Francis prayed day and night that God would give all people the courage to be themselves instead of what others expected them to be. He did not want everyone to enter the brotherhood or to join the Lady Clare and her sisters. He only wanted people to be free, to be what they wanted to be in their own hearts. For God spoke differently to each person, calling one to marriage, another to virginity; one to the city, another to the country; one to work with the mind, another with the hands. But who was brave enough to look inside and ask: “Is this what I should be doing, what I really want to do with my life?” The Lady Clare left nobility to become a beggar, but his brother Pope Innocent remained Vicar of Christ’s Church. And both were totally free, really doing what they had decided they should do. Both were living their own lives and not someone else’s. Who could do more?
—from the book Francis: The Journey and the Dream
by Murray Bodo, OFM
