A Condition of Complete Simplicity. Rowan Clare Williams
without sinning forces us to confront our own failures. So our vocation to be the living Body of Christ is impaired, because we do not want to envisage what that body might be like. It is all too painful, and we find it easier to reduce the Body of Christ to a picturesque symbol. However, the mystery of the Incarnation calls us to contemplate the truth that God became flesh, and that we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’15 in his image. Wholehearted membership of the Body of Christ begins with the call to accept our own physical embodiment, and rejoice that Jesus shared it. It was our own human reality, however far from ideal, that Jesus accepted and shared in his own body. Flesh cannot be separated from mind or spirit if we are to see ourselves as whole beings, and dedicate our whole selves joyfully to God’s service. Our human life and the physical world in which we live can be the vessel for a profound encounter with the love of God. In order to become accurate reflections of the incarnate God, we need to put every aspect of ourselves at God’s disposal. According to the Principles of the Anglican Society of Saint Francis, for example, the balanced Franciscan life is made up of three ‘ways of service’:16 prayer, study and work. Thus mind, body and spirit all find a place of equal value in the service of God.
The place of the mind in Franciscan life, however, has also given cause for dispute over the years. Although study quickly did become an accepted part of the ministry of the friars, and there were many learned Franciscan scholars, it is arguable that Francis himself was somewhat anti-intellectual. Certainly he was, at best, ambivalent about the benefits of academic learning. It played no part in the life he envisaged for the early brothers. The only book they needed to learn from was the Gospel. This attitude might in part be explained by the fact that literacy was then restricted to those who could afford it. Education was often available only through the very monasteries which had come to symbolize the Church’s arrogance and detachment in their apparent rejection of the real world. To be ‘unlettered’, as Francis himself always claimed to be, was to be closer to the poor majority. Jesus and the disciples were simple people with little or no formal education. Francis knew that his Little Brothers would reflect that, coming as they did from a society in which the majority had no access to learning. From the start he was determined that they should be Little, or Lesser, Brothers. That acceptance of poverty and littleness affected every aspect of their life, both corporately and individually.
It is of course true that, even for academic theologians, writing, thinking or theorizing about God is no substitute for a direct personal relationship with him. Francis was right to distrust the glib games which can be played with truth, thus keeping it safe and manageable, unable to work its transformation. Having said all that, Francis himself displayed an unusual knowledge of Scripture. His writings also betray a familiarity with authors of the early Church, such as Jerome and Ambrose. In this too, of course, he resembles the Jesus who was able to argue with the learned men in the temple at a very early age. He also knew the Divine Office of the Church, presumably required of a deacon, and was able to marshal theological arguments of some complexity. His claim to be ‘unlettered’ is therefore somewhat disingenuous if taken literally. It was, however, entirely consistent with his desire to know God rather than know about him. The truth and reality of what is revealed about God in Scripture is paramount. God is real and knowable, not as arcane theory but as lived reality in relationship.
Francis’ concern, with study as in all things, was that we need to rid ourselves of all the props that can shield us from living that reality ourselves. Poverty was about stripping off every cause for pride or self-absorption, everything that might draw the consciousness back from God to self. We are to become ‘instruments of God’s mighty working’:17 whatever we do is to be directed by God and to direct us back to him. In an article on Francis and poverty, an Anglican Franciscan brother tellingly remarks that as Francis saw it, a life of poverty ‘must be a habitual reference to God, and such a life then really has no limits, because its dimensions are the dimensions of God’.18
All three of these ways of service, then, if held in healthy balance, can become pointers to a Franciscan way of living in the world. Mind, body and spirit all need to be dedicated to the loving service of God. So, by persisting in prayer we learn to love the world and its people, by study we can aspire to understand it (which helps us in turn to love it more honestly), and by works we seek to do what we can to improve it, so that it mirrors more exactly the will of its Creator. Some brothers and sisters may find themselves drawn more to one aspect than another. There have been endless debates within the Franciscan movement, as in most other branches of Christianity, as to whether it is better to ‘be’ or to ‘do’. The answer, is, naturally, both – but never to lose sight of God in attempting either.
Francis and ‘Brother Ass’
Francis himself is not always the most obvious model for healthy ways to integrate body, mind and spirit. If there is one aspect of Francis which is hard to grasp today, it is his apparent thirst for self-mortification and self-denial. This typically medieval approach, so admired by his early biographers as a sure sign of his holiness, can seem exaggerated, or even neurotic, to the contemporary mind. ‘Denying yourself’ seems to go against the grain of all current wisdom. We have got used to assuming that our rights should be respected and our needs met. It is, fortunately, commonplace now for Christians to employ the insights of psychology, along with theology, in the quest for maturity as complete persons made in God’s image. We are thus aware that in order to grow and flourish as full human beings, we must recognize our needs and desires, for it can ultimately prove damaging not to do so. In what way, then, can it make sense to embrace a Franciscan path of self-denial?
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