Assisi, 2013--what do saints mean for us today?

Last week I was able to take a journey, part vacation, part pilgrimage, to Italy and visit Rome, Assisi, Sienna, and Florence. Here are some excerpts from my journal as I thought about history, saints, and our lives.  

October 8, 2013. I am writing on the train from Roma to Assisi. I was in Assisi once before, in 2006, a trip which was decisive in my decision to move to Portland the following fall. This return to Assisi is one that I wondered if I would ever do. It comes on the heels of a day in Rome, which we spent at the Vatican, seeing the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. Of so many impressions there, I was struck by a few. One was the extensive, ornate gilt of the entire place. By our modern sensibilities it seems overdone, almost garish. It is huge of course; our St Francis church would fit inside one of the many side-bay chapels. Yet this great Basilica conveys the spirit of its builders which was one of a desire for the greatest, the best, and the highest in life. It conveys also the desire to reflect and give a singular quality, which we call Glory. Glory belongs to no human person, but only to God alone, and the Basilica seeks to make that clear with an exclamation point. And yet the entire Basilica in its greatness also reminds us that we are called, not only to labor, suffer, and poverty, but also to certain glory. This is a powerful hope and a powerful vision. This balances out some of the austerity with which I often imagine Christian life, and perhaps allows some wholesome balance. Yet I also worry that the ostentatious quality of the Basilica conveys also a church that is still too wealthy. I fear the day not one stone is left on another, like the vaunted temple of Jerusalem. What will our people feel or think then? Or will they even care? The churches have become museums in much of Europe.

On that note a second observation, which is that I was wearied by the relentless photographing; crowds thronging not to see or experience the divine, but to photograph the place, to be able to say they were there. Constant, constant, constant. Few stopped to gaze, though some did. Most shot photos and moved on. But for a few, perhaps the photo was a way to reverence it. I fell into some traditional Catholic harshness, telling people to be still and, where photos were forbidden, reminding them and interrupting their picture taking.  Here I was a stranger telling people to behave, people I never even met! Where does this come from inside of me? But it did anger me, that there was so little capacity among the visitors to be here with this place, to respect the call for silence and the requests for no photos, and that I myself was finding it difficult to be present.

A third observation was the tombs and mausoleums of the popes. This is remarkable, again, for the tracing through time. Most stunning was to stand before the tomb of St. Peter—is he really buried in that spot there? That amazed me! That man ate and dined with Christ!! And there lies his body! What of the body of Jesus? Where is it? The laws of physics tell me that it lies somewhere, ground to bones, and that his resurrection was a spiritual body, one that left the physical body in the ground. Yet I think our faith insists that the physical body was pulled from the earth. So where does that leave it? The whole thing is a Mystery, one that awes me and is difficult to comprehend, as I gaze at the spot where Saint Peter is buried, the proof that the entire story is grounded in real people, real history, real events. Peter, Paul, these contemporaries of Jesus, stood here in this spot, just some centuries ago, separated from me merely by a stretch of time but not by space! What reverence, what history, here in this place, this cradle of our “western world.”  How many people labored to preserve these burial spots, this place of worship and this sign of aspiration for God, as well as this sign of the mixing of human political aspiration with spiritual aspiration.

Tuesday, Oct 8, evening. We have spent the day in Assisi. The first place we walked was the Basilica de Chiara (Basilica of Saint Clare). Here, looking to contemplate the life of St. Clare. I knew little about her. She was attracted to Francis’ way of life and went to join him, not as a lover but as a sister. How many times are we sent to one another as brothers and sisters, and we misunderstand it? Down here, in the crypt, her body is buried. There is a side chapel where I can kneel and pray. The place is filled with a Spirit. She is here. I kneel. I sense nearby, her as Sister, and Friend, and Francis, as brother, the two of them as good close friends, who encouraged everyone: encouraged everyone in joy! I feel their encouragement, their closeness, their strong support to continue to seek to follow Christ. No matter how poorly I do it, they cheer me on, with a sense of immense strength and joy surrounding me. I sense, as if remembering it myself, how truly it was a life of happiness they lived! By embracing lady Poverty, they were able to forget about stock markets and interest rates, debt defaults and savings balances. They lived in poverty, while ministering to the poor. I sense in them the ability to face the spirit of Despair that rules out world, which works through government shutdowns and global warming to lead everyone to passive despair or else the active despair of mindless ideologies. Instead, they inspire me, us, to do like the Psalmist invites: “as they go through the bitter valley, they make it a place of springs.” To go through the place of exile—singing! They did, and we can, and they invite that even now: To transform the despair into happiness, and Hope. Their worldly concerns revolved around peace and protection of those who cared for them and depended on them, including the entire population of Assisi. So that vivid presence touches me here, with a sense of “wow!” I am held for a moment by these two—so singular, yet also personified again and present in people in my own life. I am no example. But I still seek, seek, to do what God desires, in my own halting way, and find here only encouragement to continue on. This journey is a worthy one, no matter how badly you think you are doing it.

Both Clare and Francis had the courage to be completely who they really were, says my aunt, a former Franciscan. They overcame strenuous opposition from their family. They endured abuse and mockery from strangers and former friends. And they helped one another for their entire lives, Clare and her sisters nursing Francis, who she saw as a spiritual father figure, in his final months of illness. Now that I am older, I remember the idealism of my youth, and I remember Clare and Francis when they were idealistic youths. I hope I can encourage the young in their ideals, and never discourage them. It is part of my role to support those ideals. The young can do more than the old, in this way. Both Clare and Francis were courageous and extraordinarily contemporary. Unlike other saints, who are often exhibited a mixture of qualities that are both inspiring and confusing to modern minds, these two still make complete sense. Their ideas are still very current. They foresaw the need for a third way for lay people to join with vowed religious in living a holy life. They used nonviolent symbolic action to directly confront armed enemy soldiers, successfully, foreshadowing the non-violent resistance actions of today, foreshadowing Daniel Berrigan and Vaclav Havel and Rachel Cory. Francis sought inter-religious dialogue between Christian and Muslim, instead of war—at a time when other saints called for crusades—foreshadowing Vatican II. Even then, having seen plenty of war up close, he saw the horror of war as out-weighing any possible benefit—and this before gunpowder--and he entered the battlefield unarmed to try to stop it. Francis envisioned a relationship with nature that works for us today: in a powerful symbolism, he required that his followers never cut an entire tree down—only cut limbs or part of a tree so the tree could regenerate. Not bad advice for our idea of sustainability. Francis made everyday piety easier—he developed the Christmas crèche, the stations of the cross. He developed the idea of lay people living a Franciscan life by doing all things for the glory of God, the idea picked up on later by Ignatius of Loyola and anchoring the Jesuit spirituality of our own Pope Francis. His ideas are timeless and current and generative to a remarkable degree.

Wednesday, Oct 9^th. Today, in the rain, we visited the Basilica San Francesco. Again, like six years ago, I could not be in there very long; it was too much big church, too much people taking photos despite the signs asking them not to, and not being in prayer, too much hubbub and buzzing about. The tomb of Francis was sobering, solemn, and yet, I thought clearly, “He is not here.” He seemed nearer when I went back outside, onto the street.

My sister Cathy and I then walked down the new trail behind the Basilica to the old Benedictine abbey below the town. Here we experienced the regenerating forest as Francis might have, and the lowland farms as he might have. Through her eyes (she is a bird expert and a wildlife biologist) I noticed the birds—similar yet different than ours, the tree species, likewise, and the chickens. She tells me the flocking starlings belong here, not in North American where they are invasive, and it feels good to her to see them in their native habitat. We could smell the earth, hear the stream. My sister thinks that here, of all places, there should be bird watchers and so she goes about Assisi asking this, to the puzzlement of the locals. She persuades one local keeper to write down in Italian all the birds he knows of. He complies with a page-long list in alphabetical order! I don’t think the people of Assisi have met anyone like my sister before.

With my aunt I then went up to the Eremo de Carcera, a monastery built in a spot Francis retreated to pray up in the mountain. It was here that I was inspired six years ago, as I realized that Francis loved the high mountain in the same way I do—as a place where God is there, easily visited, relaxed, and present. Once again I felt the thrill of joining him here, 3000 feet above the valley floor, simply to admire the view, to gaze out at it all in wonder and joy. We stumbled upon a group of Croatian pilgrims saying Mass in the woods here; they burst into beautiful song, a familiar melody and we sang along the English words. The universality of the Catholic church suddenly incarnate and real. Here, in Assisi, are places that are not museums; these are “working” sacred places where people come and renew their faith. It makes me happy, I’m not sure why. Maybe I feel here that I am in a place where everyone is really serious about knowing God. That’s a kind of home for me.

Thursday Oct 10. The highlight of today was the Porziuncola. This is a small stone church big enough to hold about 10 or 20 people about 3 miles from Assisi. Legend says it was built around 350 AD, by hermits who had brought relics from the grave of the Blessed Virgin, and passed to the hands of Saint Benedict in 516. It was given by the Benedictines to Saint Francis in about 1208 at the beginning of his ministry. It is where he and his first brothers lived and the center house of their movement. Down in the valley, at the time of Francis it was in an oaken woods. Now it is all cleared out and built up around there, and a big cathedral built over the top. It is amazing to stand inside this simple stone structure that Francis himself helped to rebuild with his own hands. His hands worked on this stone. He built a new thing. Here in this spot, he cut off Clare’s beautiful hair the night she ran from home to give herself to God; the cutting off of her hair was a symbol of her renouncing of worldly ambition and joining with his movement. It was one of the key symbolic actions that convinced her family and relatives that she was dead serious—another example of non-violent symbolic action that stopped the ambitions of the violent, when knights came to carry Clare back and could not—both because she clung to the altar, invoking sanctuary, but also because they saw her sheared head and realized there would be no going back. Francis secured for this church one of the most powerful indulgences ever granted outside of the Holy Land, and the “pardon of assisi” has consoled many over the centuries. Here again I sensed their spirit, especially Francis and his brothers. I did not want to leave. And then 30 feet away, the spot where Francis died is memorialized as well by a small chapel. Here he laid on the ground at that time, sick, in pain, nearly blind, looking up the hill to the sunlit town that supported him and to which he gave such graces, before he died. I love this spot. I never saw it before. His spirit is here, more than at the Basilica where he is buried, even though he asked to be buried up on that spot. Did he envision the giant basilica they would build?? His spirit is not there, where they go to see him and take their many pictures; rather, it is here. Here where he lived, where he built, in the forest, away from the town, where his friends and he gathered to talk about the year.

Francis and his brothers were mendicants. They went about preaching. Often he and his friars were laughed at, abused, beat up, mocked. But they also drew followers. And this is what mattered. The message is spread to all that it may take root where it is fertile. Thus for us, our mission is to do our work and share our story. It does not matter that some people will mock it or find it pointless; the story is for those for whom it is intended, for whom the ground is fertile, and where it can bear fruit. So the lesson is to not think about the barren soil but to focus on those who will need to hear, and to give thanks for those. They may be one, or ten, or a hundred. What matters is to share whatever it is that God has given me to share.

And to hear Francis speak, how I wish I could. It is said by the eye witnesses that he spoke of God with such beauty, such joy, that everyone was inspired, strengthened, and wanted to hear him more. In this way he won an ally in a skeptical Pope, he disarmed a Muslim Sultan, and won them over as allies with warmth, humility, love, and joy. Perhaps our own Pope follows in his spirit very well. I can hope to do some of the same.

A central thought that I reflected on as I encountered so many saints through story and place was holism and sanctity. First on holism, or the appropriate holding in tension of paradox in our lives. The holism defined by Saint Benedict is that the holy life integrates and balances the interior life, or mental life, with physical activity; and it balances the life of self with the life of community. It balances stability and commitment with openness and change. Saint Francis, for all his radicalism, was extraordinarily practical when people asked him for advice.  Too much interior or mental life, and I become isolated, unbalanced, and physically weak, and ungrounded, and stressed out. I forget that I am incarnate with bodily interests, needs, sensations, that are vital to my own wholeness. Too much emphasis on the physical and I become absorbed in my own narcissism, my health, my body, my fitness. Too much social and I become a party animal, in need of constant attention, or perpetually in conversation and busy with people, and lose contact with my inner ground and interiority. I begin to have an identity through others instead of for others. I can extend this in some detail to consider the holism required to hold in tension intellectual pursuit, the “is-ness” of spirituality and prayer, and the fantasy world within each of us that serves both to help us cope as well as to lead us into escape. I can extend it again to think about tensions within our physical life—exercise, nutrition, rest, sexuality. I can extend it again to think about tensions within our social and communal engagement—balancing family and community activism and a circle of friends and a job. Balancing, holding in proper relation, these different aspects is essential to living as a whole human being. We can reflect on this at some length and see how true and practical it is.

So given that basic wisdom, what of the limits of holism? How do we put holism itself into context? On the one hand, we say that holism is not flawed—it is the right way to live. It is organically balanced. We need, I need, that to be whole, to achieve holiness. While holism appears in tension with single-pointed dedication, we can say that from one perspective this tension is an illusion. Holism does not mean doing a little bit of everything, but doing each thing very well. We do not call an athlete half-hearted because sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he eats, and sometimes he relaxes—rather we see him as even more dedicated because his entire life is organized around maximizing his readiness. We do not call him half-hearted because sometimes he spends his workout on strength, other times on endurance, other times on flexibility. We know that if he works on all these aspects in proper ratio, he will maximize his success. In the same way, living our spiritual life for God, we maintain a healthy balance of physical life, social engagement, and interior life, so that we maximize our capacity to experience God, to know God, and to participate in society and in building up God’s kingdom. 

Now we come to the tension between holism and self-donation. When do we, imitating Christ and the saints, dedicate everything to one vision, and sacrifice all the rest? When do we turn our life upside down, and walk away from it all for God? Did Saint Francis have holism? Well—perhaps in one way he did. He lived radically for God, but he worked with his hands, he prayed, he rested, he built close and powerful friendships in community. But at all times he dedicated and did what was for God and when it came time to take a stand, he was “all in” for God and ready to surrender life itself at a moment’s call. So for me, for us, the challenge of holism is to keep things in their perspective so they serve us and serve God, while not going after balance for the sake of balance. Our ideal is not balance, our ideal is Christ. We use balance so that we become ever sharp, ever ready, to serve God. Thus, we remain ever free, to go any direction—toward intimacy, toward social donation, toward interior reflection, or toward physical exertion and activism---as God’s call and spirit require. The single value, the single focus, is to know God and reflect his spirit, his kingdom, here. The method is holism, itself sacrificed when the moment so requires.

Thus if I am to be available to others, my own life has to be in balance, yet not so balanced that I am comfortable and closed off to the action of the spirit disturbing me. So without getting too comfortable, I also maintain enough holism that I don’t remain constantly deprived, constantly over-extended, and therefore without availability for anything other than my own agenda. Rather I keep myself as strong as I can, but relying on God’s strength not my own, so that I have something to offer for God and for the human enterprise, the divine enterprise, which can be united.

So much for holism. But now what about the saints? What do they mean for us, today? I am in love with them this week, being in Italy in a land that loves its saints as much as it loves its great artists. The land that gave us Michelangelo and Leonardo also gave us Francis and Clare and Catherine and Anthony. What moves me, grips me, about them is not their holism; it is that they were totally obsessed with serving God. In this I feel like I can relate to them, like they are people who would understand me, would not think I am weird, or different, but would instantly understand what bothers me. They encourage me, in this way, to really follow my heart and my desire for God all the way to the end, all the way to death, and not to give up on it, just because most of my surrounding world has no interest in it. And in particular they encourage me to seek God as understood by Christian religion, not just some alternative hip or novel way, not just new age or American ‘buddhism” (I scoff because I don’t think a lot of it is really the true beauty of Buddhism, but has been reduced to a pseudo-spirituality that has become a way that people find inner contentment and a tool for coping with our society). But Christ, Christian faith, that unique path that is like no other in the world. That uniquely compelling journey of recognizing God here in the physical world, and recognizing redemption and therefore freedom in a profound and total way—freedom even from religion or from dogma, true freedom to be with God because God is with us, as near as our own breath and as our own neighbor. Unlike Islam or even to some extent Judaism, God is not only transcendent, mystery beyond us. God is also immanent, with us, incarnate, expressed in the world, in the human person, in the creation, fully near us, and able to be known by us and approached and befriended, not only worshipped. Yet my goal is not to oppose or to contest other faiths, who ultimately are fellow travelers, but rather to affirm my own when so few do, when so many mock and disregard my Catholic Christian faith, I want to follow it—even as I criticize it, even as I remake it, even as I try to be a small part of making it new, again, because it has grown stale in this age as it has grown stale in other ages. The saints wanted to make it new. They shared our deepest passion, and in this way give us our greatest encouragement.