Francis of Assisi on How To Build a Life

St Francis was not the hippy that many people imagine. He was a devout Catholic who would not have appreciated the way people now view him.

From Aleteiaa

By Fr Michael Rennier

A church cannot be rebuilt through thievery. But St. Francis wasn’t thinking about that; his head was full of dreams. The way to build a church is to build it.

Before he was “Saint Francis,” Francis of Assisi was a headstrong, rebellious, annoying teenager. He fancied himself a knight-errant who flirted with all the girls in town by singing romantic ballads to them (or we might say at them). In order to express their deep feelings, he and his friends created a band called “The Troubadours,” which I really hope is marching the streets of Heaven right now raising a ruckus. Like all highschool bands (I know this because I was in one), I’m sure they were very earnest but also very bad. I can almost hear the main plaza of Assisi now, ringing and echoing with the horrible sounds.

St. Francis always had a big heart, and I imagine that as he walked up and down the narrow streets of Assisi, he dreamed of what his life might become. He wanted to live big, to make his mark. This is why, after his conversionary vision at the ruined church of San Damiano in which Christ spoke to him from the Cross and told him to “repair my church,” the first thing Francis did was rush to his father’s shop and steal his horse.

His father was a wealthy merchant, so St. Francis attempted to sell the expensive horse along with the finest cloth in the family shop in order to raise the money to rebuild San Damiano. His father was not pleased and had his thieving son thrown into the town prison.

About this event, G.K. Chesterton comments, “Francis had once been popular; and altogether, in his efforts to build up the house of God he had only succeeded in bringing his own house about his ears and lying buried under the ruins.”

God had given St. Francis a great calling – to rebuild a church – but the way he set about the project was all wrong. He chased the dream the way he had been chasing all his other previous delusions of grandeur. Like the romantic, thoughtless troubadour that he was, he attempted to achieve a noble goal by unsavory, self-aggrandizing methods. A church cannot be rebuilt through thievery. But St. Francis wasn’t thinking about that; his head was full of dreams.

In order to end the quarrel between St. Francis and his father, the local bishop eventually had to intervene and command that he return the money. This is when he realized that he was going about everything wrong. God was asking him not simply to organize the rebuilding of a single country church by any means necessary; God was asking him to rebuild his own self.

Finding himself

If each us is part of the spiritual edifice of the Church, we must have the humility and poverty of spirit to take our proper place in the building. St. Francis wasn’t being called to transform into a great, romantic poet or musician. He wasn’t being called to achieve feats of glory on the field of battle like some glamorous knight. He certainly wasn’t being called to pillage his father. God was calling him to simply become the best version of himself by allowing Christ to become the cornerstone of his life.

Chesterton writes, “He realised that the way to build a church is not to become entangled in bargains and, to him, rather bewildering questions of legal claim. The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else's money. The way to build a church is not even to pay for it with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.”

I love that last line. The way to build a church is to build it.

It’s simple. Start moving rocks. Stack them up. One by one. We don’t need a whole big, non-profit organization and massive resources in order to accomplish great things. When it comes to building up our spiritual lives, we don’t need elaborate, complicated plans or for some huge mountaintop experience. Our first task is simply to pick up a stone and put it into place. Once we’ve done that, pick up another.

Don’t overthink it. Spiritual progress begins with practicing simple acts of kindness. Small acts of virtue. Humility. Doing the daily work we’ve been given to do.

When I say this, I don’t mean that our vocations aren’t tremendously important or that we’re not capable of changing the world. St. Francis changed the world by remaining faithful in all the small ways, by practicing holy poverty and joy. In his own way, he remained a troubadour all his life but his song changed. He no longer dreamed of unrealistic, prideful accomplishments and worldly glory but, instead, sought to build up himself and the Church one stone at a time.

In a way, as a young man with a broken relationship with his father, it was his own life that had become a ruin. Maybe, in his heart of hearts, he doubted he could ever really be fixed. Maybe he didn’t think he had the strength and endurance to move all those stones on his own, or thought that the church was too far gone to be restored, so one big grand gesture to virtue-signal was all he could pull off. In the end, though, he did rebuild that church, and he did rebuild his life.

Together, we are stronger than all the evil of the world

Always remember that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the walls of the Church, and even if by ourselves we think we’re insignificant or weak, together we are stronger than all the evil in this world. God is calling us to faithfulness in every small aspect of our lives.

When I think of self-improvement, the task is overwhelming. There’s just so much about me that needs fixing. I cannot handle the job. But even if I can’t transform into a great saint by tomorrow, I can pick up one rock and set it in place. I can get to church on time, stop being late to meet friends, workout a few times a week, pray for five minutes, hug my wife, and say an encouraging word to my son.

God has given each of us our daily work. In that work we can accomplish more than we’ve ever dreamed was possible. Stone by stone, we can build up those around us and, who knows, might even be building up ourselves into saints.