St. Francis and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Please let’s clear something up, right now:

St. Francis of Assisi was not a hippy.

With the recent papal election, a lot of talk has been going on about Pope Francis’ namesake: how he was a lover of nature who preached to birds and converted wolves.

According to pious tradition, this is true.

Whether or not this pious tradition includes space dolphins and baby seals was still under research at press time.

HOWEVER! There is so, so much more to this great saint than his love of nature.

You don’t get called a “pillar of the church” simply by being a barefoot bunny-kisser.  Pillars of the church are made of rock (and not the garden-statue variety).

St. Francis of Assisi was hardcore.  Stigmata-and-visions hardcore.

El-Greco-paints-you-like-this-a-kabazillion-times-harcore.

If we had to pick a musical genre to describe St. Francis, I’d suggest punk rock before psychedelic folk.  Did he give up all his belongings, adopt a shabby outfit, and freak people out with his lifestyle (not unlike a hippy)?

Yes.

Did he experience ecstasy (the religious kind, mind you)?

Yes.

Did he live in a commune(ity)? 

Yes.  However, he didn’t do these things to explore the dayglo-swathed-vistas of self-expression.  He wasn’t seeking some Cosmic Swirling Whoa-Man Radical Edge.

St. Francis did these things to win souls to Christ.

Pious tradition tells us that God asked St. Francis to “rebuild my church.” Doing so takes guts, and often means freaking people out and making both sides unhappy.  It seems that Pope Francis, in choosing his namesake, may have had this Franciscan controversy in mind.

Conservatives are worried because Pope Francis is washing the feet of criminals, non-christians, and women on Holy Thursday, and liberals are worried because he’s solidly against women’s ordination, gay marriage, and abortion.  But I see this partisan unease as a good thing.  Like the societal partisan skeptics of old, nobody quite knows what to make of this funny little Francis turning the world upside-down in order to set it right.

It’s true, as this recent essay from the New Yorker points out, that “[St.] Francis is especially loved by partisans of leftist causes: the animal-rights movement, feminism, ecology, vegetarianism (though he was not a vegetarian). But you don’t have to be on the left to love Francis.”

The fact is, people on the right love St. Francis, too.  People in the center love St. Francis. We all love St. Francis, because he belongs to all of us– because he belongs to the church.

And our new pope Francis belongs to the church, too.  Our prayers and well-wishes go out to him as he seeks to rebuild the church by his radical example of Christian charity.

Rock on, Pope Francis.