ON Saturday it’s the day in the Church’s year when we remember St Francis of Assisi, who lived in Italy in the 13th century.

Francis was extraordinary.

He was born wealthy and had a wild youth. But then he embraced poverty and founded communities of people committed to lives of simplicity.

At the end of his life, Francis was marked with the stigmata, the wounds that Jesus bears through his death on the cross.

Francis has had a big impact on human history – many have sought to follow his example and teachings. We still sing his words in hymns today.

The current Pope is called Francis – a choice that speaks of the man’s modesty, humility and lack of pretention.

What might Francis mean to us now? What can we hear from a man who lived eight centuries ago?

For me, I think that Francis challenges us above all to think what it means to be free.

I came to see this a couple of years ago when I took part in a parish mission to Witney. Our team there was joined by three Franciscan Friars, latter day followers of St Francis.

Through their desire to follow Christ these men had taken on Francis’ vows of poverty, chastity and obedience – promises that most of us would see as being severe and restrictive.

As chance would have it, the brothers managed to be on Witney Green each afternoon as the students from the local secondary school were coming out at home time.

The encounters between the friars and the students were memorable.

The students were fascinated, and in truth appalled, by the lifestyle of the men they met.

They couldn’t quite cope with men who had turned down flat the values of wealth, sexual freedom and individual choice that all the time our culture tells us are the true path to happiness. It made me wonder who was really free.

The men who had chosen to live the way they do? Or the students and the rest of us who end up just going along with the herd because it’s never occurred to us to do anything else? It was a strange paradox.

I might have thought that people who had committed to some very strict vows were much less free than the rest of us. But seeing those lives challenged by young people in Witney, I came to wonder if that was actually the case.


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