Catholic Saints

When Francis stripped himself naked at Santa Maria Maggiore, he was reaching for the heart of God.

In recognizing his vocation to live the Gospel, Francis knew that he could no longer identify himself with the wealthy and powerful of his day.

The meek are blessed precisely because they recognize their dependence on the generosity of God and creation.

As Bonaventure writes, God is “totally submerged in the waters from the sole of the foot to the top of the head…. [God] appeared to you as your beloved cut through with wound upon wound in order to heal you.”

The first Franciscans believed that God was in the world, actively shaping human experience, and inspiring birds’ songs and wolves’ howls.

At the heart of Francis’s and Clare’s biblical vision was the Sermon on the Mount, and most especially the Beatitudes.