Assisi. I'll just confess to some dissonance here. We visited there today — an ancient walled, mountain city a short taxi ride from Spello. It is a beautiful town — fingering its way up and around the hillside; majestically overlooking the valley below and the panoramic view all around. It is a place of heft and depth — an ancient city that wears its heritage like the precious garment that it is. It is a place of magnificent remembrance — the breathtakingly simple surrounded by the breathtakingly opulent and grand. It is the home of Francis, poster child of concern for the earth and all that dwells therein — the sun, the moon, the smallest animal to the fiercest predator, lovingly embraced and affirmed as an integral part of God's grand design; Francis, the devotè of the poor and the weak and the small — venerated here by the grand, the gold, the immense, and the ostentatious.
Therein lies the rub. The city and its edifices are beautiful. The arches, the frescoes, the gold leaf and the ornamentation. Artistically, they are inspiring, monumental, awe-filling and staggering. It is all, in a word, moving. And I believe that Francis — the focus of it all; Francis, the advocate for the small, the poor, the "least of these" that God views as precious — must be rolling over in his venerated grave.
In short, I think he would be appalled at what's been made of and spent on his legacy.
He who stripped naked in the public square in solidarity with the poor.
He who threw money — and his clothes — at his parents in repudiation of their capitalist values.
He who gave away all he had and lived in poverty, berating the rich and challenging his Pope on behalf of those with nothing.
One of our guide books called attention to a particular fresco high on the ceiling above the altar in the Basilica's lower nave. It depicts a risen Francis, ensconced in heaven, seated on a throne and clothed in a rich, golden robe — the celestial reward for an earthly life of obedience, chastity, and poverty. The suggestion seems to be that in heaven he received all the luxuries he had forsaken on earth — the ultimate delay of gratification; heaven as the religious version of the appliance salesman's fantasy about being a rock star in that old Dire Straits song, where you get "your money for nothing and your chicks for free."
But I rather suspect that Francis would be puzzled by the notion that he had sacrificed anything in his embrace of simplicity; rather, that he had simply chosen the life that God desires.
All of which is to say that I'm conflicted. I loved it. It is beautiful. I was moved by it — indeed I was inspired by it. And I was appalled by it, all at the same time.
And I am relatively certain that as long as there is a hungry person begging on the street (as we encountered from time to time); as long as there is a homeless person sleeping in the shadows; as long as there is a disenfranchised person begging to be heard; as long as there is an animal endangered or a landscape brutalized or clearcut...
...Francis wouldn't darken the door of any of these shrines erected in his honor. He would have more important work to do. At least admission is free, even if it does cost .50-euros to use the bathroom.
It was, then, an awfully wonderful day, and one that will helpfully trouble me for some time to come.
In the meantime, I'll pray with him:
O most high and glorious God,
Enlighten the darkness of my heart.
Give me right faith,
Certain hope,
Perfect love
And deep humility.
O Lord, give me sense and discernment
In order to carry out your true and holy will. Amen.
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