This cross at San Damiano, like all crosses, is the “canvas” on which the answers are painted. Francis discovered this, and embraced those answers. That is the difference between Francis of Assisi and us. We can sit and imagine it, but most of the time we cannot or do not enter its embrace. He embraced the mystical Christ, who is more human than we are and whose mystical nature is that it can hide its divinity among us. What must it have been like for Francis, and could be for us, to be so moved for the rest of one’s life?
Such love.
—from the book Francis and the San Damiano Cross: Meditations on Spiritual Transformation
by Susan Saint Sing, PhD
