St Francis Penance by Kajetan Esser

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If the first companions of Saint Francis were asked to which Order they belonged, "they simply said that they were the penitents from the city of Assisi"[1]. And when Francis, already in the twilight of his life, summarized his religious experience, he laconically stated: «The Lord granted me, Brother Francis, to begin doing penance this way...» (Test 1). 

Saint Clare also attests in her Rule, chapter 6: "After the Most High Heavenly Father with his Grace deigned to enlighten my soul so that, following the example and teachings of our Blessed Father Saint Francis, I would do penance, shortly after his conversion, I gladly promised him obedience together with with my sisters» (TestCl 6,1). And in his Testament he repeats almost the same words. Finally, the «propositum» or the first rule of the Third Order calls the members of this fraternity: «Brothers and sisters of penance».[2]

To some, these testimonies could suggest that Francis and his followers wanted to form an association whose specific purpose was "penance", as if, in his life, fasts, disciplines, scourges, and other corporal punishment, occupied a first place.

But all these practices do not fit the spiritual configuration of Saint Francis that we know well from his writings and from the testimonies of his first biographers.[3] So it is convenient to examine what meaning he wanted to give in his writings, which for our study have a unique value, to the word "penance", and thus to know the same doctrine of Saint Francis on this subject. I have intentionally stated the doctrine because the Saint's first biographer, Thomas of Celano, already noted that Francis, in his own penitential behavior, followed a line of rigor notably different from the directives he gave to the Brothers: "Only in this lesson did they walk the words and deeds of the Most Holy Father are discordant” (2 Cel 129).

1. Saint Francis certainly uses this word to designate the sacrament of penance, confession; thus, for example, in chap. 20 of the Regula non bullata and at the end of the Letter to all the Faithful, where he speaks of the impenitent dying (cf. Adm. 22 and 23). These fragments design the essential parts of the sacrament of confession, that is: the interior aversion to sin, obtained by contrition, which manifests itself externally in conversion with the confession of sin, and is sanctioned with a consistent satisfaction.

2. Sometimes the term penance designates the work of satisfaction that the confessor imposes on the penitent. This is the meaning that Francis gives when he assures the brothers that "they will undoubtedly be absolved of their sins, if they humbly and devoutly try to fulfill the penance that has been imposed on them" (1 R 20,2); or when he wanted to prescribe in the Rule that priests "have absolutely no power to impose any other penance but this: Go, and do not want to sin any more (cf. Jn 8:11)" (LtM 20). Francis understands the same thing in the Rule bulla in these words: "And the ministers themselves, if they are presbyters, with mercy impose penance on them" (2 R 7,2).

3. But in addition, Francis frequently uses the term penance in a sense that, without completely excluding the two meanings studied so far, is much broader and contains many more implications. Let us take as a more significant example a fragment of the unbullated Rule: «And we give you thanks because that same Son of yours will come in the glory of his majesty to consign to eternal fire the damned, who did not do penance and did not know you, and to say To all who knew you and adored you and served you in penance: Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world».[4] The reference that these words make to the great parable of the Lord narrated in chapter 25 of the Gospel according to Matthew is evident.

In these words, Francis, speaking of the final judgment, condenses the enumeration of the so-called corporal works of mercy with the very brief and sententious expression: “do penance!”. For this reason, “doing penance” means knowing Christ and serving him in the smallest of brothers. Now we know why, in the Letter to the Faithful, where Saint Francis exhorts them with the words of the Gospel: "Let us also produce fruits worthy of penance", it is assumed as an eminent fruit, in the following sentence, love of neighbor and, Above all, love for the unfriendly and the enemy. Something similar also happens in the Testament, where Francis recalls that he thus began "to do penance", because the Lord led him among the lepers and the poorest of his neighbors (cf. 1 R 9). Here it becomes very clear that for him "doing penance" means that turning point that leads man from an instinctive life, centered on his own "I", to a life entirely subject and abandoned to the will, to the lordship of God. Precisely the Testament of the Saint documents in almost all its verses this submission to the Lordship of God: «the Lord gave me», «the same Lord led me», «the Lord gave me brothers», «the Most High Himself revealed to me», « the Lord has given me”, etc., thus confirming that Francis, until the end of his life, remained under the sign of initial grace in “doing penance”.

If we remember Sacred Scripture, that passage in which love of neighbor is equated with love of God and concludes: "All the Law and the Prophets are founded on these two commandments" (Mt 22:40), we have a panorama full of what Francis meant by penance in the passages quoted.

The sense coincides with the preaching of the Forerunner of Christ who exhorted to metanoia, that is, to the total conversion of man and to follow the will of the Lord in everything, that is, in the biblical sense, the way of the Lord (Mt 3,2 ); a "conversion" in the literal sense of the word, because the kingdom of God is drawing near. Here penance means the totality of the will and the actions that are necessary for man, corrupted by sin, to return to the path of God.

And since we have drifted away from God, it is necessary that we always make a great and stable change again. Francis knew well that man would never lack the incentive of sin, a terrible condition of human life; That is why he who, as a man formed by Sacred Scripture,[5] felt the Christian life as a perpetual vocation to follow the ways of the Lord, called all truly Christian life an incessant penance.[6] This penance, as an evangelical metanoia, must be the fundamental attitude first and foremost of every follower of Saint Francis in his broad and multiform fraternity.

4. In his booklet «Exhortation to the brothers and sisters of penance» [= 1LtF], almost unknown until now, but certainly older than the so-called «Letter to all the Faithful» [2LtF], with which he has a great affinity , Saint Francis shows the beatitude "of those who do penance" and the misery "of those who do not do penance". Those who do penance are "all those who love the Lord with all their hearts, with all their souls, and with all their minds, with all their strength, and love their neighbors as themselves, and hate their bodies [one's own body]. 'I'] with their vices and sins, and receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and produce fruits worthy of penance» (1LtF I,1-4). With these elements we have an essential program for an authentically Christian life.

The Christian man, as a penitent, must leave all the paths of his own "I", must be open to the love of God and neighbor. It is empty of itself and ready to receive -S. Francis would say: conceive- the fullness of God. For this reason, the Saint continues in his exhortation: «Oh how happy and blessed they are while they do such things and persevere in such things, because the Spirit of the Lord will rest on them (cf. Is 11,2) and in them will do habitation and abode (cf. Jn 14,23)» (1LtF I,5-6). When the penitent has emptied his whole heart of himself, of everything that does not fit with the will, with the pleasure of God, a free place is established for wanting, thinking, liking that in everything is full of the Holy Spirit. of the Lord. Because this man is led by the Spirit (Rom 8,14), Francis can add: "and they are children of the heavenly Father, whose works they do" (1LtF I,7).

As a son of the heavenly Father in this sense the penitent is the new man, the man according to Christ. In his life completely new relationships are realized between Christ and his follower. These relationships are revealed in their intimate reality when Francis continues: «...and they are spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are spouses when the faithful soul is united by the Holy Spirit to our Lord Jesus Christ. We are his brothers when we do the will of the Father who is in heaven (Mt 12,50); mothers, when we carry it in our hearts and in our bodies by divine love and by a pure and sincere conscience: and we give birth to it through holy works, which should illuminate others as an example” (1LtF I,7- 10).

In these words, the Christian reality of penitential life reaches its highest development. The man in whom the Spirit of the Lord has overcome all self-centeredness in a total conversion to God, conquers to the maximum degree the fullness of God. He lives in the intimacy of the Holy Trinity, in a living relationship of inexpressible depth, which Saint Anthony says is a nuptial penance (Sermo moralis de tribus nuptiis). The penitent who has overcome, as far as possible, every obstacle and removed every request and concern of this world (1LtF II, 5), is entirely absorbed by the movement of love that has its origin in God. The almighty God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit will come to him (cf. Jn 14:23).

For this reason, Saint Francis concludes his explanation with overflowing joy: «Oh how glorious, holy and great it is to have a Father in heaven! Oh how holy, comforting, beautiful and admirable, to have such a husband! Oh how holy and how loved, pleasant, humble, peaceful, sweet, kind and above all desirable, to have such a brother and such a son: Our Lord Jesus Christ!, who gave his life for his sheep and prayed to the Father saying : Holy Father, keep in your name those whom you have given me in the world; They were yours and you gave them to me. And the words that you gave me, I have given to them, and they have received them and have truly believed that I came from you, and they have known that you have sent me. I pray for them and not for the world. Bless them and sanctify them, and for them I sanctified myself. I pray not only for them, but also for those who, through their word, will believe in me, so that they may be sanctified in unity, like us. And I want, Father, that where I am, they may also be with me, so that they may see my glory in your kingdom» (1LtF I,11-19).

This mosaic, well composed of words taken from the Gospel according to Saint John, makes it very clear that the "life of penance" is a full correspondence to the redeeming action of Christ. The penitent must be immersed very deeply in this salvation that has been given to him by God in Jesus Christ. The more he opens himself to redeeming grace in order to be penetrated by it, the more he forgets himself and unites himself in love with God the Father and his Son. Already now he sees the glory of Christ and of the redeemed Christian in the Kingdom of God.

Here we find ourselves facing the culmination of evangelical conversion, of the metanoia preached by the Lord and by his Precursor; Through it, the penitent, blessed and sanctified by God, loses himself in Him to the point of forgetting himself; it is like a renewed creation and redemption; Through it, by virtue of grace, the penitent lives stretched towards that fullness in which God, in his Kingdom, will be everything for him, eternally.

In the second chapter of his exhortation, Francis addresses “all those men and women who do not live in penance”, of whom he affirms: “They are blind, because they do not see the true light, our Lord Jesus Christ. They do not have spiritual wisdom, because they do not have the Son of God, who is the true wisdom of the Father» (1LtF II,7-8). These words reveal the same reality, but seen from another aspect. Because all the things that the “non-penitents” lack obviously belong to the religious life of the penitent, who sees the true light, our Lord Jesus Christ, and has in himself the Son of God, who is the true wisdom of the Father.

The more Francis esteems, with a jubilant heart, the glory and splendor of "life in penance", the more he worries about the fate of the "non-penitents". For this reason, changing the style of his exhortation, he makes a preaching immediately addressed to them: «See, blind people, deceived by your enemies, by the flesh, the world and the devil, that it is sweet for the body (that is: for the "I" itself) to commit sin and it is bitter for him to make him serve God; because all vices and sins come from and proceed from the heart of men, as the Lord says in the Gospel (cf. Mk 7, 21).

And you have nothing in this world nor in the future. And you think you will possess the vanities of this century for a long time, but you are deceived, because the day and hour will come in which you do not think, and you do not know and you ignore; the body sickens, death draws near and thus the wretched die a bitter death... The worms devour the body, and thus they lost body and soul in this brief world, and will go to hell, where they will be endlessly tormented» (1LtF II,11-18)

As is often the case, Francis also speaks here of the salvation of the penitents and of the misfortune of the "non-penitents." For these the words of another penitential preaching of Saint Francis apply: «Woe to those who do not die in penance, because they will become children of the devil, whose works they do, and will go to eternal fire!» (1 R 21.8); to the penitents, on the contrary, the Saint makes the promise: "Blessed are those who die in penance, for they will be in the kingdom of heaven" (1 R 21,7).

In conclusion, we can say: the penance that Saint Francis seeks, and the one that he himself lives heroically, is that total detachment from himself that the Lord asks for in the Gospel saying: "Whoever wants to come after me must deny himself, take up your cross daily and follow me” (Mt 16:24). Therefore, whoever wants to "do penance", that is, to carry out the evangelical metanoia, is always invited, even more so, every day, by the Lord himself to renounce self-love, self-will, the search for oneself. , to follow His path, the path of the One who, as our brother, wanted only to fulfill the will of the Father. "Doing penance" means abandoning all human paths and allowing oneself to be fully inserted into the economy of salvation that God brings about in the creation, redemption and perfection of man through Christ. The penitent gratefully places himself at God's disposal, so that, free from all impediments, that is, from all perverse human will, he may "have in himself the Son of God" (CtaF), and, with Him, work fully for humanity. For this, Saint Francis, the true poor according to the Gospel, admonishes his followers:

"Therefore, do not retain anything of yourselves for yourselves, so that he who offers himself to you in whole may receive you whole" (LtO 29). This is the mystery of evangelical penance: man expropriates himself in the hands of God in order to belong completely to him, to be totally assumed by him, the Lord, who "created us, redeemed us and by his mercy alone will save us" ( 1 Kings 23.8).

Whoever divests himself to follow the ways of the Lord -and this means metanoein- and thus belong only to God in a sincere and continuous conversion, possesses "true spiritual wisdom", because he lives only for God and, in this way, , responds to the fundamental requirement of Jesus' preaching: «The kingdom of God is near; do penance and believe in the Gospel» (Mk 1,15; cf. 1 R 21); when man, then, gratefully opens himself to redemptive action, the kingdom of God is established. When man bows before God's ineluctable demand on his whole life, the kingdom of God manifests itself in reality.

For Saint Francis, "doing penance" contains the nucleus of his entire life. And all the penitents, in their "triple militia of those who are to be saved" (1 Cel 37), who want to throw themselves boldly into the "life of penance", must, in a supreme act of poverty, abandon themselves unreservedly to God . All of these have only one concern left, well formulated by Francis himself: "But now, after we have left the world, we have nothing else to do but follow the will of the Lord and please Him" ​​(1 R 22,9 ).

[1] Legend of the Three Companions, 37; ed. Desbonnets, in Arch. Franc. Hist. 67 (1974) 117: «... simpliciter tamen confitebantur quod erant viri poenitentiales de civitate Assisii oriundi».

[2 G. G. Meersseman, Dossier de l'Ordre de la pénitence au XIII siècle, Freiburg (Switzerland) 1961, 92: Memoriale propositi fratrum et sororum de Poenitentia...; see n. 21: «... have a religious man instructed in the word of God who admonishes and comforts them to persevere in penance and to do works of mercy»; n. 22: "The ministers visit the sick and exhort them to penance."

[3] Adm 10 and 14; CtaF; CtaM; 2 Cel 22, 129, 210, 211; CT 59.

[4] 1 R 23.4; see the entire analysis of this chapter, extremely important for the penitential doctrine of St. Francis, in K. Esser - E. Grau, Riposta all'Amore, Milan 1970, 12-24.

[5] Cf. La Sacra Scrittura e i Francescani, Rome-Jerusalem 1973, 19-47.

[6] 1 R 21; see 1 R 12,4: «... once she has been given spiritual advice, let her do penance wherever she wants»; 1 R 23,7: «... we humbly beg and beg all of us, the minor brothers, useless servants (Lk 17,10), that we all persevere in true faith and penance, because otherwise no one can be saved»; Testament 26: "... and when you are not received somewhere, flee to another land to do penance with the blessing of God"; 1LtCus 6: «And in all preaching that you do, remind the people of penance...».