‘The True Spirit of Francis of Assisi’

 

As the West drifted further and further away from the Orthodox Church after the Great Schism, it was natural that the old models of sanctity would be rejected and new ones would take their place.  Francis of Assisi retains his hold on the Western soul largely because he is the archetype of post-Orthodox Western saintliness.

Roman Catholic Italy provides an illustration of this, as her government has introduced a proposal to reinstate a national holiday in his honor.

That is to be expected.  What is not expected is to see a prominent Orthodox writer from the US promoting the cult of Francis:

I went into the crypt and prayed at Francis’s tomb. Yes, I know he’s a Catholic saint, not one of our Orthodox ones. I don’t care. That man knew the Lord.

This is how heresies are born, folks, when someone puts his personal opinion above the consensus of the Orthodox Church.

But what does the Orthodox Church have to say about Francis of Assisi?  Fr Seraphim Rose, who diligently strove to acquire the mind of the Holy Fathers of the Church, gives a good indication in his Orthodox Survival Course.

The first thing to note, says Fr Seraphim, is the discontinuity of Francis with Orthodox Tradition:

So we’ve seen in the Middle Ages the rationalism, logicalness, replacing faith or taking over and shaping now faith, becoming the criteria, romantic elements entering in. And now we come to a very important one which is maybe even more important than Scholasticism, because in the end this will do more to bring about Antichrist than Scholasticism. This is the concept of sanctity which becomes now different from the Orthodox concept of sanctity. And the best example of this is the life of Francis of Assisi.

 

The fact that this man became so popular, in fact, tremendously popular wherever he went, people went around, acted like Christ Himself coming to them; and they sang and accompanied him. He aroused great enthusiasm, which shows that he was very much in the spirit of his times.8 But if we look at his life, we see that it is so strange from the Orthodox point of view; and we can say that it’s not at all an Orthodox Life of a Saint.

 

For one thing, he founded a new manner of life. He invented the rule of poverty because in church one day the Gospel was being preached about poverty, about the Apostles not taking anything with them when they preached, although later on, of course, the Apostles did take with them money and so forth. The first time they went out they went by two’s to the cities preaching to the Jews and took nothing with them. And he heard this in church and became inspired to invent a new rule, a new way of life, a rule of poverty based on the Gospel, as though there was no monastic tradition before him, which there was. And there were many great Saints at this time.

 

Of course, he could look around, perhaps the monasteries were corrupt and so forth, and he wanted something different. But there’s something already suspicious to think he’s going to do something new, a whole new rule of life, based not on Holy Fathers. And if he didn’t like the recent Latin Fathers, he could have gone back to St. John Cassian, the Egyptian Fathers and so forth, but he didn’t. He went instead to the Gospel, like the Protestants. He went and invented himself a rule of poverty. Nothing special, of course -- monks are poor-- but he made something special out of it, just as later we’ll see that the Catholics are making something special about the Mother of God as though she’s some kind of unearthly being and so forth.

 

And he gave it and himself and his followers new names. They were not now to be called just monks, they were the “Penitents of Assisi,” or the ‘Lord’s Minstrels,’ they called themselves, going about singing. So already we see that they think they’re not like previous monks and ascetics, but something new, a new spirit which is very much in accord with the spirit of the times.

 

There was a time, on Christmas in the year 1223, he decided to celebrate the Nativity in a new manner. And so he reproduced in the church were he was in Italy the stable of Bethlehem. And thus began the so-called devotion to the crib in the Latin Church and around this he had some kind of a play which is beginning of the mystery plays in Italy -- and helping thus the rise of the drama. And the drama of course is something which, although it arose from this very same thing, we’re not going to talk about that. The mystery play, which comes from the Liturgy actually, was centered around the Mass and religious themes, and are an adaptation to the new spirit of the times to make religion more interesting, more in accordance with everyday life, more close to the believers, as though Orthodoxy is not enough.

Next, he reveals Francis’s false humility:

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-true-spirit-of-francis-of-assisi/.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!