St. Francis and the Christian Life

A Disorderly Parable of the Epistle to the Galatians

April Love-Fordham

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781532636356
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

How do we live the Christian life? April Love-Fordham and her husband contemplated this as they retraced the footsteps of Saint Francis across the Italian wilderness. Did they need to renounce materialism and live more simply? Did they need to do more work serving those in need? Was more Bible study or a stronger prayer life needed? What made their commitment to Christ different than those committed to other faiths? How could their lives make a difference?Love-Fordham was planning a lecture series on Galatians, written by the Apostle Paul, when she and her husband began their pilgrimage. As they journeyed into the life and legends of Saint Francis, a playful old-school Franciscan monk befriended them. Together, the three named the parallels and divergences in the lives of Saint Francis and Paul. In doing so, they discovered an entirely new--but ancient--way of following Jesus.This book teaches Galatians the way Jesus taught: through parables. In this case, the parables are about Saint Francis. Each section ends with a spiritual practice designed to help readers discover their own unique way of living the Christian life.

Part 1

Rest and Restlessness

1

Pilgrimage to Assisi

My husband and I woke to cool dry air drifting into our open windows along with the morning sun. The second floor of the cream ashlar farmhouse had original pine hardwood floors and roughhewn ceiling beams.1 We would be spending the next four weeks here. My husband would be taking a desperately needed rest, and I would be making gentle progress on research for a fortnight class I would be teaching the following spring. Unbeknownst to me, my work would eventually proliferate, although not overnight, into this very book.

Our tired legs had been hiking for exactly eleven days on the Cammino di Assisi.2 We’d been staying mostly in refuges offered by churches and monasteries along the way. We felt a profound sense of accomplishment at this, our second to last stop before completing the pilgrimage. This was a planned detour between Valfabbrica and Assisi. This agriturismo was a working organic farm whose specialty was oil from the Leccino olive tree. In fact, the rows of olive trees we could see from our windows were filled with olives. The harvest would begin in just a little over a month.

Assisi was only a day’s hike away, but we had planned to take a month’s break from the trail and finish our pilgrimage into Assisi on the eve of St. Francis’s feast day. The agriturismo, with its comfy king size bed and spacious en suite bath complete with an antique claw-footed tub and separate shower, was a luxurious step up from the community sleeping quarters and sleeping bags we had been crashing on for the past eleven days. Oh, and don’t let me forget the smell of homemade bread wafting in from the kitchen of the farm building attached to ours via a modern glass breezeway. It was all an indulgent delight.

Yet, we couldn’t stay under the vintage matelassé comforter too much longer. Today was the celebration of the Cavalcata di Satriano—a reenactment of the dying Francis’s final return to Assisi. We had a two-mile uphill walk to get back to where we had passed the Satriano historical marker on our hike in the evening before.3 The marker had a serious but enchanting warning: “Wayfarer who approaches this place, do it in the silence of the mind and in the peace of the heart.”

The marker memorialized the place where the cavalieri, or knights, had stopped for dinner with the blind and dying Francis in tow. We wanted to get there a bit early so we could stand where we could get some good photographs of the reenactment. The Knights of Assisi, on their way home from fetching Francis in Nocera Umbra, were to pass through on horseback about half-past noon.

The climb was uphill and hard, not because it was truly difficult, but because we had just walked 177 miles and were exhausted. Though we would occasionally pass a house and could see a farm here or there in the distance, this was considered the edge of the Italian wilderness. We saw no cars and no animals except for a flock of white ducks, who had befriended a longhaired white dog and were lounging together on the white stone strada. Not a human being was in sight. When we reached the ridge, we could see Rocca Maggiore, the larger of the Assisi castles, sitting five miles away in the distance, sandwiched in the dip between the towering Mount Subasio and the Umbrian hills. Hiking this ridge as the sun was setting behind Assisi on our way in the night before had been spectacular. Like a cloth dip dyed in the colors of the rainbow, the sky transitioned from light blue to yellow to peach to pink to purple. Then as the sky touched the mountain, Assisi sat where it had sat for more than two thousand years wedged in safety between the rising hills. Soon we passed another agriturismo and spotted the historical marker just ahead and a sign pointing us to La Cappella Satriano, a very tiny but sturdy stone chapel set in a clearing in the woods.4

I looked at my husband and he looked at me. We were the only ones there. As we thought about it, we concluded we were indeed in the middle of nowhere so how had we ever expected a crowd would turn up? Nevertheless, the brochure said the knights would pass by Satriano in thirty minutes and there would be a Mass. Well. We plopped down on the middle of the three stone stair steps leading into the one room open niche and reread the brochure.

It wasn’t long before we heard a rustling in the undergrowth beneath the craggy green trees and for the first time noticed a narrow, unpaved path in the woods leading to the chapel. Towards us walked a Franciscan. Later my husband would refer to him as an “old school” Franciscan. He had on a tunic, but it wasn’t the rich brown one we had seen on every other Franciscan we had met on our journey. This one looked more like a faded burlap sack—not the kind Marilyn Monroe had modeled in support of the Idaho potato. No, this one was far less form fitting and had been patched uncountable times. Presently, it was splitting at the side seam above his ankle and could use some work. Covering his shoulders was a mantle made of the same material with a hood sewn onto it. Around his waist was a white cord. He had a beard and bowl cut hair streaked with gray. He carried a sling bag made of blue fabric over one shoulder. And he was barefoot. Where his feet weren’t dirty, they were notably ashy and dry.

The friar’s gait was peppy—almost dance-like. He smiled and then bowed deeply upon reaching us. It was such unusual behavior that, in retrospect, it made us both a little nervous. In unison, we got up from the steps and stood aside making way for him to enter the chapel. But it wasn’t the chapel he was interested in it. It was us.

“Buongiorno!” he sang out as he reversed his swan dive and stood in perfect mountain pose. No yogi could have mastered the asana better. Looking from one of us to the other with eyes wide and hopeful, the little lines around his eyes crinkled. He grinned ever larger at our muteness, making us even more suspicious that perhaps he was not all there.

My husband was the first one of us to speak. He held out his hand and offered a buongiorno back. Then apologized with purtroppo, parlo molto poco Italiano. It wasn’t quite true. My husband, after having his DNA tested and discovering he had Italian roots, had actually spent many late, but short, lunch breaks sitting in his clients’ cafeterias learning Italian from an app on his phone. My husband is a linguistic genius. The talent extends to software languages too. Hence, his profession of computer programmer has been perfect for him. At any rate, he had learned Italian and according to his app was now 93% fluent. Right now, however, he just didn’t want the challenge of keeping up with this odd little character in the woods.

“But I speak English,” the little friar offered again almost singing it out with palms up outstretched toward us and no hint of an accent.

Rattled, neither of us asked how he knew we spoke English or where he had learned the l...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: Rest and Restlessness
• Part 2: The Way Lost
• Part 3: The Way Found
• Part 4: The Way Forward
• Appendixes
• Bibliography