faith

Levertov / Dust

A Gift
—
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
the gift is your answer.
—
–Denise Levertov
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A New Proposition

—
“Faith is not being sure. It is not being sure, but betting with your last cent… Faith is not a series of gilt-edged propositions that you sit down to figure out, and if you follow all the logic and accept all the conclusions, then you have it. It is crumpling and throwing away everything, proposition by proposition, until nothing is left, and then writing a new proposition, your very own, to throw in the teeth of despair…
—
Faith is not making religious-sounding noises in the daytime. It is asking your inmost self questions at night and then getting up and going to work…
—
Faith is thinking thoughts and singing songs and making poems in the lap of death.”
—
–Mary Jean Irion, 1970

A Man For All Seasons.

The Position of Rule: A Richly Embroidered Tapestry

and a Decision of Foundation

Looking at the interplay of rule, or politics, and faith, it would appear that one must make a difficult decision of foundation, or of hierarchy. One must say in the end either that faith is a tapestry richly embroidered with the things of this world, or that worldly affairs are a tapestry sumptuously illustrated with (alternately troublesome and useful) religiosity. The tug-of-war between these two possibilities runs throughout the English Reformation creating societal havoc, finding its expression even today in the British subconscious. There are only a few positions that can be taken on this subject, and each had meaningful impacts on society as well as profound implications for one’s personal life during the English Reformation. These positions are crystallized quite clearly in the situation between Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. The following rulers’ deteriorating sense of reverence also shows the visible and the invisible battling each other (most notably the contrast between weak and swayable Catholic Mary Tudor and charmingly shrewd Protestant Elizabeth I). And finally there is the inscrutable genius Oliver Cromwell who managed a rather messy balance between rule and faith – tho which is on top is difficult to tell and one could say it flip-flops a good deal in spite of his keeping everything in hand for some time. The Puritans in general, however, were much more inclined toward the first option than the second, and would even go so far as to take out much of the worldly embroidery, preferring the cloth of faith to be as plain as possible.

Sir Thomas More’s situation with Henry VIII, as portrayed in A Man For All Seasons reveals the struggle between the things of heaven and the things of earth in an astoundingly clear and honest way. More struggles even in the beginning of the film with his prominent and powerful position, having to deal with bribes and maneuver honestly in his communication and dealings between the people he is beholden to and the people he loves. It is obvious that he has a code of some sort that he operates by, and we soon find out that that code is his deep commitment to the Catholic faith and to God. Near the beginning we see him stating to the Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey that he wishes the country could be run by his prayers, and Wolsey (in essence) telling him he is a fool. Wolsey has been caught up in the midst of the complications of state and has seen how ‘running the country’ works for some time. He is very familiar with the intricacies worldly embroidery introduces to the simple, honest kind of faith that More speaks out of, and tells More that acting out that simple faith exactly while still in the world is the mark of a naive fool. Ironically we see an almost perfectly parallel scene next, when Sir Thomas reaches his house and the young man Richard is there, asking if he will help him to become a lawyer. More shows him a bribe that he received and gives it to him as a gift, tells him that the life of a lawyer is simply more complicated and difficult than that of an ordinary man if lived uprightly, and that therefore Richard should become a teacher. The Lord Chancellor, on the other hand, names Thomas More as his successor.

Thomas More is for a time in Henry VIII’s favor as Lord Chancellor, favor bestowed and wrested away like a flash of lightening according to worldly needs. Henry’s wife was bearing him no sons, and he soon became convinced that her miscarriages were directly due to the fact that he was being punished because she was his brother’s wife. He demanded a divorce from Catherine of Aragon on the grounds that they couldn’t have been made husband and wife by Church law anyway, and he became increasingly infatuated with the stand-offish Anne Boleyn. Sir Thomas More, now Lord Chancellor, never publicly condemned the divorce, but neither did he condone it. The film has a brilliant conversation between the Henry and More where More quietly refuses to give his blessing to the marriage, dancing nimbly around the things which would incriminate him as a traitor and yet still refusing to lie in order to please the king. Politics and worldly desires have trumped all else for Henry in this situation, such that all he can think about is his need for an heir and his passionate interest in a woman who could solve his problem. He is even willing to use religion as a shield for his actions, wanting the blessing of the honest More such that he can hide behind it from his own eyes. In the end, as even his shield condemned him, he decided to take over the rule of the Church as well. Now the king of England was the Church, and he could elaborately adorn his political threads with any kind of spiritual support he desired. This represents a complete inversion of the tapestry.

Mary Tudor, Henry VIII daughter by Catharine of Aragon, came to the throne at age thirty-seven in 1553, lonely and middle-aged. An attempt to characterize her rule might include something about ‘weakness’ and being ‘easily swayed’. Having come to the throne at such a late age without a husband, having lost her youth and beauty, she desperately desired a fulfilling relationship and an heir. Throwing caution to the winds, she married Philip of Spain, who ultimately despised her and went back home. They had no children. She was left devastated. The pursuit of love could be seen as her idol, perhaps, introducing far more instability into her life than she otherwise would have had. Philip even convinced her to go to war with France and Calais was lost (1558) as a result of the expense and the forced fighting. Daniell portrays Mary as an extremely devout Catholic, rising early in the morning for private masses, fasting half the day, and working diligently until late in the night (104-105). I wonder, however, about this. It seems that her priority was being loved, and in the absence of earthly love from Philip, imposing Catholicism on the country was her solace. Poor Mary grasped at the beautiful worldly pictures on the tapestry and was devastated when they broke loose and came out of the fabric: no longer anything but a jumble of thread. Life being devoid of the beauty she so desired, in her last years she resorted to dogmatic punishment of a world which couldn’t hold her hunger.

Elizabeth I reigned in stark contrast to Mary Tudor; through charismatic charm, wily wit, worldly wisdom, and bravery, she ordered the world about her to her liking. She played people like keys on a piano and arranged them like pieces on a chess board; it is clear that she used the strengths of her womanhood to her advantage in this way, never letting them hinder her. It is said that Elizabeth tried to put off difficult decisions and applied herself mainly to maintaining a broad stable plane of power through gaining loyalties by way of relational maneuvering. She focused on political stability rather than on religious unity (Daniell, 104), as the practicality her position as ruler meant far more to her than a clean heart — or making other people’s hearts clean. She was predisposed to Protestantism, however, and remained the head of the Church (the heritage of Henry’s reign), although she attempted to mitigate the position. Elizabeth I is far more adept at dealing with the world and its affairs than Mary Tudor was, but faith seems to be relegated somewhat to a backseat in her reign as a consequence. Her reign moves the throne back a few steps closer to the insolent inversion of Henry VIII.

Puritan Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England after Charles I’s beheading. The Puritans had been growing in number and were by this time quite influential. Oliver refused to be named King, but preferred the title of Protector which was supposed to restrict his power and give connotations of a more representative government. The Puritan ethic is strict and simple adherence to spiritual law with as few worldly trappings as possible — almost monkish in its dedication to the un-earthly, yet with a curious emphasis on personal experience and an extreme distrust of symbol and ritual. Put in a position of power, a Puritan is in as tricky a situation as Sit Thomas More was in A Man For All Seasons. Cromwell is difficult to figure out, as he often seemed to sit in a suspicious manner almost solely upon military power. Some think that he was an evil genius, but on the other hand he managed a despicably intricate and difficult situation with at least some semblance of balance for quite some time. He believed in democracy, ‘godly rule’, and tolerance (although we’ve all seen where those values go wrong too brittlely held). There are hints of untoward things at play in his political rule, such as notable (though isolated) cruelty and the dissolving of Parliament under pressure from the military (Daniell, 132). Overall, however, the Puritans would place faith and the spiritual at the core, as the fabric upon which worldly things are embroidered — with extreme care. You must choose your chains, and ideally you will be free of them completely.

So we see that Henry VIII was a winner, refusing to trust in what he could not see and wishing only to need to trust in himself. Mary Tudor was weak and lacked discernment, trapped by her own longings. Elizabeth I lost sight of her own true goal in her brilliant mechanizations of everyone else’s reactions to her. And creed-driven Oliver Cromwell slipped up in many areas, seeming to have the correct goal in mind but unsure of how to make his power manifest so as to benefit his people. In the difficult interplay of rule and faith one must found one’s life and rule on one or the other. If one is not sublimely sure of the solidity of faith, it will seem a poor foundation for rule. One must say in the end however either that faith is a tapestry richly embroidered with the things of this world, or that worldly affairs are a tapestry sumptuously illustrated with religiosity.

Every ruler must ask whether they will take faith as a basis, or necessity and the affairs of state. If the leader is insufficiently convinced of faith’s solidity, faith will deteriorate into religion and become just another brick in the wall with some leverage in important places. Sir Thomas More took off his chain of office when it required that he bind himself invisibly with lies. The kind of vision that he shows in A Man For All Seasons is incisive and clear; he sees in every situation where the needle has carried the world’s thread through the fabric of faith, and he knows when he wants to take out the stitches. He is able to see what kind of trappings he’s getting into with each commitment of his self, and is able to abdicate when necessary to preserve his spiritual life from being poisoned. The scene with his friend who implores him to give it over and approve, who asks him why he is so stubborn and proud that he will not yield even in this one instance, is very revealing. He accuses More of trying to save himself by works, in effect, saying that they’re all stained and there is no reason for More to try and avoid this one more splash of mud. More looks at him, utterly separate and unswayed, and the look says everything. His mind rephrases the question: Why don’t I consciously invite decay into my own life and make myself accomplice to the decay of my country? Because there is more to life than worldly embroidery. Because life is founded on faith, whether I wish it or not. And later: “Richard,” you can hear him saying still, with sorrow in his eyes, “what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, and yet forfeits his soul… But for Wales?”

c. Mary Kathryn Gough (more pictures coming)
note: Both notably insecure for one reason or another, James I and Charles I, one taking up where the other left off, took the divine authority of kings to its logical conclusion, engaging in the ultimate power-trip. James, sharp and suspicious, was satisfied as long as neither the Catholics or the Puritans threatened his power — though he meddled as he saw fit between the two in an attempt to play the peacemaker (Daniell, 115-116). He joined a Protestant union of princes, but had no qualms about putting those who had helped Elizabeth to death, which would seem to indicate a lack of sensibility to the relevance and power of the intangible world. It held no terror for him; it was a tool. He even tried to legitimate his homosexual relations by referencing Christ’s relationship with John (Daniell, 118)! The state of his Parliament is described in one word “addled.” James overall found not much use for Parliament. Charles, however, went so far as to rule for eleven years without Parliament at all! He called it ‘the personal rule’, although some historians have called it ‘the eleven years of tyranny’ (Daniell, 121). Charles had married a Catholic, and his attempts to impose religious uniformity, combined with the other strife-inducing factors of his reign, brought about the Civil War, and finally a remnant of his own Parliament sentenced him to death on the premise that there would be no peace while he lived. Was Charles attempting to live according to his own beliefs, or according to his own desires? I feel that from the information I have, I cannot properly say.

Marykathryn Huffman / 2.24.06 Prof. Bratt / STBR 312 Essay # 2 / Mary Kathryn Gough (married)

A Legend & A Life Story: Who was Saint Francis of Assisi?

A Legend and A Life Story:
Who was Saint Francis of Assisi?

St. Francis of Assisi’s spiritual life was unfathomable even to those around him while he lived, but they attempted to write about him nonetheless. Many contradictions exist in the literature about him, in the things he is said to have accomplished and events that purportedly occurred throughout his life. Countless historians, wanting to understand him within the context of their own views and beliefs, have made him an object of study. However it has proven to be a most arduous task, considering the many differing religious agendas behind all the written works of that time. Just as there are today, forces were at work beneath and beyond any kind of kinship or loyalty to the truth. It turns out that a surprising amount of sifting must be done in order to get any kind of a clear picture of who Saint Francis really was. The man has become a legend. He is almost a myth to the average person now, considering the fact that many associate his name not so much with the man he was as with the stories they’ve heard about him. It can be startling to remember that he was a real person with a concrete history– and an even more concrete spiritual life. This paper will analyze and compare two texts written by a select few men who accompanied St. Francis on some portion of his journey through life– The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano and The Legend of Three Companions. These particular two texts are both well tailored to this project and seem to be most reliable, as the authors lived with the saint and were close to him. First the paper will analyze where each text came from and the reasons it was written. Then, while striving to look deeply into who this saint really, truly was, comparisons and contrasts will be made between the contents of the two at several crucial points (his youth, conversion, and the tone of his spiritual life). Finally, among the conclusions drawn from the information found in our two texts, the question will be addressed again of whether we can know who Saint Francis was or whether we must take the ‘packaged’ version of his spiritual vitality and wisdom.

The Texts

The first text chosen for this paper, often called the Vita Prima, was the first written account of the Saint’s life, composed by Thomas of Celano between 1228 and 1229 at the order of Pope Gregory IX.1 It was intended as a kind of ‘literary monument’2 to the new saint when he was canonized. According to the editors of The Saint, which contains our translation, a full three-fourths of The Life of Saint Francis is “dedicated to conversion, promotion of the gospel, and his example and teaching of Christian holiness.”3 As the introduction to the piece so articulately points out:

“At a time when heresies abounded, crusades failed, and the struggle for power between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy intensified, the poor and humble follower of the gospel, Francis of Assisi, offered an alternative way of Christian living.”4

It is more than possible that Pope Gregory intended to use this ‘literary monument’ simply in order to stir up new life in the Church. The papal influence in the writing does not by any means entirely conceal who Francis was however; the document is still centrally about him, about revealing who he was— even if it was arranged by a hand and mind attuned to ecclesiastical necessities.

The Legend of the Three Companions, on the other hand, was written by three men who knew Francis personally and lived with him for years. Their names were Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. The work is believed to have been composed between the years 1241 and 1247, but the source of the commissioning this time was from within the Franciscan Order. Crescentius of Iesi, the head of the Order, felt that the reforms which had occurred during his predecessor’s time had the potential to wipe out the origins of the order. As he watched the many people who had truly known Francis dying, leaving nothing behind but stories and sayings passed along by word of mouth, he saw that the young who replaced the old were so numerous that size began to outweigh content. Crescentius observed the tide of men joining the Order and, seeing the possibility that the brothers would forget who they were, where they had come from, and why, he sought ways to preserve some sort of authentic knowledge of the man who had founded it.5 In order to resurrect the memory of Saint Francis, Crescentius ordered Leo, Angelo, and Rufino to write down everything they knew about him. Thus was born The Legend of The Three Companions. This text focuses on the saint as a man— the focus needed for our purposes. These three men did not want to simply recount all the miracles Saint Francis performed; those had already been documented and written about many times and competently enough. They wanted to express the heart of this man (the heart which the growing Franciscan Order needed to keep conscientiously as its heart, its core). In their own words:

“We do not intend merely to relate miracles, which demonstrate, but do not cause sanctity. Our intention is to point out some striking aspects of his holy manner of life and the intention of his pious desires, for the praise and glory of God and of the holy father Francis, and for the edification of those who desire to follow in his footsteps.”6

The texts were written for different reasons by different people, at the requests of other people who had their own purposes– even the authors themselves had particular and unique focuses they couldn’t get rid of if they tried. Digging through all of that is hard; it is difficult to know when to trust the sources and when to take what is given with a grain or two of salt. But it is best to remember that (1) these are some of the best resources we have (biased and tweaked as they most probably are) and (2) that this very situation is where comparison and contrast fit best into earnest research, purifying our knowledge of each chosen subject along the way— quite a bit like scientific experiments do.

Drawing Comparisons

Everyone agrees on certain things about Francis of Assisi. All detail him as a man touched by God, a man with a strong sense of calling and an incredible devotion and love for his Lord (as well as his chosen bride: the shiningly beautiful Lady Poverty). In his youth, before his conversion, he was a cloth merchant, and rather well off from the sound of it. The texts agree that he was not particularly attuned to virtue at that time and that he spent enormous amounts of money on lavish feasting and trifles, although differing greatly in their assessment of the basic inner attributes behind these actions. They explain his conversion with some differences as well, although providing these explanations within roughly the same mold. These two things are basic disagreements between the writings, both specific enough to analyze closely. But throughout the text of each a far more subtle thread is woven, showing us what the saint’s soul was like. In looking at the two accounts, one sees that they agree in many areas about Francis, but Leo, Angelo, and Rufino paint his inner life in more detail and with a more realistic simplicity.

Youth

The most striking difference between the two texts is the recounting of Saint Francis’ youth. Thomas of Celano was almost unbelievably severe in his account of Francis’s early life, describing how, “maliciously advancing beyond all of his peers in vanities, he proved himself a more excessive inciter of evil and a zealous imitator of foolishness.”7 The very second sentence of this entire work introduces him to the reader, saying that “from the earliest years of his life his parents reared him to arrogance in accordance with the vanity of the age[,] and by long imitating their worthless life and character he himself was made more vain and arrogant.”8 In stark contrast to this, the three companions portray him as “endowed with clever natural abilities…, good natured and generous.”9 The Legend also alludes to his lavishness and his vanity, however it sprinkles praises lavishly even throughout its early description of him. The three companions do not appear to be brandishing the sword of judgement the way Thomas does.

Young Francis often presided over feasts, generously taking care of the expenses for his companions when he partied with them. He was known to be generous and carelessly merry in that way which only successful young men who have lived in plenty all their lives can be. A responsible businessman, he was quite absorbed in his work as a merchant and worldly matters of the richer classes. Soon, though, he began to grow more aware of the many poor and destitute people around him. He had always given alms to the poor, but the Lord began to touch his heart with true sympathy for them. The three companions have a penchant for inserting many small happenings in between the ones which Thomas addresses, like the interaction with the beggar in the store. Francis was engaged in business, deep in conversation with some customer most likely, and a beggar came into the store asking for alms in God’s name. “Preoccupied with thoughts of wealth and the care of business,” Francis ignored him, but later,

“touched by divine grace he accused himself of great rudeness, saying: ‘If that poor man had asked something of you for a great count or baron, you would certainly have granted him his request. How much more should you have done this for the king of kings and the Lord of all!’”10

There are many instances like this, intimate revelations that are completely internal which Thomas of Celano never addresses. He is more concerned with presenting the external, the visible, with the promotion of the kind of Christianity he lived rather than what went on inside of him to cause him to act or be the way he was.

Francis decided after the experience with the beggar that he would not refuse alms to anyone asking in the name of God ever again, and soon “his whole heart was intent

“on seeing the poor, listening to them, and giving them alms. He was so changed by divine grace that, although he was still in secular attire, he yearned to be in another city where, as someone unknown, he would take off his own clothes and, in exchange, put on the rags of a poor man. And he would try begging for the love of God.”11

He began overcoming himself and his fears in small ways, showing mercy to lepers and even accepting the kiss of peace from them.12 Saint Francis acted all the way through his learning process, throwing himself into projects without reserve and coming to a fuller understanding through his acts. This understanding triggered a longing within the saint to dedicate himself fully to the Lord and this grew almost impossibly quickly. The companions say that he “endured great suffering and mental anxiety, unable to rest until he accomplished in action what he had conceived in mind… He was burning inwardly with a divine fire, unable to conceal outwardly the flame kindled in his soul.”13 It took years for the Lord’s plans for his eager and youthful son to come to fruition, but Francis had the willing spirit necessary for the process.

Conversion

The tale of the saint’s conversion contains so many similarities it should be safe to say either that because of this the story is reliably true most of the way through, or that the three companions used this part of Thomas of Celano’s work and spruced it up to their liking with bits and pieces Thomas did not know and never mentioned. In any case, “The Legend of the Three Companions provides insights into Francis, his youth, struggles with his father, and the emerging consciousness of his call that Thomas of Celano… [does] not have.”14

Once Saint Francis learned to hear the still small voice of the Lord, his focus shifted from worldly things to spiritual things. After a time of confusion and misinterpreted visions of glory (confirmed in both texts), young Francis finally understood that the glory he had been shown was not earthly glory or power— he was to receive physically invisible power, and favor from the Lord of all. He became so sensitive to the Spirit’s calling in his life that he was willing to go anywhere and do anything– give up his whole world and walk about naked and poor for the sake of becoming closer to God. One day he traveled to another city by horse, sold a great quantity of expensive cloth all at once, and left his horse there, wanting nothing more of his material life. But the money bothered him.“Feeling the heavy weight of carrying that money even for an hour, and reckoning all its benefit to be like so much sand,” Thomas tells us, “he hurried to get rid of it. Returning toward the city of Assisi, he came across a church on the side of the road. It had been built in ancient times in honor of Saint Damian and was threatening to collapse because of age.”15 He tried to give the money to the poor priest of that church, but the man would not take it for fear of incurring the wrath of the young man’s parents. This would indicate it was a very large sum, but when the priest repeatedly refused Francis simply threw it on the windowsill and thought no more of it, “begging the priest with all his heart to allow him to stay with him for the sake of the Lord.”16

Francis’ father, in the meantime, had grown worried about his son and “went about like a diligent spy, seeking to learn what might have happened to [him].”17 For a time Francis hid in a cave, praying to God to release him from his father’s wrath and persecution, but soon the Lord enlightened him and gave him courage to return to Assisi and to continue to live in his chosen way. The texts are almost superposable on this point, as The Legend tells us that “he begged the Lord relentlessly in fasting and weeping. Lacking confidence in his own effort and strength, he cast his hope completely on the Lord, who filled him with an inexpressible happiness…”18 Thomas of Celano states that “fasting and weeping,

“he earnestly prayed for the Savior’s mercy, and lacking confidence in his own efforts, he cast his care upon the Lord. Though staying in a pit and in darkness he was imbued with an indescribable happiness never before experienced. Then totally on fire, he abandoned the pit and openly exposed himself to the curses of his persecutors.”19

This is another place which leads the reader of the two texts to believe that perhaps Leo, Angelo and Rufino used Thomas’ work as a guide or a base for their own.

The stories of his return home are virtually identical as well, down to the very greeting he receives from his former friends:

“When all those who knew him saw him, they compared his latest circumstances with his former and they began to reproach him harshly. Shouting that he was insane and out of his mind, they threw mud from the street and stones at him… they blamed everything he did on starvation and madness.”20 (See The Founder, bottom of page 78 for a comparison passage).

Soon word of his return (and word of how the people of Assisi had treated him) reached his father, who “instantly arose to look for him, not to free him, but rather to destroy him.”21

Both texts portray the saint’s father as abusive and greedy. It is true that he did not want his son to dedicate himself to such a hard life, but he also feared it would damage the family’s reputation to be related to a person who scorned everything the world had to give him and was ridiculed in the streets. Francis’ father, in his great pride, and fear for his own well-being, came looking for him, intent on taking him back home and breaking him of his fool notion. He locked him “in a dark prison for several days [and] he strove, by words and blows, to turn his spirit to the vanities of this world.”22 After days of watching her son endure such treatment with great strength of spirit, Francis’ mother pitied him and, while her husband was away, let him out. Francis returned to the Church of San Damiano, and when his father learnt of this he pursued him, bringing him before all sorts of authorities in order to take all of his possessions from him. He even caused the money that was laying neglected in the windowsill of the church to be found and given to him. Francis gladly complied with all of this, even taking off all his clothes, saying “because I have proposed to serve God, I return to [my father] the money on account of which he was so upset, and also all the clothing which is his, wanting to say from now on: ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ and not ‘My father, Pietro di Bernardone.’”23

The three companions do not mention it, but according to Thomas of Celano he even chose for himself an adopted father in the streets, where his father passed by often and cried out against his son in bitterness and anger. Francis instructed that whenever this happened, the adopted father should put his right hand over him and bless him as his father cursed him. This shows that some sort of ingenuity is laced throughout the simple character portrayed everywhere else. Although it makes sense to expect some such creativity from an accomplished businessman, the rest of the texts center on his simple approach to life. To see him so intelligent and responsive in the Spirit so early on is interesting, if nothing else. He was truly, according to both texts, a changed man.

Spirituality

The tone of the two texts is very different as well. Thomas of Celano writes as if he were expressing divine approval; his style is beautiful and enjoyable to read, but written from above with the distinct feel of an Imperial address. It is formal, and intended to inspire awe. The three companions, on the other hand, wrote in a far more familiar way, easily relating to the reader on the same level. This was because it was written in order that it be available to the monks within the Franciscan Order. It was written like a letter from brother to brother.

The tenor of Saint Francis’ spiritual life as portrayed by both authors is detailed with very obviously dissimilar intents. His personal interaction with God is represented more in The Legend, whereas Thomas’s account is in places much more like a pep talk, designed to inspire awe and motivation:

“They [the brothers] never or hardly ever stopped praying and praising God… For when they felt like dozing during prayer they would prop themselves up with a stick, so that sleep would not overtake them. Some anchored themselves with cords, so furtive sleep would not disturb prayer. Some bound themselves with irons; and others shut themselves in wooden cells.”24

Thomas emphasizes every way in which Francis denied his flesh comfort and nourishment, praising him for it with flowery words and poetry, even though it made him almost continually ill (see The Saint, p 266). He speaks often of the Saint providing the people of the Christian world with an example to follow. When he writes that “they were touched in their hearts and were moved to a better way of life by such an example,” he hopes that those he writes to will feel a fire in their spirits like Saint Francis did.25 However The Legend of the Three Companions tells us that although for much of his life Francis “inflicted his flesh with such fasting that, whether healthy or sick, the excessively austere man hardly ever or never wanted to indulge his body[,]… he confessed on his deathbed that he had greatly sinned against ‘Brother Body’.”26 Many of the brothers attempted to follow his extremism, but “the pious father

“used to reprove his brothers who to him were too austere, exerting too much effort in those vigils, fasts, and corporeal punishments. Some of them… seemed to hate themselves. The man of God forbade them, admonishing them with kindness, reprimanding them with reason, and binding up their wounds with the bandages of wholesome precepts.”27

It seems that he was quite willing to learn, and to admit his wrongs in front of the brothers as well as before God. In his last months the Lord showed him many things, and Francis was enraptured upon learning these things from his Savior. Thomas quoted Augustine in describing him, saying:

There was in him such harmony of flesh with spirit
and such obedience that,
as the spirit strove to reach all holiness,
the flesh did not resist
but even tried to run on ahead,
according to the saying:

For you my soul has thirsted;
and my flesh in so many ways!

Repeated submission became spontaneous,
as the flesh, yielding each day,
reached a place of great virtue,
for habit often becomes nature.28

His fervor bordered on unhealthy obsession and probably contributed to his sin against “Brother Body”, but it truly was amazing. We all sin, but his fixation was on Jesus alone, and that is what mattered. The companions tell us that he did not “seek counsel from anyone, except from God alone, and, periodically, from the bishop of Assisi.”29 His zealousness is demonstrated, among numerous other things, in the fact that “many times,. . . having sat down at table, he had barely begun to eat when he would stop eating and drinking, absorbed in meditation on heavenly things.”30 According to the Leo, Angelo, and Rufino, Francis was ‘conformed to the passion of Christ until his death’. Taken by a great illness, the saint remained alive for an impossibly long time, wasting away weak and sightless. Saying goodbye to all his sons, he bade them to

“live in fear of God and remain in Him always, for a great test will come upon you and tribulation is drawing near! Happy are those who will persevere in what they have begun: many will be separated from them by the scandals that are to come. But now I am hurrying to the Lord and I am confidant that I am going to my God whom I have served in my spirit.”31

Francis then asked to be returned to the place where God had first opened his eyes, and after recovering from the journey he summoned two brothers who were close to him and “told them to

sing The Praises of the Lord with a loud voice and joyful spirit, rejoicing at his approaching death, or rather at the life that was so near. He himself, as best he could, broke into that psalm of David: ‘With a loud voice I cried to the Lord; with a loud voice I beseeched the Lord.’”32

What a willing spirit! What beautiful, child-like devotion, patience and strength! The companions say that even in his last months of sickness he was as saintly as ever, “for he loved God with such enthusiasm from the depths of his heart that, on hearing His name, completely melting within, he would burst forth saying that heaven and earth must bow at the Lord’s name.”33 Both texts give him a worthy death; he was brave and strong of will, persevering and continually placed himself in the capable and merciful hands of God until the very end.

Remembering that Saint Francis of Assisi was a real man who born and lived a real life in the flesh can be hard. It might be difficult to fathom how he could have had the real loves, hates, trials, obsessions, and relationship problems that come with such a life. But it’s true. He lived here on this very earth. Saints were and are real people who have made their spiritual lives as tangible to themselves and others as their material life is— and Saint Francis’ spiritual life was so concrete and alive that he became known worldwide and his memory was preserved for centuries to come.

So many people have attempted to untangle the mass of literature about Saint Francis, braving the mountainous religious agendas and the hundreds of years of history leading up to his life and trying to pick out the subtle threads belonging to the truth of who he was. And yet the question remains: is it possible?

In light of the fact that the authors each knew Francis, what are we to think when the stories they hand us do not match up? Was his character as a youth as flawed as Thomas of Celano would have us believe? Or was that simply for the sake of magnifying his later piety? Perhaps there was no other stance Thomas could have taken toward the young merchant-Francis, given that he was writing for the pope. How much speculation was involved in the three companions’ account of Francis’ internal life and the things which happened before they met him? They wrote for Francis and the resurrected Lord Jesus; they didn’t have designs on affecting the bride of Christ, His body on earth, the way the pope had reason to. How much of a bent towards their respective purposes in the world did these man allow into the facts? And why were the conversion stories identical in so many ways? Why are there so many passages that echo each other almost exactly? The texts don’t seem to have disagreements (beside differing insertions and omissions) once they reach the point where Francis committed himself to God and His work. Is this because what we see is fact or because once copied the other? Maybe we’ll never know. But in any case, we receive a very muddled view of the man— even from the most reliable of sources.

Can we know him? Is it possible?

Maybe not. But these things we do know: these men who knew Saint Francis, contemplated him, and wished to be like him— they were not drawn to him because of the things he did as such. They were not awed or inspired by a light shining down from heaven or by the manner in which he was pursued by the Lord as a youth. No, they saw something emanating from the deepest regions of his heart, made transparent by his mode of living such that the Father’s seat within was visible to all. They were drawn to the One who lived in him. Those who knew Saint Francis saw themselves as richly blessed because they were allowed to see God’s mercy, love, purity, justice and strength made manifest in a meek and malleable life. In a broken vessel.

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“Why do we think of the gift of contemplation; infused contemplation, mystical prayer, as something essentially strange and esoteric reserved for a small class of almost unnatural beings and prohibited to everyone else? It is perhaps because we have forgotten that contemplation is the work of the Holy Spirit acting on our souls through His gifts of Wisdom and Understanding with special intensity to increase and perfect our love for Him. These gifts are part of the normal equipment of Christian sanctity. They are given to us at Baptism, and if they are given it is presumably because God wants them to be developed…. But it is also true that God often measures His gifts by our desire to receive them, and by our cooperation with His grace, and the Holy Spirit will not waste any of His gifts on people who have little or no interest in them.”

~Thomas Merton, What is Contemplation?, Templegate Publishers, Springfield, IL. 1950. p.8.

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Katie Huffman / Spring ‘03 Final Paper / Professor Van Liere

1 Celano wrote about the saint often in later years, however these works were more often than not for the brothers of the Franciscan Order.

2 1 “The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano.” eds. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap. J.A. Wayne Hellmann, O.F.M. Conv. William J. Short, O.F.M. Volume I of: Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. The Saint. New York: New City Press. 1999. p 172.

3 The Saint, p 175.

4 The Saint, p 175.

5 “The Legend of the Three Companions.” eds. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap. J.A. Wayne Hellmann, O.F.M. Conv. William J. Short, O.F.M. Volume II of: Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. The Founder. New York: New City Press. 2000. p 61-62.

6 The Founder, p 67

7 The Saint, p 183.

8 The Saint, p 182

9 The Founder, p 69

10 The founder, p 69

11 The Founder, p 73.

12 The Founder, p 74.

13 The Founder, p 75.

14 The Founder, p 64.

15 The Saint, p 189.

16 The Saint, p 189-190.

17 The Founder, p 78.

18 The Founder, p78.

19 The Saint, p 191.

20 The Saint, p 191

21 The Founder, p 79.

22 The Founder, p 79.

23 The Founder, p 80.

24 The Saint, p 219.

25 The Saint, p 228.

26 The Founder, p 76. (Emphasis added).

27 The Founder, p 102.

28 The Saint, p 266.

29 The Founder, p 74.

30 The Founder, p 77.

31 The Saint, p 276-277.

32 The Saint, p 277.

33 The Founder, p 108.

c. Mary Kathryn Gough, 2003

Night *

Elie Wiesel and Theodicy

A reflection paper turned in to Professor Thompson

By Kate Huffman (Mary Kathryn Gough) / REL 131 4/12/04

This paper will respond to Elie Wiesel’s Night, The Trial of God, and his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, probing into why evil is allowed to exist in the world and whether we have the right to blame God for it—or at least whether we have to right to blame Him for not intervening. It will examine various methods of justifying God’s ways in this matter, as set forth by several of the characters in Wiesel’s works (most notably Berish, Mendel, Sam, and the Priest.) Finally, the paper will point out where Wiesel seems to settle, which appears to be where I settle as well, and challenges us to remember the Thou in our dialogue, not forgetting that we are in relationship with God and that our stance toward Him (whatever it is) ought to hold in heart the knowledge that it is intimate in character: a family member’s tie.

Night is the stunning account of a fifteen year old boy who tows us back in time to witness the hell of the Holocaust through his own eyes. Elie Wiesel’s powerful writing strikes terror, sorrow, remorse, and compassion by turn in readers as they encounter the unimaginably cruel and inhumane things he was forced to endure during World War II. I was as blown away by this story as I always was before; I’ve read it three or four times now, and every time it leaves me breathlessly racing with heart-felt thought. Babies thrown carelessly—even laughingly—into scorching flames, bodies of all sizes piled sky-high, crematories scattering the ashes of former friends and family like rain, cruel beatings and passionless killings without number . . . what are we to make of evil made so solidly manifest we can barely keep our food down or remember to desire Life? This terrible sickness drains me, sucks me dry somehow, and I truly feel the need to find real sackcloth and ashes to cry out to God in mourning. Obviously to mourn these horrors is not enough. But my first instinct is to shed tears of revolt and helplessness against the evil and plead with God that it be different. Brought to witness horrors like these, I find myself ever more desperately wanting to know why they are allowed to exist in a universe ruled by a supremely good and all-powerful Being!!! What is the explanation for suffering such as this? How can a supremely good ruler look it in the face and remain whole and Holy?

Theodicy is coined from a Greek word meaning ‘justice’, as well as from the word for God, and was thus originally used to designate attempts to justify God’s ways, or goodness. Now it is more common to see it used when directly speaking of evil and ways of trying to explain our undeniable experiences of it. Theodicies abound as they always have; all religions have one form or another, whether pantheistic, monotheistic, or what-have-you. This is because most everyone accedes that perceived evils must find an ordered place on the shelves of the belief system. Everyone seems to feel that they experience evil, so it must either be explained away or fit into the desired structure. Mostly it is safe to say no one fully succeeds. Christianity has a very complete picture in the end, if not entirely so, and we’ll see why even Elie Wiesel appears to allude to the key it contains for all this thought later.

In his works, Wiesel considers various common theodicies from several points of view and ends up rejecting them for one reason and another in favor of a theodicy pieced together from his past, in view of his present, and looking toward the entirely unknowable future, in which he makes room for the mysterious Being of God within his own memory-full existence while still allowing himself to wade through everything that his experience hands him. In Night, the protagonist initially wonders if all of the suffering is because of committed sins, and then alternately sees the whole experience as something which must be submitted to or as a test although he’s sort of in limbo about the whole thing by then. Near the end of his imprisonment the boy rebels inside, and what broke in him that first day when God died, comes back together with the rest of his being in deliberate defiance and protest. Many in the camps see the suffering as a test, but most of those lose heart and strength—like the one with the deep, heart-breaking voice who (essentially) volunteered for death. In The Trial of God, Berish is most definitely the central character of protest, and probably the one to whom Wiesel feels the most definitively drawn. Mendel the beggar seems to advocate a theodicy of suffering as a test/soul-making—and yet he is strongly drawn to many aspects of the theodicy of submission to the mystery of God’s sovereignty as well (which Sam will endorse, minus the awe and feeling that properly go along with such a response). This is how Mendel is brought to idolatry; his internal drive for knowledge overcomes the heart that has been growing in him, the heart Sam so easily deceives him into thinking that he possesses as well. Mendel falls into the comparative ease of rationalism, finally declaring, “Your love of God: I wish I had one measure of it. Your piety: I wish it were mine. Your faith: mine is less profound, less intact than yours. Who are you?” (p. 158, 168). In this way Mendel loses himself to the stranger, who still refuses to tell him who he is. We find in the end that the stranger is ‘intact’ because all he does is talk, and he feels no qualms about lying with truths. The Priest, on the other hand, has a very traditional (and lamentably very fallen) take on suffering as punishment for sin. Unfortunately this in no way causes him to wish to sin any less. He drinks too much, and he wants to sleep with Maria. He talks about hell, he says, because he always does, and because it’s easy to talk about (TToG, p.93). It is often to his advantage to do so as well. He seems to be internally rifling though a hand of cards every time we see him, desperately searching for the one that will help him win. A very uncourageous soul (but aren’t we all just a bit like that… isn’t it a fair representation of the Church, in a way?).

It is frightening, but easily understandable that in Night, the protagonist’s young faith, innocence and love are aborted in the midst of the shockingly personal suffering and death in the concentration camps. The scars that remain in the man to this day are obvious in his memoirs. And yet, somehow this tested faith—a faith that has wrestled with God and continually comes through still firmly opposing God’s enemies and affirming His all-powerful existence (as Wiesel attests in his memoirs, All Rivers Run To The Sea)—is fuller, deeper, and wider than most. He is faithful in as many senses of the word as one can think of, acknowledging and keeping a hold of all the things he’s experienced, not ignoring anything, and struggling to remain whole in the center of it all. It is his acceptance of two propositions especially that make this a possible quest for him: That it is alright to be angry at God, and that God is to be looked upon with compassion and pity.

The first proposition is that it is alright to be angry at God—it is, in fact, our duty to confidently protest who we think He is within the context of our relationship to Him. As Wiesel says,

“

But if Nietsche could cry out to the old man in the forest that God is dead, the Jew in me cannot. I have never renounced my faith in God. I have risen against His justice, protested His silence and sometimes His absence, but my anger rises up within faith and not outside it. . . Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah and Rebbe Levi-Yitzhak of Berdichev teach us that it is permissible for man to accuse God, provided it is done in the name of faith in God” (ARRttS, p.84).

We must always remember to address the real God in our defiance, however. No matter how hot the burning fire within us is, first we have to know exactly why we are angry and realize that we are defending something— standing up to God for His own creation, which he has given into our care. Then we have to purposefully extinguish our puny, limited caricatures of Who He is, to the best of our ability, and acknowledge the Unknown reaches of the mind of God. (Who has known the mind of the Lord?…) C. S. Lewis wrote a poem expressing the underlying, foundational posture we ought to adopt, acknowledging that “Where God is concerned, all is mystery” (ARRttS, p. 104).

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

We’re all in the same boat, really: without the mercy of God our voices would never be directed properly… but it’s true that we must be faithful witnesses to what we’ve been given. We have to work with the whole of our lives, because that’s what he’s given us. Sometimes that calls for keening and wailing, sometimes it calls for gritted teeth and strength, and sometimes (yes) it calls for the fiery anger and defiance of Wiesel’s innkeeper Berish from The Trial of God.

In that same play, Sam (the unknown character whom everyone seems to have seen before in places of tragedy and who turns out to be Satan in the end) asks the judges of the Purimschpiel court who are putting God on trial if they will judge without preconceived ideas. They respond in the positive. Will they judge without prejudice? Yes, they reply again. And without passion? Thoughtful Mendel immediately says “No. With passion” (TToG, p.136). I think this is extremely significant in separating one of the things that sets Sam apart from the rest of the cast. As Maria says when she first denounces him as evil, “He has no heart, no soul, no feeling! He’s Satan, I’m telling you!” (TToG, p. 116). Passion, evidently, is important to a human response to God. This is another part of what legitimates our being angry towards God.

The second proposition Wiesel accepts that allows him to strive at keeping the faith is that God is to be looked upon with compassion and pity, as the father of countless children who war with each other and sin against one another constantly. God sheds tears at the suffering of his children; He shares in their pain and grief. This seems to be something extremely significant that Christianity and Judaism have in common. Wiesel is right when he references the Zohar—“No space is devoid of God. God is everywhere, even in suffering and in the very heart of punishment” (ARRttS, p.103). Right and true, but how exactly is God present in every space? As Himself. As Life-giver, Love-source, Powerful Redeemer, and so many many other things. “Israel’s sadness,” Wiesel states, “is bound to that of the divine presence, the She’hina: together they await deliverance. The waiting of the one constitutes the other’s secret dimension. Just as the distress of the She’hina seems unbearable to the children of Israel, so Israel’s torments rend the heart of the She’hina” (ARRttS, p.103). This sounds strikingly similar to Christian thought on the matter where we are, together with God, suffering and awaiting deliverance:

“God’s work to release himself from his sufferings is his work to deliver the world from its agony; our struggle for joy and justice is out struggle to relieve God’s sorrow. . . Until justice and peace embrace, God’s dance of joy is delayed. The bells for the feast of divine joy are the bells for the shalom of the world” (LfaS, p. 91).

Christ blesses mourners in the Sermon on the Mount, saying that they will be comforted. We must realize that our anger at and protest against a seemingly disengaged, impotent, or merciless, unjust God are actually mourning which lacks a foundation to rest on, which looks Mystery in the face, sees nothing recognizable, and loses its faith that dialogue is happening. Assuming that a Mystery characterized by love would not communicate with us is just that: an assumption. From what we are given to know, God does dialogue with us, and we must rest in that with confidence—when we mourn and when we are angry (or when we communicate with Him in any other way).

Who are the mourners, really? Nicholas Wolterstorff addresses this in his moving book, Lament for a Son.

“The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God’s new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. . . mourners are aching visionaries. . . The stoics of antiquity said: Be calm. Disengage yourself. Neither laugh nor weep. Jesus says: Be open to the wounds of the world. Mourn humanity’s mourning, weep over humanity’s weeping, be wounded by humanity’s wounds, be in agony over humanity’s agony” (LfaS, p.85-86).

And why does Jesus say this? Because He Himself was open in just this way: because through Christ’s suffering on Earth, our God mourns with us! Again Wolterstorff expresses this admirably, saying “To those who mourn the absence of that day is disclosed already the heart of God. Upon entering the company of the suffering, they discern the anguish of God. . . they hear the sobs and see the tears of God. By these they are consoled” (LfaS, p.88, emphasis added).

Wiesel seems to point to Christianity in a forgiving and positive manner in several places in his writing. For example, when the Priest is dumping on the Jewish faith, Mendel says an amazing thing. He says, “I speak not of Christ, but of those who betray Him. They invoke His teaching to justify their murderous deeds. His true disciples would behave differently; there are no more around. There are no more Christians in this Christian land” (TToG, p.99). The Priest responds, “Is it His fault? Why blame Him? If what you say is true, then feel sorry for Him. If Christ is alone and abandoned—then it’s up to you, His brethren, to comfort Him” (TToG, p.99). Mendel assures Him that one day they would.

In the foreword to Night, Wiesel speaks of another young man with hopeless eyes full of death and torment who comes to visit him, wanting to share asking for an answer to it all. Wiesel says,

“And I, who believe that God is love,… what did I say to him? Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him—the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world? Did I affirm that the stumbling block to his faith was the cornerstone of mine, and that the conformity between the cross and the suffering of men was in my eyes the key to that impenetrable mystery whereon the faith of his childhood had perished? … We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Eternal is the Eternal, the last word for each one of us belongs to Him. This is what I should have told this Jewish child. But I could only embrace him, weeping” (Night, p.x-xi).

God has actually done both these things for us. Sadly, we miss them all too often.

Let your heart bleed for God. Recall in faith that we suffer with Him.

c. Mary Kathryn Gough, 2004