A FAMOUS ORDER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 124, 27 May 1937, Page 10

A FAMOUS ORDER

FRANCISCAN FRIARS

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

EXTENSION TO N.Z.

The report that the Franciscan friars, at the invitation of Bishop Liston, are to found a monastery in Auckland, draws attention to one of ;he most famous religious orders of the day—a spiritual movement so intense that its influence is felt in almost every co.uitry in the world. New Zealand is ivs latest territorial recruit. For more than seven hundred years the order lias been growing and spreading, a.\6 the story of its development, with its stormy internal history, is no less entertaining than the story of the remarkable man who founded it, Francis, son of an Assisi merchant. It is the story of a reveller, leader of the young bloods of the village, transformed by what must have been a tremendous inspirational and emotional crisis into a penijtent, whose career of humble service and devotion subsequently was a living contradiction of his earlier character. This spiritual transformation occurred after a banquet, at which he was crowned king of the revellers. It permanently changed him, and never deviating from the path he chose, he was ' canonised two years after his death in 1226. What is regarded as the culminating episode in the life of St. Francis of Assisi followed a pilgrimage he made to Rome., Having a special horror of lepers, it is recorded, he passed a begging leper; but immediately afterwards a heroic act of' self-conquest made him return, give the afflicted beggar.his money, and kiss his hand. From that day he gave himself to the service of lepers and the hospitals. In consequence of his profuse alms to the poor, in whom he had always been interested, arid to the restoration of the church of St. Damian, his father, fearing the dissipation of his property-, took Francis before the Bishop of Assisi to have him' legally disinherited. But without waiting for the documents to be drawn up, Francis cast off his clothes, and having received a cloak from the bishop, went off to the woods of Mount Subasio. ' A LIFE OF POVERTY. For the next three years he lived in abject poverty, ministering to lepers and outcasts. He began to frequent a little ruined chapel, and here during Mass one day the following words of the Gospel came to him as a call: "Everywhere on your road preach and say: The kingdom of God is at hand. Cure the sick1,. raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out devils. Freely have you received, freely give. Carry neither gold nor silver nor money in your girdles, nor. bag, nor two coats, nor sandals, nor staS, for the workman is worthy of his hire." This was in the year 1209. Francis felt that it was demanded of him that he should lead a life in. the closest imitation of Christ's. Within 'a few weeks of this incident, disciples began to join him, the condition being that they should dispose of all their possessions. When they were' twelve i.n number the little band went to Rome and there received the sanction of Pope Innocent 111, who showed some little misgiving about their proposed mode of living. They gave themselves up to apostolic preaching and work among the poori and-from that small beginning there grew an order that by the time of the Reformation numbered some hundred ■■ thousand adherents. The Franciscans have always been the most numerous of the various religious orders, and at the present time, ' according to the latest available figures, the number of Franciscan friars is about thirty-five thousand. ...-.- In describing the character of Francis, a chronicler writes:—"There is such a many-sided richness, such a tenderness, such a poetry, such an originality, such a distinction revealed by the innumerable anecdotes in the memoirs of his disciples, that his peri sonality.is brought home to us as one of the most iovable and one of the strongest of men. Probably no one has ever set himself so seriously to imitate the life of' Christ and to carry out literally Christ's work in Christ's own way. His enthusiastic love of poverty is certainly the keynote of St. Francis's spirit. . . . Another striking feature was his constant joyousness, a precept in his rule, and one that he enforced strictly. His love of nature, animate and inanimate, was. keen, and manifested itself in ways that appear somewhat naive. His preaching to the birds is a favourite theme in art. It would be an •anachronism to think of Francis as a philanthropist or a social worker or a revivalist preacher, though he fulfilled the best functions of these. Before everything he was an ascetic and a mystic—an- ascetic, who, though gentle to others, wore out his body by self-denial. He was a' mystic irradiated with the love of God, and endowed in an extraordinary degree with the spirit of prayer." PHYSICAL SUFFERING. His last months were passed in great bodily suffering, and though he became almost blind he carried on his appointed, task to the end. The movement was really cradled in a little chapel, St. Mary of the Angels, in the plain. below Assisi. N Around this the early members built themselves huts of branches of twigs, but they had no fixed abode., They wandered in pairs over- the country dressed in the ordinary clothes of the peasants, working in the fields for their daily Bread,'sleeping in barns and in hedgerows or in the porches of the churches, and mixing with the labourers anH the poor, arid with the lepers and vh.e outcasts. Francis and his disciples were to aim at possessing absolutely, nothing, so far as was compatible with life. They were to earn their bread from day,to day by the work of their hands, and only when they could not do so were they to beg. They were to make no provision for the morrow, lay by no store, accumulate no capital, and possess no land. They were, in short, to practise a life of extreme austerity. In spite of the internal troubles that developed in the order in later years, the Friars Minor have in each age zealously and faithfully carried on the work laid down by St. Francis and his disciples. Always recruited in large measure from among the poor, they have always been the order of the poor, and in their preaching and missions have always laid themselves out to meet the needs of the poor.