The Year of Saint Francis

On the day the Decree announcing the Year of Saint Francis was released, Bishop Krzysztof Nykiel, Regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, spoke in an interview with Vatican News on how we can make this year not simply another exciting time, but a time to grow in grace.

“In the life of faith, it is not a matter of a continual ‘more,’ but of a ‘deeper,’” says Bishop Nykiel. To go deeper, we do well to pause and reflect on our journey since the beginning of the Jubilee of Hope, perhaps “identifying and isolating a single concrete fruit that has remained … and making it a starting point rather than an end in itself.” The Jubilee of Hope, as beautiful as it was, was meant to be a beginning of something much larger, of which the Year of Saint Francis is another part.

A Fitting Model

For this going-deeper, Bishop Nykiel explains, Saint Francis is a fitting model for many reasons. He “shows that true imitation of Christ is not based on declarations or ideas, but on a concrete and real lifestyle rooted in the Gospel”; thus, he leads us well from thinking and aspiring into doing. No one ever lived the Christian life in a more practical, active way than Francis, who embraced total poverty in order to love God more freely and his neighbor more fully. “Francis showed that freedom of heart is born of detachment from material goods,” says Bishop Nykiel; this, he adds, is “an extremely timely” call to us amid so much excessive consumerism.

Other practical applications of the Franciscan spirit include “consistency between faith and daily life” and “active and fraternal love, especially toward the weakest, the poor, and the marginalized.” Francis’s faith expressed itself not in words or feelings but in everything he did, especially his care for those most in need. Among the best-known stories of his life is the day, early in his spiritual conversion, when he encountered a leper on the road and overcame great natural fear and revulsion to embrace the poor man. This, it appears, was a formative moment for him, one that inspired his lively, active compassion for the rest of his life.

“His life was a response to indifference and sometimes to selfishness,” says Bishop Nykiel, “problems just as evident today, when interpersonal relationships tend to flatten and ‘the virtual prevails over reality.’” (quoting the Decree)

This compassion also extended to those in spiritual need; as he urged his brothers “that there may never be a brother in the world who has sinned as much as he could sin, who, after seeing your eyes, goes away without your merciful forgiveness, if he asks for it.” (from the Decree, quoting Francis of Assisi, Lettera a un ministro, 7-8). If one is looking for ways to honor the Year of Saint Francis, one might well include the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Being Peacemakers

Saint Francis’s example also shows us how to be peacemakers, so sorely needed in our divided, strife-torn age. “Peace is born from a converted heart,” says Bishop Nykiel, “not from self-interested declarations or compromises without truth. In a world marked by conflicts, social violence, and insecurity, his life is a call to build peace based on the Gospel of Christ, the only Redeemer of humanity!” Like our times, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in which Francis lived were rife with conflict; indeed, he rode to war himself in his youth. As he came to embody Christ’s Gospel so deeply, Francis radiated more and more his Lord’s love for every person, which is the only answer to division, violence, and hatred.

If the Jubilee of Hope redirected us toward our great goal—union with God in Heaven—the Year of Saint Francis points us to the way leading there, namely, following Christ through active, uncompromising, joyful charity. Keeping that hope before one’s heart, as Francis did, gives one strength to live in that love, remembering for Whom everything is ultimately done. Likewise, one who loves also has hope, for God, in Whom we hope, is ever faithful.