Saint Francis experienced his vision in the small church of Saint Damiano. Today the location is the Basilica of Saint Clare Shrine

The Reluctant Saint Chapter Four Year 1205 (By Donald Spoto (pp. 44-45) Published 2012 by Penguin Books.

Saint 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, his eyes gradually adjusting to the dark.

The place seemed on the verge of collapse from old age and neglect. The walls were cracked, the low vault was crumbling, the beams were rotting. Wild grass sprouted along a narrow window and the crescent-shaped apse, once bright blue, with painted stars, was faded and peeling. No one had worshiped in San Damiano for years.

Over the abandoned alter a crucifix had somehow survived the decay. Painted on linen stretched taut over a walnut frame, it was a striking image in the tradition of Syrian-influenced 12th century iconography, the eyes of Christ gazing serenely and directly toward the viewer.

In the stillness of the small church, Francis felt, as an early source described, “different from when he had entered”.

And then, “the image of Christ crucified spoke t him in a tender and kind voice. “Francis, don’t you see that my house (/Domus Mea) is being destroyed?? Go then and rebuild it for me’.”

History offers many accounts about people catching glimpses of the world beyond of being addressed by some unknown presence. Moses before the burning bush, Isaiah awed by his vision of the majesty of God’s court, Jesus aware of a profound sense of mission at the time of his baptism, the Buddha beholding the universe in a bouquet of flowers and Juian of Norwich* seeing it in a hazelnut, Saint Paul and John astonished by unexpected visions, Saint Augustine herring a child’s voice whisper, “Take up and read”- these moments changed the world and revealed the intersection of the timeless with time, of this world with another.

The two earliest accounts of Francis’s experience at San Damiano are far less dramatic than some might wish. Yet, the simple description the image spoke t him “in a tender voice”, is in keeping with the most rotational images of Christian faith, that of the rejected outcast Jesus addressing a man broken by disappointment and estranged from himself. What more apt icon could God use t reach out to a man of Francis’s time and place?

He felt this mysterious change in himself,” Thomas of Celano concluded, “but he could not describe it,. So, it is better for us to remain silent about it, too.” Thomas’s report about this event is likewise remarkably measured offering no praise of Francis and nothing designed to raise him in the estimation of readers or to present the moment as a miracle. It is merely an episode in which a man knows that he has been touched and changed and sets out to respond by action.

Francis could only interpret the message literally, because he was sitting in a collapsing church and he had been told to rebuild it. Immediately, he left San Damiano and set about finding ways to attend to its disrepair. Now, at last, he had found a focus and a remedy for his present feelings of bewilderment.

* Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – after 1416) was a medieval English mystic and anchoress. She is best known as the author of Revelations of Divine Love, which is widely recognized as the earliest surviving book written by a woman in the English language. At age 30, Julian fell so gravely ill that she was given the last rites. While nearing death, she experienced a series of 16 intense visions (or "showings") of Christ's passion. After making an unexpected recovery, she spent the rest of her life pondering the meaning of these revelations and recording them in writing. Her famous hazelnut revelation is a central metaphor in her masterwork.

The San Damiano Cross is the large Romanesque wood cross before which St. Francis of Assisi was praying when he is said to have received the commission from the Lord to rebuild the Church. It hangs in the Basilica of Saint Clare (Basilica di Santa Chiara) in Assisi, Italy, with a replica in its original position in the church of San Damiano nearby. Franciscans cherish this cross as the symbol of their mission from God.