By kind permission of the publisher we publish the editorial of the Franciscan cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, patriarch of Jerusalem, taken from Avvenire’s monthly art and culture magazine “Luoghi dell’Infinito” (number 298 of October 2024), which dedicates an extensive monograph full of essays, testimonies, contributions and insights on Saint Francis of Assisi.
by Pierbattista Pizzaballa
At the center of the experience of Saint Francis of Assisi is the profound encounter with Jesus, which becomes the fulcrum of his life and the core of his faith. For the Poverello, faith is not a simple intellectual adherence, but a reality that involves the whole being: the heart, the affections, the thought. It is precisely this total dimension of faith that struck me most in his figure. An integral faith, which embraces every part of existence. I don’t deny that when I was young I struggled to understand some aspects of his life, like when he cried saying: “Because Love is not loved.” Such expressions seemed almost too romantic to me. However, with experience and years, I have better understood the meaning of these words, discovering that Francis’ faith was a path in which mind and heart were united, without division.
Francis’ Trinitarian faith: a full vision of God
A second crucial aspect of St. Francis’ spirituality is his Trinitarian vision of faith. For him, faith in God the Father is fully realized only through the encounter with Jesus Christ, and only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to this salvific reality. His faith was a direct experience of “seeing, touching and believing” in Jesus, true man and true God. Francis was not limited to an abstract faith, but lived a concrete love for the humanity of Christ. We see it clearly in the episode of Greccio, where he wanted to relive the nativity of the Lord, and later in La Verna, where he mystically participated in the crucifixion, asking to feel the same pain as Jesus in his body. It is a total experience, which surpasses the intellectual dimension and becomes flesh.
Francis and the Holy Land: the link with the place of the Incarnation
For a Franciscan, the Holy Land is not just a geographical place, but an essential component of his own charism. Francis himself taught us that there is no incarnation without a concrete place: Bethlehem is linked to Greccio, and Calvary to Verna. Preserving the memory of the Incarnation is one of the main tasks of the Franciscans, who live in the Holy Land to preserve and relive the experience of Jesus in these sacred places. The pontiffs themselves speak of this presence as a plan of Providence, entrusted to the Franciscans, true “heralds” of the Incarnation of Christ.
The Church as a meeting place with Christ
Another central teaching of Saint Francis concerns his deep connection with the Church. In the Testament he writes: «The Lord gave me so much faith in the Church that every time I encountered a church I said: “We adore you Christ and we bless you”». For Francis, the Church is the privileged place of encounter with Christ, through the sacraments and especially in the Eucharist. It is the Church that allows us to directly experience Christ, and Francis’ faith invites us to look beyond the flesh, to see with the eyes of the Spirit. Even in times of difficulty, war and destruction, the Spirit inspires us to continue to believe in peace, even when everything seems to indicate the opposite.
The prophetic vocation and the mission of peace
In our era, like every other inhabitant of the Holy Land, since October 7th I have been immersed in a sea of blood and fire, not those of Christ, but of war. We have witnessed death, destruction, wounds, violence, resentment and the desire for revenge. However, we strove, with God’s help, to be bridges of peace, seeking mediation and keeping alive the last hope of negotiations. The prophetic vocation of the Church in this time is fundamental: being able to orient life in the light of the Word of God and not simply follow the current of events. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, we are called to offer hope and vision, even in suffering. Even when the world seems reduced to rubble, we must remember that the future glory of this house, as the prophet Haggai says, will be greater than before.
