St. Francis of Assisi

by G.K. Chesterton

He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour. He was a Lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation.

But as St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ.

"Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins? Go and restore it for me."

"Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernadone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me."

The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not with somebody else's money. The way to build a church is not to pay for it even with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.

The adoration of Christ had been a part of the man's passionate nature for a long time past. But the imitation of Christ, as a sort of plan or ordered scheme of life, in that sense may be said to begin here.

it needed ten times more courage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of Sicily),

The whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure.

said, "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything."

"Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me."

They were to mingle with the world; and to this the more old-fashioned monk would naturally reply by asking how they were to mingle with the world without becoming entangled with the world.

One of the Franciscans says later, "A monk should own nothing but his harp"; meaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in his creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men.

He was better than other men; he was a benefactor of other men; and yet he was not hated. The world came into church by a newer and nearer door; and by friendship it learnt faith.

He started out with two companions to convert the Mahometan world. He started out with eleven companions to ask the Pope to make a new monastic world.

The whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for good; he knew where he would get his supper, though it was a very plain supper. But the whole point of a friar was that he did not know where he would get his supper.