We used to tell a joke about a guy who wanted to find God's plan for his life through the Bible by opening the Bible up and pointing. The first verse said, “Judas went out and hung himself”. The second verse said, “Go thou and do likewise”. The last verse read, “What thou doest do quickly”. Of course the joke stopped there so we never asked what the guy did next but in the new biography of Francis of Assisi we see Francis using a similar method and acting on it. He used a practice, accepted in his day, called sortes biblicae. In which the priest opened the missal three times and for Francis the three verses set the course of his life. “Go, sell what you have; take nothing for your journey: let a man deny himself take up his cross and follow me” became the first step in the founding of the Franciscan Order.

This practice of sortes biblicae shows that Francis was very much a man of his time as well documented in this new biography by the Dominican priest Augustine Thompson, published by Cornell University Press. The writer makes it clear from the beginning that he is telling the story of a saint of the Church without the glitter and glam that similar biographies contain.

I admit that as I read there was something in me that looked for more of the spectacular but that would have taken away from the reality of the man Francis—the privileged young man who gave it all up for God and the Church. (Francis love for the Church, rightly ordered, is a theme running through the whole biography.)

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This was my first in depth reading of Francis of Assisi and it was a good start. The writer shows us a man with faults and flaws like the rest of us but who was mightily used of God because he was willing to be used, even though he was uncomfortable in the roles God gave him. This book reminds us that God can draw straight lines with crooked instruments.

 

I received the Ebook edition of this book through NetGalley.com but there was no expectation other than an honest review