The Franciscan path to passion for Christ

St. Francis of Assisi was arguably the greatest saint after Mary, the Mother of God. G.K. Chesterton, an early 20th-century British journalist and convert to Catholicism, maintained that we can see Jesus reflected in Francis’ life, and that Francis is reflected in Jesus’ life. We can learn about Jesus by understanding Francis.

Chesterton also called Francis a communist. Francis’ rejection of private property (though not of property itself) shows a path to an ideal society that lacks the one-upmanship and violence that have degraded most societies throughout history. Of course, Franciscan communism is one based on conversion, not compulsion.

The 800th anniversary of the great saint’s death is on Oct. 3. Although he lived centuries ago, Francis continues to stir the imaginations of both Christian and secular people. Perhaps more books have been written, and movies made about him, than any other historical figure. Yet we cannot get enough of Francis.

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I confess that I love Franco Zeffirelli’s 1972 film Brother Sun Sister Moon, although it portrays Francis and Clare more as hippies than saints. Both were no doubt stronger and more intelligent young people than Zeffirelli gave them credit for. Still, for all its flaws, the movie touched many viewers.

Chesterton treated Francis more seriously in his 1924 book St. Francis of Assisi, placing him as the key figure at the transition from the Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages.

Francis’ asceticism was, in Chesterton’s view, his key virtue. It represented medieval society’s final rejection of the Roman gods and nature worship. In the author’s view, nature worship turned natural passions into unnatural passions. 

“The effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex,” he wrote.

Asceticism expelled this and other spiritual diseases from “the system.”

The end of the Dark Ages called for an unearthly religion. Francis’ asceticism was emblematic of a supernatural life, one that “united him more perfectly to the natural. It did not make him dismal or dehumanised; for it was the whole meaning of his message that such mysticism makes a man cheerful and humane.”

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St. Bonaventure, another medieval Franciscan great, placed greater emphasis on Francis’ commitment to voluntary poverty. Surely, that was the foundation of Francis’ “communism,” although Bonaventure likely had never heard the word.

Bonaventure’s The Life of St. Francis is a spiritual classic that devotes eight of its 15 chapters to unveiling key virtues in the founder’s life – austerity, humility and obedience, poverty, affectionate piety, charity, zeal for prayer, prophecy and efficacious preaching.

Bonaventure recounts numerous events from Francis’s life, including his embracing a leper, his building of three churches, his meeting with Pope Innocent III, assorted miracles, his making of a family of snowmen to ward off sexual temptation, and his reception of the stigmata.

However, Francis’ humility and poverty are his most striking qualities. He would rather hear someone degrade him for his sins than praise him for his holiness. The former would spur him to repentance; the latter tempts his pride.

Yet Francis’ total commitment to poverty makes him unique. Of the Franciscans, Bonaventure writes, “Holy poverty, which was all they had to meet their expenses, made them prompt for obedience, robust for work and free for travel. Because they possessed nothing that belonged to the world, they were attached to nothing and feared to lose nothing. They were safe everywhere, not held back by fear, nor distracted by care; they lived with untroubled minds.”

One Marxist error is its insistence that those who oppose the revolution must be bulldozed into non-existence. Its reliance on violence only perpetuates the reign of terror.

Yet Chesterton is surely right when he declares that for Francis, religion was not a theory or set of doctrines to be debated “but a thing like a love-affair.” All his virtues grew out of his love for Jesus.

We can learn much from Francis about poverty, nonviolence, humility and respect for the person. However, Christianity is a love affair between God and believers, and that is surely our central belief. Today, that is more central than ever.

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At some point, Christianity became more a duty than a passion for many believers. The Second Vatican Council called on us to reverse this trend and develop a faith rooted in an encounter with Jesus. Francis exemplifies that better way. If we want a more just and equitable world, we will find it by walking a path marked more with love than compulsion.

(Argan is a Catholic Register columnist and former editor of the Western Catholic Reporter. He writes his online column Epiphany.)

A version of this article appeared in the September 20, 2026 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "The Franciscan path to passion for Christ"