JUBILEE YEAR OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Friar Chinonso NWOGWU OFMCap.

As the Archdiocese of Ibadan joins the Universal Church in celebrating the Solemnity of Pentecost, we are called to reflect on the nature of the Holy Spirit as a living fire that transforms ordinary lives. In the history of our faith, perhaps no one embodies this transformation more radically than St. Francis of Assisi. He is celebrated for his love of God, commitment to poverty, holiness of life, joyful spirit, fraternal living, and total dedication to God. However, the root of all these virtues was his complete and radical immersion in the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

For Francis, Pentecost was not just a past event; it was a daily reality. St. Bonaventure, in his classic biography Legenda Maior, portrays Francis as a "Seraphic" figure. The Seraphim are the angels closest to God.  Bonaventure describes Francis as a man consumed by the "burning coal" of divine love, a direct echo of the tongues of fire at Pentecost. This fire reached its climax on Mount La Verna when Francis received the Stigmata. This was not merely a physical phenomenon; it was the ultimate work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, who is the "Artisan of Love," etched the wounds of the Crucified Christ onto Francis’s body. Bonaventure writes that Francis’s heart became a "furnace" of divine heat. This teaches us that the Holy Spirit does not just give us "ideas" about God; rather, the Spirit transforms our very being into a living sacrifice. Thomas of Celano, another biographer, wrote that Francis became "not so much a man praying, but prayer itself." This is the goal of Pentecost. As St. Paul says, "the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). Francis reached a state where his breath, heartbeat, and movements were entirely imbued with the Holy Spirit. Thus, when we allow the Holy Spirit into our lives, our daily activities become a continuous extension of our prayer life.

If Pentecost is the "birthday of the Church," then the Franciscan movement may rightly be seen as a "rebirth of Pentecost," led by a man who sought to move only by the breath of God. In the early days of the Franciscan Order, as it grew into thousands of friars, Francis did something almost unheard of in the history of institutional leadership: he stepped down from formal leadership. Yet, he did not leave the brothers leaderless. According to the Legend of the Three Companions, Francis declared: “I leave you in the hands of the Holy Spirit.” He famously referred to the Holy Spirit as the "General Minister of the Order." In our modern world, we often worry about leadership, administration, and the future of our institutions. St. Francis offers us a refreshing, Spirit-led perspective. In his Later Rule (the Regula Bullata, 1223), which remains the blueprint for Franciscan life, Francis wrote that the friars “should desire to have the Spirit of the Lord and Its holy operation.” This is a powerful reminder for us in our parishes and societies across Ibadan: our primary goal is not just to "do" things for God, but to allow the Spirit to "operate" within us.

At the first Pentecost, the Apostles spoke in different tongues, and people of all nations understood them. Francis experienced a similar miracle. Because he was so filled with the Spirit, he could communicate with all of God’s creation. In Thomas of Celano’s First Life of St. Francis, we read of Francis preaching to birds and taming the wolf that terrorised the villages. Thus, through the Holy Spirit, he restores harmony within creation. When Francis composed the Canticle of the Creatures, he was singing in the "language" of the Spirit, recognising all elements of creation as brothers and sisters. Thus, he called the sun, “Brother Sun” and the moon “Sister Moon”. In a society often divided by language, tribe, status, and ideology, the life of St. Francis reminds us that the Holy Spirit speaks one universal language: LOVE. When we are united with the Spirit, we no longer see others as strangers; we see all people as children of the same Father.

As we celebrate Pentecost Sunday today, let us look to St. Francis as our model. He was a man who took the Gospel literally and the Holy Spirit seriously. He reminds us that the same Spirit who descended upon the Apostles in the Upper Room is still active in the life of every Christian. We need only to make ourselves ready and empty ourselves of those things that extinguish the spirit of holy devotion.

May we, like St. Francis of Assisi, seek above all things to possess the Spirit of the Lord, so that our hearts may become furnaces of divine love.

St. Francis of Assisi, Man of the Spirit, Pray for us!