St. Francis of Assisi Was Both Humbled and Challenged by Christ on the Cross –Franciscan Media
TweetFor St. Francis of Assisi it is the love of God, the self-offering and surrender of control that comes with the Incarnation that is at the heart of what it means to talk about the suffering of Jesus on the Cross.
The sense of giving up control is seen in the way Scholar Zachary Hayes describes the place of the Cross in the spiritual worldviews of Francis and Bonaventure.
When we look at the mystery of Jesus, this evokes quite a different sense of the divine. When we think of the historical origins of Jesus, the poor circumstances of His life, the tragic historical ending on the Cross, we must ask in what sense this is truly the incarnation of divine love.
For St. Francis and St. Bonaventure such historical realities point our attention to the humble, tender elements of the world in order to discover there important signals of the presence of the divine.
How can one look at the figure on the Cross without asking: What is the nature of creative and redemptive love? What is truly creative power?
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