31/07/2011
ST.FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1181-1226)
Francis was born in 1181 of a very wealthy cloth merchant in the lovely Umbrian town of Assisi in Italy. He was a very handsome young man. He spent the first twenty years of his life in luxurious living. In war with the neighboring Perugians, he was captured and imprisoned for a year. He was confined to... bed with fever for several months. This made him feel and reflect on the emptiness of life he had been living. Abandoning his former wasteful ways, he took to a life of poverty. He spent hours and hours in solitary prayers and meditation. He befriended the sick, the poor and the lepers. As a result of all these,
his ambitious father who had entertained great hopes for a brilliant career for his son Francis disinherited him.
Francis gladly surrendered all his worldly possessions and went about like his master Jesus, in utter poverty. He saw Jesus in the face of poor, the hungry, the sick and the suffering and spent the rest of his life for them. The life of Francis was like that of a grain of wheat, which dies itself to bring forth new life, like a candle which burns itself out to give light to others.
A group of young men joined him and they lived in simplicity and earned their daily food by manual labor. When that was not enough, they begged for food .The Heavenly Father who feeds the birds of the air with abundance, and clothes the lilies of the fields, looked after them. By the year 1219, 5000 men joined his group (Known as the third order of the Franciscans) they moved about in Western Europe, Italy, Southern France and Spain, preaching about Jesus Christ. Countless sinners were won over by their holiness and love. Three years later, Francis received the Stigmata (the five wounds on his body, like Jesus) and died in 1226 at the age of 45.
Francis was declared a Saint by the Church, two years after his death. So many cures and miracles are attributed to St. Francis. Probably, Francis is the world's
