Saint Francis Receives the Stigmata, illumination from the Life of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventure

O humilitas sublimis!
O sublimitas humilis!

 

In 1224, Saint Francis of Assisi († 1226) becomes the first man to be marked with the stigmata of Christ’s Passion: “While contemplating the sufferings of the Savior, he suddenly saw descending from heaven one of the seraphim in the form of a crucified man. This celestial spirit was endowed with six wings of flame. Five rays of light flashed forth from the five wounds of the crucified, striking the saint’s side, two hands, and two feet, and inscribing there forever the wounds of the Lord.”

This month’s cover of Magnificat illustrates this event. It features a miniature, possibly painted by a Poor Clare nun from Fribourg, from a fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript of the Life of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventure. This work reveals a childlike simplicity of soul. It perfectly translates the deliciously naïve vision of Brother Leo, the sole witness of this prodigy, whom Francis praised as “innocent as a dove.” The faces of all three figures here are beaming with beatitude, as if they have come down again from heaven to reenact the scene. Brother Leo himself appears seated in the background, holding his crammed notebook. The only tragic touch in this painting lies behind him: a grotto amid the crags of Mount La Verna recalls Christ’s tomb and foreshadows the baptism of death that Francis will undergo two years later. Nevertheless, Brother Leo wears a long, rough robe tinged with rose, the color of the dawn that also casts a halo over the mountain, as it adorns the liturgical ornaments on Laetare Sunday. While Francis, clothed in jet blue, enters into the night of the Passion, Brother Leo, at rest among the flowers, already hints at the light of Easter morning and the great joy that the Passion has prepared. We admire the liberty and beautiful spontaneity that our unknown artist infuses within her design. Free from any signs of retouching, her brush strokes—sepia for living beings, black for the mineral—flow forth like the extension of a joyous and peaceful mystical thought.

In canto 11 of the Paradiso, dedicated to the life of Saint Francis, Dante († 1231) sings in a completely different key about the Poverello’s stigmata:

On a harsh rock between the Tiber and the Arno

he received from Christ his final seal,

which his limbs bore for two years.

A fervent proponent of a humble and spiritual Church founded upon evangelical poverty and bold proclamation of the faith, Dante presents a Francis of Assisi who radically embraces humility as the only “means” of attaining the sublimity of being an alter Christi, the most authentic proof of which is “his final seal.” His Francis is not only “peace and joy.” “In order to live according to the holy Gospel,” he can be exceedingly determined and courageous, resolute and uncompromising, indeed inflexible.

Seven centuries after Dante, the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes: “I consider the feast day of the stigmata of Saint Francis* one of the most perfect revelations of this universal and transformative Christ who showed himself to Saint Paul, and for whom our generation feels such an irresistible need.” And later he adds: “I dream about a new Saint Francis or a new Saint Ignatius, who would come and show us the kind of Christian life we need.” In March 2013, all of a sudden a son of Saint Ignatius becomes Pope Francis! It is not clear whether the media is yet aware of just who they are dealing with…** 

 

Pierre-Marie Dumont

 

* In order to foster greater love for Jesus crucified, Pope Paul V († 1621) extended the liturgical memorial of the stigmata of Saint Francis (September 17) to the universal Church. In 1960, this memorial was reduced to a simple commemoration.

** His book of spiritual exercises, In Him Alone Is Our Hope (Magnificat), reveals a Pope Francis who is astonishingly close to the Francis of Assisi of the Divine Comedy. Addressing his brother bishops, for example, he lets fly with the following remark: “The Antichrists are right here inour midst: some of us have grown weary of the humility of Christ.”

 

 

Saint Francis Receives the Stigmata, illumination from the Life of Saint Francis by Saint Bonaventure, before 1478, Add. 15710, f. 164v., The British Library, London, England. © British Library Board / Robanna / Leemage.

 

With thanks from MAGNIFICAT com

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