Let’s see…I read this one on the way from Knoxville to Columbia. As a whole, I liked it very much, except for the yearning to just get the heck back to Italy that it watered.
What we have here, in short, is a combined life of St. Francis/travelogue. Francke and her husband tried to visit every one of the spots in Italy associated with St. Francis – as well as a couple in Egypt. The book is, I want to tell you emphatically, not in the category of "ambiguous skeptic follows footsteps of saint and snickers at relics and people who actually believe this stuff." And believe me, I’ve read my fill of those over the past few years. Francke is clearly devoted to St. Francis in her own way, is unfailingly respectful of most of the biography, as well as the sites that she visits, and her fellow pigrims. She gives plenty of air time to alternative explanations of the stigmata,though, and doesn’t seem to interested in the "miraculous" aspect of such a thing, focusing on what it says instead – that St. Francis had conformed himself to Christ. But, if you think about it…well, never mind.
Of course the big sites are here, but what fascinates are the smaller places – the many hermitages Francis and his brothers built all over central Italy, places like Ancona, where Francis stayed for a time, and from which he left on one of his attempts to convert Muslims. Francke is determined to find everything – like the very spot where Francis renounced his earthly father, every spot of every important vision, the exact place where he received Clare, and so on. Her adventures in doing so make an engaging read, peopled with mostly very cooperative, albeit busy Franciscans.
The missing piece though, is any clear sense of why this trek is so important to Francke. The appeal of St. Francis is evident on some level – the drama of the story, the strength of his commitment, his sacrifice, the intense emotional and physical pain and disappointment of his later years, the simple charm. But as we walk along with Francke, observing what she observes, we realize at some point that this is all we are doing – observing. To be sure, there is a distance between any of us and the religious experience and commitment of another, and intense figures like St. Francis sometimes, by their singularity, throw up a wall between them and us that is impossible to breach. As illuminating as Francke’s journey is, it is absent a piece – I suppose I would say that would be the totality of Francis’ faith. And perhaps that is fine, for perhaps anything more than Francke can bring to this project would end up being intrusive, and would have the effect of injecting the narrator too much into what she is telling us about, while in fact, this book strikes an excellent balance on that score.
(Again, it’s not like "Let me use this pilgrimage to vent about my life" genre of "spiritual journey" books that pepper the bookshelves.)
Perhaps I can best put it this way.
As I got into this book, I was filled with a passionate desire to do this journey as well. Not mirroring every stop, of course, but to get back there, see Assisi and beyond, to climb up a rock or two and find those hermitages hanging onto cliffs, to see San Damiano and Gubbio and Ancona.
But then I thought…why? What is this journey about? Is that, in the end, what Francis would want me to do? Is that the essence of following Francis or, for that matter, following Christ?
Pilgrimage is a venerable and ancient aspect of Christian spirituality. It’s a metaphor and a concrete symbol of the Christian life. But shouldn’t I first let myself be inspired by St. Francis, not to plan a voyage across the sea, but to plan how I can better serve the poor and the lepers who live within a five-mile radius of my house?
First things first, I’m thinking.
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