluntary embrace of bodily humility, becoming naked, poor, and suffering "death on a cross." Majesty becomes humble, the Invisible bares all, the Source of all riches "[becomes] poor," and the Ineffable becomes Word. All "for our sake," all to suffer and die with creation, "groaning as in the pains of childbirth."[9] God is with us; Christ's passion is compassion. His death is our birth.
In an evocative reversal, given that Francis was born to a rich textile merchant, the cruciform lifestyle into which Francis is reborn is a call to rags. So he becomes a "lover of complete humility"[10] and "poverty."[11] He sees his life of faith and adoption of poverty as intrinsically bound up in one another. As God descended to be with his creatures, so his creatures too must descend: "[T]o be a spiritual merchant one must begin with contempt for the world."[12] Francis takes this attitude to its logical conclusion, "renouncing his family possessions and returning everything he had,"[13] and "placing all his treasure and hope in God."[14] He knows that money does not buy salvation; the wealth his father represents is nothing before the riches his true Father in heaven offers. For "those who valued [the love of God] less than money were most foolish, because the incalculable price of divine love alone was sufficient to purchase the kingdom of heaven." Those who privileged money over the love of God were selling themselves short. Francis knew that his new life, a life begun by death on the cross and marked in chalk upon the only covering he allowed himself, was a life marked by compassion the lowest of creatures, even the beasts of the field. As Francis became poor for the sake of others, Christ's compassion entered Francis' own human flesh not just metaphorically, but literally. Bonaventure describes the stigmata as not just flesh appearing wounded by nails, but being in fact the spikes themselves, which were a physical manifestation of Christ's, suffering on the saint's body. For Francis, the "friend of the Bridegroom,"[15] the literal marks pointed toward two figurative symbols held in common by Francis' cruciform lifestyle: first; death to self by a cruciform lifestyle and second; living in Christ, whose glory is in the crucifixion.
In the early church, martyrdom was venerated as the supreme witness to one's faithfulness to Christ, though its frequency faded in the fourth century when the church was no longer persecuted openly by the state. Like Ignatius of Antioch before him, Francis "[hoped] to attain… the palm of martyrdom."[16] However, martyrdom is not suicide, and therefore Francis was not at liberty to accomplish a martyr's death by his own hand. "But the fruit of martyrdom had so attracted his heart that he desired a precious death for the sake of Christ more intensely than all the merits from the virtues."[17] The "red martyrdom"[18] that took the lives of so many faithful slowly gave way in frequency to a bloodless "white martyrdom," wherein one died to self. Through extreme poverty and ascetic practices, the faithful could pursue imitation of Christ more vigorously apart from the distractions of worldly things. The death of their old ways and their old selves could win them a crown otherwise denied them by a state perhaps too friendly with the church. The marks of the stigmata were emblematic of a cruciform life denied martyrdom, "brand-marks of the Lord Jesus"[19] in whose bodily passion Francis could share only in sign, not in reality.
The stigmata were cruciform symbols marking Francis' living in Christ, whose glory is upon the cross. The nail-shaped flesh in his hands and feet appeared "so that he might carry externally in his body the cross of Christ which he carried internally in his heart."[20] Bonaventure wants his readers to interpret the stigmata as both affliction and gift, as imitations of Christ's passion. Francis himself experienced them both with joy and sorrow; they caused Francis pain, such that he could not walk without discomfort, but they also made possible a much more profound union with Christ. Francis suffered with Christ just as Christ suffered for the world, and in doing so, he shared in Christ's glory. After all, suffering precedes glory, for "Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?"[22] The Gospels tell how Jesus showed his wounds to the disciples before they believed. Another saint, Martin of Tours, could tell an apparition of Satan by the absence of the marks of crucifixion,[23] which similarly shows how essential these wounds belong to the early church's understanding of Christ's identity. Christ's glory is upon the cross, the ironic instrument of God's peace that Francis so famously asked to be made.[24] Though his flesh was "not cut down by a tyrant's steel, was yet not deprived of bearing a likeness of the lamb that was slain."[25] Like Father, like Son. Like Master, like disciple.
"For Francis, his life of poverty in imitation of Christ led to such a total transformation that he received "the seal of the likeness of the living God, namely, Christ crucified." The stigmata, therefore, show outwardly what Francis has become inwardly through his life of renunciation and humility."[21] The marks of the cross simultaneously direct and reflect Francis' trajectory, at once a downward social mobility that also acts as the ultimate ascent toward and with Christ crucified. After all, the cross is the lens through which Francis understood the life of faith. The cross necessarily transforms one's life and re-orders the very nature of the world, for Christ was vindicated in his resurrection; everything we thought we knew about death must be up-turned. Francis, like Ignatius, subordinated his own life for the sake of others, for "greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life."[26] Such a posture may seem morbid, but it is the way of the cross. To prepare to die as Christ did emerges from compassion, not contempt. Francis' "contempt" for the world became love for the unloved; when he encountered a leper, the nausea he feels is the very motivator for his kissing the lips of the subject of his revulsion. Hatred is turned to love. If the Man he followed suffered death on a cross, to what other logical end could he move? If poverty of body and soul marks the path to the cross, what happens when there is literally nothing left to give to God, when all you have is the Lords? So it was "by his sweet compassion [that] he was being transformed into him who chose to be crucified because of the excess of his love."[27]
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In the end, Christ blessed Francis with the stigmata because there was nothing left for Francis but to receive—he had no possessions of his own. With two years left on this earth, Francis was given the gift of white martyrdom, one unstained by the blood shed by persecution. The relationship between his poverty and the stigmata was not that of cause and effect. Francis' poverty did not cause the stigmata, but his severe poverty and compassion for the poor reflected Jesus so strongly that "the true love of Christ transformed his lover into his image."[28] The relationship between being poor and being like Christ is imitation; "just as he had imitated Christ in his actions of his life, so he should be conformed to him in the affliction and sorrow of his passion."[29] Poverty imitates both God entering passible flesh and the actions of Christ's own life. When there was nothing left for Francis to imitate, Christ made possible for him not just a cruciform lifestyle, but a crucified body. He was totally transformed into the likeness of Christ in all his glory, which was (and remains) on the cross.
Footnotes
[1] 2 Corinthians 8:9, New International Version. All scripture citations are NIV.
[2] Stigma is the same Greek word Paul uses in Galatians 6:17.
[3] Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 306.
[4] Ibid., 182.
[5] Ibid., 318.
[6] Ibid., 194.
[7] Philippians 2:8 & 7, respectively.
[8] 2 Corinthians 8:9.
[9] Romans 8:22.
[10] Bonaventure, 195.
[11] Ibid., 193.
[12] Ibid., 188.
[13] Ibid., 193, paraphrased.
[14] Ibid., 194, paraphrased.
[15] Bonaventure, 262.
[16] Ibid., 262.
[17] Ibid., 267.
[18] From Dr. Smith's lecture "Bonaventure and Francis of Assisi," November 8, 2012
[19] Bonaventure, 312.
[20] Ibid., 190.
[21] Lecture, November 8, 2012
[22] Luke 24:26, NIV (emphasis added)
[23] Sulpitius Severus, "The Life of Saint Martin," Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 11, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Hendrickson, 1994)
[24] Famous does not always translate to accurate. What is commonly (and inaccurately) known as The Prayer of Saint Francis begins "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…" It's modern form cannot be traced farther back than one century; http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html, retrieved December 1, 2012.
[25] Bonaventure, 271.
[26] John 15:13.
[27] Bonaventure, 305.
[28] Bonaventure, 307.
[29] Ibid., 304.
