Transitus

This evening and tomorrow the Catholic Church, particularly Franciscans everywhere, and also people of all faith and people of good will who revere the life of Francis of Assisi commemorate his passing from this world into new life in God. As St. Bonaventure, who wrote an early definitive chronicle of the saint's life, puts it, Francis was "assumed into the abyss of God's glory."

This evening at our simple and intimate transitus service, held just for our fraternity in our friary chapel, we read from the Major Life of St. Francis by Bonaventure. I quote from his account of Francis' death.

As the moment of his death drew near, the saint had all the friars who were there called to his side; he spoke to them gently with fatherly affection, consoling them for his death and exhorting them to love God. He mentioned especially poverty and patient endurance and the necessity of holding to the faith of the holy Roman Church, and gave the Gospel pre-eminence over any other rule of life. The friars were grouped about him and he stretched out his arms over them in the form of a cross, because he loved the sign, and blessed all the friars, both present and absent, in the power and in the name of the Crucified.

Then he added, “I bid you good bye, all you my sons, in the fear of God. Remain in Him always. There will be trials and temptations in the future, and it is well for those who persevere in the life they have undertaken. I am on my way to God, and I commend you all to his favor.”

When he had finished his inspiring admonition, he told them to bring a book of the Gospels and asked to have the passage of St. John read which begins, “Before the Paschal feast began…” Then, as best he could, he intoned the Psalm, “Loud is my cry to the Lord, the prayer I utter for the Lord’s mercy,” and recited it all down to the last verse, “too long have honest hearts waited to see you grant me redress.”

At last, when all God’s mysteries had been accomplished in him, his holy soul was freed from his body and assumed into the abyss of God’s glory, and Francis fell asleep in God. 

One of the friars, a disciple of his, saw his soul being borne on a white cloud over many waters to heaven, under the appearance of sublime sanctity, full of the abundance of divine wisdom and grace which had earned for him the right to enter the home of light and peace, where he rests with Christ forever.

All of us are passing through this life into that which we do not know. We are voyagers, sailors navigating to the undiscovered country. We can go drowning in the cramping grip of fear and anxiety, carried mindlessly, helplessly in the undertow of our personal troubles and the cares of a ruining world. The alternative is to go freed from those fears and anxieties, buoyed by grace, lifted to the crest of the mysterious waters. Under and within the waters lies the uncreated yet fulfilled place of peace. This is the picture in Bonaventure's mind's-eye as he imagines how Francis appeared to his brothers, carried on a cloudy surf to the shores of heaven. And who with a heart of faith could doubt but that Francis, the exceptional little man, having seen and lived now in the forever-future world of the reign of God, took the greatest leap forward toward it across heaven's sea to the place where heaven no longer lies submerged?

From where we live and breathe, glory dwells in God's abyss. To get to where the glory is, we must also be assumed into the abyss, but in faith, not fear. Francis' death is rightly remembered as one of the greatest passages in human history. It is the consummation of his courageous life, the epitome of his generation-long ascent, by descent into minority, into the center of God in Christ. And through Francis' brothers, the world has observed and since has drawn nearer, even if only in the most hesitant of half-steps, to the same way Francis lived and died so that there may simply be life to the fullest, and perfect joy.

As we pass through this life together, certain only that we are passing through a world that itself is passing away, let us live into what must ultimately rise, and let die the many ways that destroy life and the very gifts that make life itself possible. Let our passing be a giving without remainder, a giving that returns everything that the Giver has granted. In doing this we will go as Francis has gone, and we will inherit undying life in God.