My summer holiday this year has been nine nights in Assisi followed by a final night in Rome. This worked well to complement a short retreat I made in London at the end of July, which I fashioned around a visit to the National Gallery’s exhibition on the life of St. Francis of Assisi.
Arriving in London on a Monday afternoon I thought I’d finish the day with a visit to the exhibition - if there was more to see I could always go back, or so I thought! But when I got to the Gallery 90 minutes before closing time it was obvious from the length of the queue that I wasn’t going to get in. Fortunately, I was able to book a visit online, though there wasn’t a space for another 48 hours. Public response had been quite amazing. Seeing so many works of art and other items from the habit Francis wore and an ancient copy of his Order’s Rule, through Zurbaran’s paintings to Anthony Gormley’s depiction of Francis was not only an aesthetic experience but spiritually deepening in the light it shone on his vocation 900 years ago. A discussion I attended later in the day drew out still more of his relevance for today.
The visit to Assisi built on that. We’d chosen our apartment because it looked to be near the railway station. It was - and it also turned out to be right next door to the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, the great church built over the Porziuncula Chapel where Francis had first formed his community and where he died. I’d visited the church over 40 years ago and remembered being rather put off by its baroque hugeness contrasting with the simplicity of Francis’s life. But this time I saw the point - and was glad that we could visit it so easily on a number of occasions. From our first evening when children were out playing football at 11pm (too hot to sleep) on the piazza in front of the basilica, through visits to the Porziuncula where pilgrims queued patiently and prayed silently in the tiny chapel - to an amazing occasion when we heard music coming from the church at 10pm and entered to find ourselves caught up in a procession and devotion involving hundreds of people.
Also remarkable were the conversations we had on several occasions. On our first visit to the main town of Assisi (it’s a short bus ride up the hill above Santa Maria degli Angeli) we came out of the Cathedral of San Rufino to be greeted by pilgrims from Ireland and the priest who had been saying Mass for them. They wanted to know where we had come from and why we had come - and they were eager to say what had drawn them there. It was the same when we visited San Damiano, where Christ is said to have spoken to Francis from the Cross, saying “Go and re-build my church which, as you see, is falling down.” Francis took Jesus at his word, bought mortar and stone and got to work - only later did he realise he had a bigger task than buildings maintenance. It was outside that church that two young women came up to us and said how pleased they were to hear someone else speaking English - and they went on to say why they had come to Assisi: not only drawn by the witness of St. Francis but by the example of a young man, Blessed Carlo Acutis, who died aged just 15 in 2006, but has now been beatified (one step short of being declared a saint) on account of his faith.
I’d heard of Blessed Carlo - and had thought his story of dying so young mainly as being simply sad. But here were people who had learned about him and who wanted to live out their lives as he did - in devotion, open about their faith, wanting to see the lives of others changed for the better. I was impressed! And not only by them… In San Damiano people kept the silence requested of them not only in its buildings but all around. Above Assisi at the Eremo delle Carceri where Francis and his companions went to pray, that stillness and silence was apparent in the woods surrounding the ravine in which they had lived. At an open-air altar we found a large group of young people waiting prayerfully for their Mass to begin.
If nothing else it was wonderfully refreshing to escape the cynicism and harsh secularism that characterise so much of our own society. And so good to find people from our more worldly culture there, drawn by something which would renew their faith - and mine!
What do we want from our own faith? Often we despair or seek to attribute blame as to the Church’s shortcomings. But when he found the church falling down, Francis set about re-building… How should we be living out our faith?
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