8-9-22--SAINT FRANCIS AND MARTYRDOM

Martyr: One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles. One who makes great sacrifices or suffers in order to further a belief, cause, or principle. One who makes a great show of suffering in order to arouse sympathy.

Saint: An extremely virtuous person.

Which of the definitions above fits the life of Saint Francis? Perhaps all three might qualify him as a martyr at different times. He was known early in his life as a gadabout, a troubadour, someone chasing sensual pleasures. He was perfectly capable of making a show of ascetic preferences in order to be someone to garner attention. As he grew older and grew into his skin of dedication he exchanged pleasure and prestige for a way of life characterized by shedding all unnecessary clothing and appurtenances and appendages that stood in the way of his transformational relationship with God. And as he grew even further in his spiritual journey to God, he not only welcomed hardship and pain and sufferings, but he also invited a death that transported him to a realm beyond the one of his trials, not because he was looking for an easy escape from them but because he hungered for God's embrace.

Saint Francis makes a good case for martyrdom. I have read several biographies of him (Nikos Kazantzakis and G. K. Chesterton) and each recounts the few known events in his life in slightly different ways, each essentially a work of fiction. What slim elements of truth there are speak to me in a powerful way. Both books add an element of drama to his character and that adds to the power of his life, his voice, and his message.

There is a reason that individuals in religious traditions (Catholic as well as Quaker) are deemed saints. It is because they have performed “miracles” that spring spontaneously into their lives and upon which they have acted, usually in the service of an impoverished person. It isn't so much that the miracles are part of a life plan but that they are called upon in certain circumstances to act in a saintly way. All of which is to say that they break out of their limited egos and act on behalf of someone else.

The story of Francis resonates with me just now because of the times in which I am living. These are times of turmoil and dissent and even inexplicable violence. The violence is a force seeking a victim and innocents are a boundless mass of potential victims. The subjects of a saint's life are also innocent victims, often of violence or diseases (leprosy, polio, plague) or natural disasters. In these times we see a rise of individualism and partisan tribal divisions as well as impatience and social upheaval. We observe the dark sides of technology with privacy invasions, bullying on social media, manipulation of ideas and truth, propaganda to gain minority privilege. Some of this is not new to humankind. Much of it is tied to the uses and misuses of technology beyond the projects that expand our lives into new fields of inquiry and connections.

When I think about my own situation of existential life with its challenges related to relationships, aging, and identity, it occurs to me that there is a case to be made for martyrdom in daily life. That sounds a bit odd, as martyrdom traditionally has focused on lives from ancient times, lives lived in defiance of social customs and authorities. And martyrdom also contains the inevitable consumption of the martyr's life. In some instances, the consumption came at the hands of soldiers following orders or mobs disenchanted with the martyr's message and devoted following. In most cases, the consumption emerged from fear, fear of influence, fear of disorder, fear of insurrection and loss of power. And it may have been the case that martyrdom followed a life of service to the poor and disenfranchised, whose large numbers were a threat to the authorities, particularly if the saint's actions mobilized and empowered large numbers of people in their disenchantments. Has much changed today?

The life of Saint Francis was different from those of more traditional martyrs. Yes, he did flaunt established order and the assumptions of what it was to be born into a privileged caste. He did give up all his possessions to those who were more in need. He did leave his family and important relationships that turned out to be important in his emotional life. He gave his love to the less fortunate and to the beings and things that populated his world. His heart was open all the time. What made his martyrdom different, I think, is that he invited into his life all the turmoil and sacrifices that most humans would avoid. He wanted to move as close to God as possible and to do that he had to strip his life of convenience and privilege and expose himself to the exigencies of Nature and human nature. He was unsatisfied with the occasional deprivation but placed himself inside the freezing cold and the blinding sun as a way of devoting himself to the power of God. He seemed never to be satisfied with the trials he experienced and his bleeding feet and his insomnia. He called for more from God, unlike Job who suffered the plagues and boils delivered to him, achieving martyrdom of sorts by abiding. Job was eventually rewarded for his suffering with a long life and restitution of wealth and family. Job could not qualify for sainthood because of his religious affiliation and because of the restitution of wealth and privilege.

Francis not only welcomed calamity and misfortune but he invited all of it with a joyful heart, not once that I can remember lamenting his fate. He did at times question God's presence but that only caused him to call upon himself greater catastrophe. I think the point of the story is to illustrate the relationship between a human being and a power of spirit beyond himself, thus showing what a small life we humans have in space/time and in the vast unknown that is God, God in his universality and eternality. We do not celebrate such a micro/macro sense of life today and do not include anything like the power of God and higher authority in our puny human scenarios. We are so smitten with our potential for power and control, for prestige, profit, pleasure and privilege that we cannot look beyond the miracle of our lives and wonder how we are to act with humility and gratitude. Just now we are receiving incredible photographs from the James Webb Telescope of galaxies beyond galaxies some 500 million light years away and beyond. We can be in awe of this technology and crow about our sophistication. It is a technological accomplishment, to be sure, but it is also an opportunity for us to ponder the importance of those activities we now deem critical to human existence (profits on Wall Street, partisan political issues such as abortion and gun rights) and to compare them to the vast and eternal mystery at the edges of the universe brought to us by the space telescope. It seems to me this begs the question about how we might gain a larger perspective of human existence and how we might so alter our behavior so that the space/time we inhabit here on Earth more fully benefits all who have pain and suffer.

Francis was eternally humble and grateful for his relationship with God and taught through voice and actions how accessible such a relationship was for anyone. Is it possible to do good works for others and still harbor pride at doing so? Is it possible that we can give away possessions but save back a few for ourselves? Is it possible to claim martyrdom and not lose one's life because of it? In the long run and the scheme of things, all of us in one sense can claim martyrdom as we approach death. If we acknowledge that our lives are small but let soul conquer ego, then we are able to give up our earthly life for a higher level of existence in a realm we cannot imagine. We can do as Francis did and see life and death as part of a grand cycle that ends in giving over to a mystery that will always remain an unknown. When the time comes for all of us we can welcome death as our ultimate act of dedication to life. Zen Buddhists say that we can practice this willingness every day by focusing on death/life as a continuum. I think Francis was in this frame of mind most of his adult life, the part he devoted to his relationship with God.

The context of the life for Francis was all of life, no exclusions and no excuses. His relationships were with all things and beings—and with God whose presence was as real as any other being. The appropriate view of his life is to see that humans reach beyond themselves, beyond the claims Nature has on them, beyond the circumstances that an earthly life manufactures and delivers, and to invite whatever will enter a whole life. What can be excluded? It isn't necessary to hold onto a concept of God in order to emulate the joy of inclusion that Francis experienced. Such behavior calls upon humans to act in the most virtuous ways and to dedicate effort to all things and beings regardless of religious affiliation or none at all. All of us can strip away the layers of complexities and find the freedom that is our wondrous legacy in being alive. Saint Francis is a model of a life well-lived even in the face of sacrifice and a will to devote one's efforts to the benefit of all things—and to do so with great joy. Can we replace the elusive chase after happiness with the heart/mind core of joy? What does this mean to you?

The most powerful aspect of the message of Saint Francis, and the most impossible to emulate, is that the deepest love a human can manifest is an all-inclusive love for the other based on the inexplicable and altogether mysterious love God has for us. This love blossoms in the face of rejection and traumas of all kinds. It is the love Francis taught when he invited into his life everything and everyone, friend or foe, jilted or beaten for it, blessing those who treated him worst. It is powerful just as it is and to state its terms is to have no boundaries with which to circumscribe it. It is nearly impossible because it challenges humans to a state of not only acceptance but invitation of the best and worst of us. We humans have such a narrowed and individualistic grasp of what we think reality is when, in fact, the most enduring reality is one that includes poverty, charity, and the love of Saint Francis for the world, even if the world turns on us.

Love is a very complex emotion and an even more complex intention. The love of Saint Francis for the world was a radical love in that it was love in its purest form. I have thought that love was not of real substance if it wasn't reciprocated. I now think that it is exactly the opposite. I think that the love of Saint Francis is very simple, having stripped out all qualifications and emotions of reciprocation based on human psychology and human needs. It is radical because it is one-way and not reciprocated. It is an outpouring of generous spirit that emanates from God. It is all-inclusive and all-giving. It is given without the expectation of return. In fact, if one's love is reciprocated then one might think it has been coerced or manipulated in some human way. It is for this reason, I think, that Francis experienced great joy if the love he gave in the face of harm and rejection was not returned, as it was an even deeper expression of God's faith and grace because the love given was simple and pure. I think Francis experienced the spiritual crises he did because he felt, at times, that his love was inadequate and insufficient and smacked of self-absorption and neediness. He realized that no matter how one's intention was to achieve no-self and a merger with God's love, a human would not be able to reproduce such simple and pure love in an earthly setting. Yet, he continued to try and did his best as long as his life on Earth lasted.

I don't for one second think my life is anything like that of Saint Francis. I do not think I will ever emulate his radical love of purity and simplicity. But it is my intention to work hard at what I think it is in its ideal state, knowing that chasing an ideal is often a foolish waste of time. It is a high bar to leap over and I know myself well enough to know that I have too many personal failings and flaws to make the mark. This is just another aspect of the life of Saint Francis that is so powerful for me. But I also know that it is one of my personality traits to take on challenges, even if they are difficult or maybe even impossible. Maybe that is what Saint Francis intended with his life of service to the world.