You know the Rule from Saint Francis of Assisi? Why does it still last today, and does it convey hope with unprecedented strength? The rule, as Saint Bonaventure reminds us, is a “form of life”, the set of a series of passages taken from the Gospel to guide life, to which one adheres fully. Or don’t join. The rule is revolutionary. One does not live through interpretation as the Sunday Christians do with the Pope’s words on mercy and welcome. Yes, the cristianucci, those who go to church to be seen with new shoes and the foulard by morocco but do not believe and do not live anything of the rule of St. Francis or of the words of Pope Francis. As Tommaso da Celano writes, to write it, Francis, closed in the porziuncola, leaving for Rome to meet Innocent III, starts from a premise: sit is only through positive example that someone can be induced to change, not through preaching and condemnation. So the first key word with which the Rule presents itself is “Exemplarity“. And this is very popular with young people who do not like boring sermons. The revolution of the message is this: to make the facts speak. It is the adventure that Francesco wishes to live: Francis and his friars work to serve others, not to earn or accumulate provisions, to love others, to welcome whoever.
In this difficult time, marked by impasse, witness of endemic debauchery, as well as of the fall of historical ideologies, our young people, absorbed by a consumerist society and a wavering education, wander in search of new points of reference able to fill the emptiness that they feel in the heart. For this reason Francesco is, still today, a catalyst, a refuge to dispose of the intoxication of frenetic rhythms, a means to find profound answers on the meaning of life. Francis of Assisi, today more than ever, is perceived as modern and revolutionary, with a subversive force that, even today, is at the forefront of his own spirituality. Following his charism, he puts his life at the service of the community, without necessarily having the intention of becoming a Franciscan friar. To those who want to join him, Francis offers to give up their comfortable habits and to run with him the great adventure of imitating Jesus. Francis asks young people to completely detach themselves from self-harming behavior, endowed with hysterical exhibitionism and widespread vulgarity. , and asks to bring out the talent, the total abandonment to hope. Is Francis still able to say something to our people, to our young people? We are all anxiously looking to decode the signs that come to us, to listen, to search for dialogue and for the meaning of life. We yearn for an essential and serene life. Young people, above all, need to contemplate the beauty of the universe. It is not a question of living in the twentieth century with the customs of the thirteenth, but our earthly existence could be characterized by humility and simplicity. The Poverello continually brings us back to him when others denigrate us because we do not have designer labels, when they isolate us because we do not identify with their slang and stop being blatant. The solitude of Francis gratifies and reconciles us because we are not similar to the vulgarity of others, and without witnesses we go to bring smiles and sweetness to people who are waiting for nothing more so as not to identify with commonplaces and the vanity of the world. The main apostolate is to live the gift of life by committing to build a more just world, happy to be on a par with the weakest, promoting justice.
For Hermann Hesse, Francis embodies a message capable of giving reasons for life and hope to everyone’s heart, including that of Italy today, shaken by a crisis which, before being economic and political, is spiritual and moral. Young Francesco is truly one of us, so similar to us in the lightness of life and dreams. Largely human. The bad myths, the bullies, the beautiful, the rich (no matter how) the false heroes, arouse in us an immediate sympathy because we feel them familiar, endlessly praised by the mass media. Francis instead invites us to a choice of sobriety, it offers us a logic that appears subversive with respect to the careerism and greed of this world. It is not the “audience” that counts, nor the success or the money, but the naked truth of who we are! And it is precisely this freedom of the essential that brings it closer to everyone and makes it disturbing for everyone! The provocation he launches at our present is burning: not an escape from the world but a spirituality of respect and love for creation where man is at the center. And isn’t it that Italy and the world also need?
THE ROAR / Francis of Assisi, what are you saying to a young person today?