Maine Celebrates the Franciscan Jubilee Year

Saint Francis of Assisi really did have the gift of being able to communicate with birds. 🐦 An excerpt from “Saint Francis of Assisi: The Reluctant Saint”, by Donald Spoto. Saint Francis really did talk to birds and they listened to him❗💜💛💙Pp- 100-101 in the Donald Spoto biography. This experience was observed by the men who were with Francis while they were walking back to Assisi from their visit in Rome with Pope Innocent III. Francis topped on the road between Bevagna and Connara, about six miles south of Assisi. Annoyed at the indifference of so many people and dejected at the apparent failure of all their efforts, Francis announced that he would probably have a more respectful hearing from the birds- which is exactly what happened. The event, one of the oldest documented in his life and perhaps the most often represented in art, has been sentimentalized out of all proportion t his deeper truth. But, once the veil of romance has been lifted, it revels an important motif in th...

The Reluctant Saint Chapter Four Year 1205 (By Donald Spoto (pp. 44-45) Published 2012 by Penguin Books. Sa int Damiano in Assisi where Saint Francis experienced his vision. Today this is the Basilica of Saint Clare. As the indolent, lazy, summer of 1205, turned into autumn, Francis continued to work with his father in a kind of quiet, resigned desperation, unable to envision either a bright future or a chance at either knighthood or nobility. Late one afternoon, he was returning from an errand to one of the properties his father owned outside the city of Assisi’s walls, located south of the town. Having grown weary after hours of walking in the bright sunlight, he wandered into the cool refuge of San Damiano, which stood a mile from the city walls, at the foot of the hill on which Assisi was built. San Damiano was a small church and over its doorway Francis could make out the faded words oten inscribed in country chapels, Domus Mea (My House). Once he was inside, Francis sat alone, hi...

" I have resolved my heart to abandon the world and follow you in that which you command ", St. Francis of Assisi  Notably, the most familiar of all the Saints recognized by the Roman Catholic and Episcopal religious faiths, Saint Francis of Assisi is widely known for being the patron of birds, animals, the ecology and as an advocate to help the poor.  But who was he? How did this man who abandoned his life of  privilege, become so universally respected and a role model for millions of followers today? My two sources for this introduction to Saint Francis are: The Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi by Donald Spoto Penguin Press ((Viking Compass), NY, 2002 Saint Francis of Assisi: His Essential Wisdom , edited by Carol Kenny Gange, Fall River Press, NY, 2010. St. Francis o fAssisi spent the first twenty-four yeas of his life in an unremarkable way.  He was born in 1181 (or 1182?) to a wealthy cloth merchant, named Pietro Bernadone and his wife, Pica Pietr...