Naming the elements brothers and sisters, identifying poverty as his lady, and contemplating the San Damiano cross, which depicts the living Christ with open eyes surrounded by other figures, changed Francis’s life. He had separated himself from friends and family. In renouncing his father publicly, he had sent a message that he was taking a new path, a path different from most people’s. It is what Christ asks all of us to do—choose to follow him.
Curious and worried friends came to talk to Francis—some to join him, some to convince him to return to the safety inside the city walls. But the spirit he was given was a tidal wave of grace. And while that tsunami would engulf the Christian world, changing lives, changing the church, and inspiring thousands of followers for the next eight hundred years and counting, at first, Francis sat alone.
—from the book God’s Love Song: The Vision of Francis and Clare
by Murray Bodo, OFM, and Susan Saint Sing
