Assisi 2020 - II

This is the second in a series of posts sharing information and perspectives on the lives of Saints Francis and Clare, life in Assisi and seeking to follow Franciscan values in today's world.

Gospel Quote - Luke 12: 34. For where your treasure is, there will your heart also be. 

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Umbrian Adventures - This post, updated from March 2016, shares some background on a small Assisi church.

Today I stopped by the Church of Santo Stefano, which was built in the year 1166, not many years before the birth of Saint Francis. The facade of this church has changed little over eight centuries; the photo below is basically what Francis would have seen. The church was built by and for the working people of Assisi. It's plain in appearance, but clearly well-constructed.

The inside has been carefully remodeled, but retains much of the original materials, design and spirit. In the front of the photo below is the baptismal font. Portions of frescos remain on the left wall. On Sundays, neighborhood residents gather for mass here, celebrated by a Franciscan priest.

The stone wall that winds above Santo Stefano is a nice place to rest on a sunny day. Legend has it that the evening Saint Francis passed from this life to the next, the bells of Santo Stefano, seen in the center, spontaneously began to ring.

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Reflections - Many American Catholics are familiar with the works and writings of Dorothy Day, who helped found the Catholic Worker Movement. Day, in turn, was close to Jacques and Raissa Maritain, influential French writers and converts to Catholicism. Jacques Maritain brought life and depth to the discipline of Philosophy through the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Jacques and Raissa found their way to Catholicism by way of a French writer named Leon Bloy, whom they befriended early in their careers.
Leon Bloy lived in poverty and tended to be harshly critical of others, leaving him less than popular in some circles. He wrote a novel, The Woman Who Was Poor, that tells the story of Clotilde, a woman who was born into poverty, was abused in her childhood, and suffered numerous misfortunes, including loss of her child, her husband, and a person who treated her kindly. (Her story is so unrelentingly harsh, I've been reluctant to even recommend the book to others, despite a beautiful underlying theme.) Regardless of all of her suffering, Clotilde remains faithful to God.
Is there a Franciscan theme to this story? Yes.
First, near the end of the novel, Bloy writes of Clotilde, almost in passing, "A Tertiary of Saint Francis, she has just finished reading the Office of Our Lady by the last declining rays of daylight, and now she is thinking of God and listening to 'the sweet footfalls of night.'"
More important are the last words of Clotilde, "There is only one misery, and that is not to be saints." Clotilde's worldly poverty not only reflects choices made by Francis and Clare, she also realizes that there is no human pursuit so precious as saving souls. This is a very Franciscan message, a message of deep and eternal love.

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Something Franciscan - Below Assisi sits the town of Santa Maria degli Angeli, home to one of the small churches Francis repaired. This one, called the Porziuncola (Little Portion) or, more formally, Saint Mary of the Angels, dates back to the Fourth Century, when it was constructed by traveling hermits from the Middle East. During Francis' lifetime, it became the center of Franciscan life. The Porziuncola now sits inside the large Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where it continues to be a principal Franciscan gathering place.

In 1769, a Spanish Franciscan missionary in California came across a river and named it after this Franciscan landmark, and a town grew up there that was aptly (if not concisely) given the Spanish name El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncola (the town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Porziuncola). As time went by, people started shortening the name of their town, until it finally was honed down to... Los Angeles.
A couple of other California cities seem to have similar Franciscan origins, they being Santa Clara (Saint Clare) and, of course, San Francisco.

Pax et bonum