I was in this Franciscan life, how natural it was to me, because that is to some extent the heart of the case I wish to make.
Christmas was a great feast in Italy, as it had been back in the Highlands of nightmare which I had so briefly seen. It became to me the most solemn and significant of all Holy Days, and wherever I was in Italy I went home to Assisi at that time.
Even before my first Christmas there, I had read the story of the Christ Child born in the manger and looked at innumerable paintings of it, and I had given myself heart and soul to the little infant in Mary’s arms.
I closed my eyes and imagined that I was a tiny baby, which I had never been, that I was helpless and yearning and innocent. And the feeling which came over me was one of rapture. I resolved to see Christ—a pure child—in every man or woman to whom I spoke. If I suffered a moment of anger or annoyance, which was unusual, I thought of the Christ Child. I imagined I was holding Him in my arms. I believed in Him utterly, and that someday when my destiny was fulfilled—whatever and whenever—I would be with Christ. I would kneel in the manger and I would touch the Christ Child’s tiny hand.
God, after all, was eternal—Child, Man, Crucified Savior, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit—it was all one. I saw this with perfect clarity almost immediately. I saw it so completely that theological questions made me laugh.
By the time I left Italy, I was a priest of God, a renowned preacher, a singer of canticles, a sometime healer and a man who brought consolation or happiness to all he knew.
But let me now explain with greater care:
From the beginning, my innocent manner and my directness astonished everyone; they never guessed the real reason for it; that I was a child. That I feasted on milk and cheese seemed humorous to people. My speed at learning also drew love from everyone around me. I could write Italian, English and Latin within a short time.
Uncompromising saintliness took me body and soul.
There was no task too low for me to perform. I went with those who tended the lepers outside the gates of the town.
I had no fear of the lepers. I could have had it, I think, but I did not cultivate it, and therein lies a key to my nature. I seemed to be able to cultivate what I wished.
Nothing to date had severely repelled me, except hatred and violence. And this attitude remained constant during all my years on earth. I was either saddened by something or seduced by it. There was seldom a middle ground.
Indeed, I had a fascination with the lepers because other people were so frightened of them; and of course I knew how Francis has fought to overcome this, and I was determined to be as great as he. I gave comfort to the lepers. I bathed and clothed those who were too far gone with the disease to care for themselves. Having heard that St. Catherine of Siena once drank the bathwater from a leper, I cheerfully did the same thing.
Very early on, I became known in Assisi—the innocent one, the dazzled one, the fool for God, so to speak. A young monk who is truly on fire with the spirit of Francis, who does naturally what Francis would have us all do.
And because I seemed so completely unsophisticated, so incapable of conniving, so childlike if you will, people tended to open up to me, to tell me things, egged on by my bright curious gaze. I listened to everything. Not a word was wasted. Imagine it—the great infant that I was, learning from people’s smallest gestures and slightest confessions all the major truths of life.
That is what was happening inside my mind.
By night I learned to read and finally to write, and I wrote constantly, taking as little sleep as I could. I memorized songs and poems. I studied the paintings of the Basilica, the great murals by Giotto which tell all the significant events of Francis’s life, including how the stigmata came to him—the wounds in his hands and feet from God. And I went out among the pilgrims to talk to them, to hear what they had to say of the world.
The first year of which I knew the date was 1536. I went often to