A Glaring Omission
Oldest known portrait of St. Francis, painted 1228-29, shortly after his death
All across the Western Church (and in some Eastern communities), today is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. While we honor many pre-Reformation saints, some who confessed some terrible doctrines as men of their times - Lutheran Service Book, following the tradition of earlier English-speaking hymnals - makes no mention of Francis.
I remember as a seminarian hearing a pastor chide a parishioner for having a statue of St. Francis in the garden, saying that this was the “wrong religion.”
However, our Lutheran Confessions, namely the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, praise St. Francis by name.
In Article 4:211 (known also as Article 4:3:90) on Justification, Francis is counted among the “holy Fathers” who “believed that by faith they were accounted righteous for Christ’s sake, and that God was gracious to them, not on account of those exercises of their own.”
In Article 24:7 on the Mass, he is referred to as “St. Francis” and credited with abolishing private Masses in his order: “St. Francis wished to provide aright for this matter, as he decided that each fraternity should be content with a single common Mass daily.”
In Article 27:21 on Monastic Vows, he is counted among the “saints” and “holy men” who observed “obedience, poverty, and celibacy” rightly:
Obedience, poverty, and celibacy, provided the latter is not impure, are, as exercises, adiaphora [in which we are not to look for either sin or righteousness]. And for this reason the saints can use these without impiety, just as Bernard, Franciscus, and other holy men used them. And they used them on account of bodily advantage, that they might have more leisure to teach and to perform other godly offices, and not that the works themselves are, by themselves, works that justify or merit eternal life.
In Article 27:1-4, also on Monastic Vows, we find a member of the Franciscan order, a certain John Hilten, praised for his righteousness:
In the town of Eisenach, in Thuringia, there was, to our knowledge, a monk, John Hilten, who, thirty years ago, was cast by his fraternity into prison because he had protested against certain most notorious abuses. For we have seen his writings, from which it can be well understood what the nature of his doctrine was [that he was a Christian, and preached according to the Scriptures]. And those who knew him testify that he was a mild old man, and serious indeed, but without moroseness. He predicted many things, some of which have thus far transpired, and others still seem to impend, which we do not wish to recite, lest it may be inferred that they are narrated either from hatred toward one or from partiality to another. But finally, when, either on account of his age or the foulness of the prison, he fell into disease, he sent for the guardian in order to tell him of his sickness; and when the guardian, inflamed with pharisaic hatred, had begun to reprove the man harshly on account of his kind of doctrine, which seemed to be injurious to the kitchen, then, omitting all mention of his sickness, he said with a sigh that he was bearing these injuries patiently for Christ’s sake, since he had indeed neither written nor taught anything which could overthrow the position of the monks, but had only protested against some well-known abuses.
But another one, he said, will come in A. D. 1516, who will destroy You, neither will you be able to resist him. This very opinion concerning the downward career of the power of the monks, and this number of years, his friends afterwards found also written by him in his commentaries, which he had left, concerning certain passages of Daniel.
But although the outcome will teach how much weight should be given to this declaration, yet there are other signs which threaten a change in the power of the monks, that are no less certain than oracles.
One of the legacies of St. Francis of Assisi is the popularization of the crèche that we find in many - if not most - of our churches at Christmas. In 1223, Francis gathered people and animals for a living nativity scene to help worshipers better picture the scene of the birth of our Lord.
Two centuries before the Lutheran Reformation, a wing of the Franciscan movement was condemning the papacy as antichrist and were being burned at the stake, as summed up in a book review by Library Journal’s Steve Young:
“Within 100 years of St. Francis's death in the early 13th century, his ideal of apostolic poverty was condemned as heresy, and Spiritual Franciscans were all too frequently burned at the stake. Criticisms of laxity in the order spurred accusations that the popes were forerunners of the Antichrist, while papal authorities found Franciscan extremists to be heretical and disobedient to ecclesiastical authority.
The legacy of St. Francis is complex, but no less so than, say, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose hymns we sing, and who is commemorated in LSB.
In the words of the prayer attributed to St. Francis, let us pray, “Lord make us instruments of Your peace.”