Act II scene 3

ACT II

Scene 3  “Franciscan Friars”

Setting:  the road from Assisi to San Damiano. 

CURTAIN OPENS

(Wolf and Francis strolling along the road, occasionally stopping to chat by the side of the road.)

WOLF: Good morning, Brother Francis!  I’m glad you remembered our meeting.  I’m anxious to hear about your freedom.  You said you’d tell me about it.

FRANCIS: Good morning, Sister Wolf.  Yes, I want to continue with my story.  We’re coming to the most important part, I think.  I felt free, but I didn’t know what would come next in my life.  I just gave it all over to God.  I was happy about that, but sad to have said a final good-bye to my family and my former life.  I’d had it pretty good, you know.  I never had to go hungry.  I could play the beggar to see what it was like.  But now it was for real.  If no one gave me food, I’d go hungry.  I could have starved.  But I had left the world once and for all.

WOLF: And your friends?  Didn’t they go with you?  Didn’t they help you?

FRANCIS: No.  Ever since I’d returned from Rome, I’d grown  apart from my friends.  I still love to have fun.  I love singing and dancing, and I still do those things.  But I also spend a lot of time in prayer.  And my favourite companions are the lepers down the hill. 

WOLF: So you went to live in the leper colony?

FRANCIS: Not immediately.  Eventually, though, I spent many hours every day bathing them and tending their sores.

WOLF: Yuck!  How could you bear to do that?

FRANCIS: It took me a while to do it.  I struggled with the horror and repulsion, until I began to find them beautiful.

WOLF: You’re strange. You love poverty and you find ugly sores and deformities beautiful.

FRANCIS (laughing): I suppose you’re right.  But it’s a matter of seeing Christ whenever you look at someone.  What if you saw Jesus begging for food on the streets, dressed in rags?  Wouldn’t you want to feed him and give him decent clothes to wear?  And if you saw him with weeping sores and deformed hands and faces, wouldn’t you want to go to him and comfort him with kisses?

WOLF: Um.  I would probably feed the beggar, but I don’t know about kissing a leper.

FRANCIS: It surprised me, when I actually did kiss a leper.  It surprised him too! (laughs)  But the food people gave me.  That was probably the worst.  I gagged when I tried to eat the scraps of rotten meat and soggy vegetables I was given.  Soon, though, I learned to eat around the worst parts.  Now I hardly notice what’s good and what isn’t.  Of course, I do get sick once in a while.  But it’s better than being rich.

WOLF: Really?  I’ll take your word for it.  But you still haven’t told me where you went to live?  So what, exactly,  did you do when you left Assisi?

FRANCIS: I was on my way to your village, Gubbio.  I was singing.  You know how I love French songs.  I was debating about whether or not to stay at San Damiano and continue working.  But suddenly some robbers jumped me.  I don’t know what they thought they were going to get from me.  I had nothing but an old tunic the Bishop’s gardener had given me as I left Assisi.  The silly fellows asked me who I was.  I was feeling as light as a bird.  So I answered that I was God’s Herald.  Well, they didn’t understand and they had no sense of humour.  So, well, it wasn’t a very good result. 

WOLF: What happened next?

FRANCIS: They beat me up after I gave them everything I had.  That experience helped me make up my mind.  I stayed at San Damiano and continued to beg for stones to build the church.  So, my whole life was praying, begging, building, and tending lepers. 

WOLF: San Damiano looks quite fine now. 

FRANCIS: Yes. Thanks.   I had lots of help, and then I worked on San Pietro and several other ruined churches.  I kept myself very busy for a long time.  Of course, I also attended church services.  The Eucharist is most important to me.  The Gospel messages that meant the most to me were about poverty.  The most important sermon I heard was on February 24^th, the feast of St. Matthias.  The priest read the Gospel and it said something about going to preach that the kingdom of God is at hand, and that we should not have gold or silver or money, not even an extra coat or shoes.  I had a few friends who shared my enthusiasm.  Let me introduce them to you:

(enter Bernard of Quintavalle)

BERNARD: Hello.  My name is Bernard of Quintavalle.  I was very very rich.  I always wondered if Francis was as good as he seemed to be.  You know how people are.  Sometimes they’re good while people are watching.  But as soon as they think no one can see them, it’s a different story.  Well, I decided to test Francis.  I invited him to stay at my house for a few days.  I have a nice big house, but I wanted to watch him.  So, instead of giving him his own bedroom, I had a second bed made up in my own room for him.  At night, he went to bed and pretended to go to sleep.  But I watched, and do you know what he was really doing?

WOLF: I have no idea.  Why don’t you tell me?

BERNARD: He was praying.  Almost all night.  Maybe all night, for all I know, because I fell asleep watching him.  I was so impressed by his honesty and his piety that I wanted to be like him.  I told him that, and that I’d been rich so long that I didn’t know if I could give it away.  It took me a while, but eventually because I was with Brother Francis so much, I had to get rid of the things that were holding me back from being as free and happy as he was.

WOLF: So, then it was just you and Brother Francis.  What did the two of you do together?

BERNARD: There were three of us, really.  I suppose I was the first to join the holy man.  But soon Peter came along.

WOLF: Who’s Peter?

(enter Peter Cattaneo)

PETER : That would be me.  Let me introduce myself.  I’m Peter Cattaneo.  I was never as rich as Bernard here, but I had too much of a good thing, too, you might say.  I had a very good position as canon of the cathedral.  I had all the right education, you see.  I’m a doctor of law.  But for all that, I was never as holy as Brother Francis.  It was clear to me that he was the one to follow if I wanted to learn to be a true Christian. 

WOLF: What did the three of you do, then?

PETER: First we went together to St. Nicholas Church.   Brother Francis went directly to the altar and knelt in prayer.  He never did anything without praying about it first.  I could hear him praying for God’s guidance.  Then he opened the Bible and read a passage from the Gospel of Matthew. 

WOLF: Sorry.  But wolves rarely read the Gospels.  Or anything else for that matter.  Most teachers don’t like us to come into their schools, you see....

PETER: No.  I suppose they don’t.  Can you blame them?

WOLF: I think we were talking about you.

PETER: The Gospel of Matthew, actually.

WOLF: Right.  Was it important?

PETER: The gospels are always important.  This one confirmed what the gospels always said to Brother Francis.  It was another message about poverty—his favourite topic, the love of his life, other than Jesus, that is.  It said that if you want to be perfect, sell whatever you have and give it to the poor.  And to follow Jesus.  Then in the Gospel of Luke, Brother Francis read that we should take nothing for our journey, not even money or food or extra clothes.  I think he’d read that before.  But again in Matthew, we read that followers of Jesus should deny themselves and take up their cross. 

WOLF: I haven’t seen him carry a cross.

PETER: There are many ways we all carry crosses, Sister Wolf.  You have your cross, you know.

WOLF: I do?

PETER: Yes.  Your cross is anything that is difficult to do, or that makes it difficult for you to live the way God wants you to live.  For example, it’s very hard for you to be kind to the people of Gubbio.  To leave their sheep and farms alone. 

WOLF: I see.  What cross did you and Brother Francis have?

PETER: Well, that was the wonderful thing about the first part of the command—to give away our worldly goods.  Once we had done that, our load of worries were gone.   We just had to find people to give us food for ourselves and the lepers, and building stones for the churches.  We could carry Christ’s cross, you might say.

BERNARD: It’s true.  When I was rich, I had so many things that I had to take care of.  I was always worried about being robbed, or losing something valuable.  And I always needed more money to buy more stuff that would show the world how rich I was.  Once I’d given all that stuff away, I didn’t have any of those worries anymore.  I was free to pray with an easy conscience.  It was wonderful.  After all, who needs a lot of useless stuff.  I was free to take on the cross of caring for the lepers—doing God’s work.

WOLF: So the three of you were poor as the lepers you were helping.  How could you help if you were just like them?

BERNARD: We still had our health.  And people weren’t afraid to come near us.  So we could beg for them and look after them.

WOLF: That’s a lot of work for three men.  But there are more of you now, aren’t there?

PETER: Sylvester joined us next.  And for a while we were known as Brother Francis and his Three Companions.

(enter Brother Sylvester)

WOLF: Is this Brother Sylvester?

SYLVESTER: Yes.  I’m Sylvester.  I have to say I’m not proud about the way I came to join the Friars Minor.  That’s what we’re called now, you know.  It means the Little Brothers.  I wasn’t rich or educated like Bernard and Peter here.  My burden was that I was proud and greedy.  And, to make matters worse, I should have known better because I was a priest.

WOLF: What made you change?  Did Brother Francis preach to you?

SYLVESTER: You might say that!  He always says we should preach the Gospel, but use words only when necessary.  Often the most effective preaching is done by example.  And that’s what he did in my case.  You see, it started when I sold him some stones to use in church building.  He had begged the money, of course, but I didn’t give any thought to that.  All I could think of was getting what I thought was a fair price for the stones.  I looked at the money he gave me, and, to my shame, I complained that it wasn’t enough.

WOLF: Oh.  He didn’t like that, I bet.  What did he say?

SYLVESTER: That was just it.  He didn’t say anything.  His silence made me feel embarrassed.  But what he did was even worse—or better, maybe.  Certainly it was more effective.  Rather than preach at me, he simply opened out his money bag and emptied it into my open hands, spilling all the coins he had collected from generous people.  I felt horrible.  I realized how selfish I was.  And how generous he was, and the people who had donated their hard-earned cash to the building of churches. When I finally came and apologized,  Brother Francis kindly accepted me as the third companion. 

FRANCIS: They were the best and most generous friends I could possibly have.  Next came Brother Giles.  He was able to give his cloak to a poor beggar woman. 

(enter Giles)

GILES: It isn’t a bad life, you know.  We have a lot of fun.  We laugh and sing.  People even had a name for us.  They called us God’s Jesters. 

FRANCIS: It was surprising how fast our numbers grew.  The men came from all over.  Come here, men!  Introduce yourselves.

(enter ANGELO, RUFFINO, MASSEO, ILLUMINATO, SABBATINO, JUNIPER, PACIFICO, PHILIP, LEO, JOHN, ELIAS: each comes in and says his name and leaves the stage.)

FRANCIS: Then I realized that we had twelve men and more, and that meant I had something very important to do.  I went to see my friend the bishop in Assisi.  He warned me about our lifestyle.  How dangerous it was to depend on the generosity of people to continue forever.  And, as our numbers were growing, and responsible citizens were giving away their belongings to become homeless beggars, many people were becoming alarmed.  How many would be left who could support us all.  They said it was irresponsible.  I suppose it was.  But what could we do?  We were following the Gospels of Christ. 

WOLF: What did the bishop advise?

FRANCIS: Well, he agreed with me that if we had possessions, we’d have to defend them.  So, that wasn’t the answer.  I decided  to go to Rome and get the Pope’s blessing on our rule of life.  But it wasn’t easy to get to see the pope, you know.   You can’t just go and knock on the door of the Vatican and ask to chat with him.  I saw him on the street one day, and I tried to talk to him.  But he had many people around him to protect him.  It was impossible.  But it was so important.  I couldn’t just go home.

WOLF: If it was impossible, then how did you manage it?  I assume you did get to see the pope?

FRANCIS: You could call it luck, or a coincidence. But I prefer to call it God’s intervention.  It just happened that my old friend, Bishop Guido, was in Rome and had connections.  Because, I just sat outside the Vatican and waited.  And suddenly, one of the guards came and told me that the pope wanted to see me.  Imagine!  The pope actually asked to see me.

WOLF: How had he heard of you?

FRANCIS: I don’t know if Bishop Guido told him about me, or if he had seen me from his window.  But I later learned that he had had a bad dream about me.  He dreamt that the beautiful big church, the Lateran, was falling down around him, and I was a pillar holding the roof up.  That’s when he called me in to speak to him.

WOLF: I don’t get it.  Were you the cause of the building falling down?

FRANCIS: No. I was the pillar holding it up.  Me.  A beggar at his door.  So he sent for me.

WOLF: Did you get dressed up in fine clothes to go and speak to him.  He’s a pretty important fellow, I hear.

FRANCIS: Very important!  And I went, as I was,  to see him in his court, with all the cardinals around him.  There he was, Pope Innocent, sitting on his throne, waiting for me to tell him what I had on my mind.  I could hardly speak for trembling.    Then, God gave me the strength and voice to tell the pope about what my friends and I had been doing at San Damiano and the other churches around Assisi.  I told him about our giving up all wealth and exchanging our fine clothes for beggars’ clothes.  I told him about our begging for food for ourselves and for the lepers we care for.  I asked him to bless our work, and to allow us to have this lifestyle as our rule of life.  I even dared to remind His Holiness that we were living life as Jesus commanded us in the Gospels.

WOLF: If you call him “His Holiness”, he could hardly refuse.  It was a done deal.  I guess you just said thank you very much and went home.

FRANCIS: You might have thought so.  But it wasn’t that easy.  Most of the cardinals were against what I was doing.  They agreed with the citizens of Assisi that our way of life was irresponsible.  One of the cardinals spoke up for us, though.  He pointed out that if the Pope rejected us because our lifestyle was too difficult, then that would mean that the church was saying that it was impossible to follow Jesus.  That would be blasphemy against Christ.  In the end, Pope Innocent dismissed me saying, “Go my brother, and as the Lord inspires you, preach repentance to everyone.  When God has multiplied you in numbers and grace, come to me again rejoicing and I will grant you more than this.”  I was thrilled.  I hurried out of the Vatican afraid he might call me back and change his mind.  As I left the great hall, I heard him say to his cardinals, “Truly this is the pious and holy man who shall restore the Church of God.”  I came home the happiest man alive, with my beloved bride Lady Poverty and her beautiful sisters, Obedience, Simplicity and Trust.   

CURTAIN CLOSES

End of Act II