Fr. Paschal Mary | April 11, 2026
Desire for change is one of the great markers of the hopefulness of youth. Unfortunately, many of us lose it somewhere along the way. Or if we do hold on to hope, too often it is for someone else to adjust to our expectations. Francis of Assisi seems particularly prone to this temptation. Even for our heroes, we would like to conform more or less to our unspoken ideals.
But are we to say that Francis of Assisi was not who we believe him to be? And a further more important question: Who did Francis believe himself to be?
It is abundantly clear that something in Francis of Assisi deeply desired change. More simply, Francis desired, he was a man of desires. This very much is the story of his soul and of the purification of his desires, which we call “conversion”.
When Francis of Assisi was preparing his testament before he died, he spoke very simply of his conversion:
The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance in this way: for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I showed mercy to them. And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body. And afterwards I delayed a little and left the world.
At first the desire for change is experienced in revulsion. Francis recognizes this as “being in sin” – that is, not being in right relationship with the lepers and so not living in the light of the Lord who led Francis to show mercy to them. This was not a quick mercy, it was a process. Sweetness of soul and body did not come immediately, neither did the firm break with the world.
One of the more heartening aspects of Francis is certainly his vigor for life. In his youth this vivacity moves him toward celebrations, being the life of the party, vying for the worldly glories of knighthood, even excellence as a salesman and as a beggar. He is a show-off, an exhibitionist, sewing expensive silks to cheap undergarments, more jester even than herald.
In the conversion of Francis of Assisi the path is not so straight forward. Francis does not explain what happened, but clearly something did. For what we can make of the timeline, the start of it is the battle of Collestrada (a name meaning in Italian the “way of the hill”, or the “bumpy path”) and his year long imprisonment and the and its initial perfection in the hearing of the Gospel. In between was a winding road filled with these little encounters, unexpected and yet so necessary to move the process forward.
What we each may find in the story of Francis is a bit of our own sacred history. So often we would like the nice and clean conversion story, a once-and-done lightning bolt that demarks clearly what came before and what is to come. We would like not to struggle anymore even with our own desires, holy or not.
In the first letter of Saint John 2:16 we are confronted with a “formula” for temptation, a veritable cocktail of the desires of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. In the overwhelming darkness of these three, hope for conversion seems bleak. Many go through a period of Christian life actively pushing away all desires, believing naively that this is the way to holiness. Although there is a unfortunate strain in the Franciscan Tradition that walked down this treacherous path, Saint Francis was led in a different way.
Back to the earlier quote from the Testament: Francis realized through his bumpy past that desire was the way that the Lord gave him clarity. There are the desires which flotsam that rests on the surface and there are the deep and abiding desires which well up from within. It was for the Lord to make clear the path not upward in worldly glory, but downward towards the least and the most in need of mercy.
Conversion is ultimately a life-long process. The small events of our lives and the encounters that change our path are rarely expected. Francis of Assisi gives us hope and courage to keep moving forward when all hopes for greatness seem dashed, when discouragement clouds the best of us, when family struggles overwhelm. Keep on the path of holy desire and in the words of Saints Francis, “Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally!”