Another experience that marked the journey of St Francis’s life, after the encounter with the leper, was the one that took place at the Church of San Damiano, outside the city of Assisi. According to the account of Thomas of Celano—the biographer of St Francis—in 1205, while Francis was wandering through the countryside around Assisi, he entered this small church and prayed fervently and insistently for greater light from heaven about what God’s will was for him. From the crucifix of this church—known as the San Damiano Cross—he heard the words: “Francis, go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling completely into ruin.”

At first, Francis understood these words in a literal sense. But it was after this episode that his life was turned upside down, and a series of events unfolded that led him to renounce entirely his father’s wealth so that he could truly be a son of the heavenly Father. Indeed, according to the Legenda Maior of St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Pope Innocent III approved the Order after seeing, in a dream, this friar holding up the Lateran Basilica to prevent it from collapsing.

In the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon, we see St Francis, after his radical decision, repairing the little church of San Damiano with his own hands, joined by the first brothers. Although this is not historically accurate, it is certainly a powerful scene that captures our imagination and kindles our hope. I like to imagine that, with every stone of San Damiano that he put back in place, the Poor Man of Assisi also laid a trowelful of mortar to build the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, through the witness of his life and that of his brothers. Surrounded by heresies and compromises that were undermining the Church from every side, St Francis chose to build on solid apostolic foundations. He built on freedom, fraternity, and equal dignity, without violent revolutions. He did not build his own pure church. He renewed the Church from within rather than hurling stones at it from outside, because he knew that he too was a redeemed and beloved sinner …

As pilgrims of hope returning home, how will we continue to build up and support the Church of which we are a part, in the style of St Francis?