This year the Franciscan family marks a remarkable anniversary: eight hundred years since the death, or Transitus, of our Seraphic Father Saint Francis of Assisi on October 3, 1226. For Franciscans, the Transitus is more than the anniversary of a saint’s death. The word means a “passing over,” and it expresses the profoundly Christian way in which Francis approached his final hour: not as an extinction, but as a passage through death with Christ to the Father.

 

As Francis approached death, he was singing. Thomas of Celano tells us that Francis began Psalm 142, the very Psalm traditionally associated with the celebration of his Transitus: “With a loud voice I cry out to the Lord; with a loud voice I beseech the Lord. My complaint I pour out before him; before him I lay bare my distress.” The words are striking because Francis did not approach death pretending that human suffering was unreal. His body was exhausted and afflicted by illness, his eyesight had largely failed, and the wounds of the Stigmata remained upon his flesh. Yet suffering had become prayer, and prayer had become praise.

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​Francis also returned to the great song of his final years, the Canticle of the Creatures. As death approached, he had added that extraordinary final praise: “Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whom no living person can escape.” The dying Francis was doing what he had spent his whole converted life learning to do: turning everything into praise. Sun and moon, wind and water, fire and earth, suffering and forgiveness, and finally death itself were gathered into his song and offered back to God.

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​A remarkable event from only ten years earlier helps illuminate the meaning of Francis’s final hours. In 1216 another of the great figures of Francis’s age died in Perugia: Pope Innocent III. Innocent had stood at the summit of medieval Christendom. Kings negotiated with him, bishops answered to him, councils assembled at his summons, and only months before his death he had presided over the Fourth Lateran Council. He was also the Pope before whom Francis and his first brothers had appeared, seeking approval for their simple determination to live according to the Holy Gospel.

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After Innocent’s death, Jacques de Vitry—the distinguished preacher and churchman who would become Bishop of Acre and one of the earliest independent witnesses to the Franciscan movement—arrived in Perugia. He went to the church where the Pope’s body awaited burial and discovered something that deeply affected him. During the night, thieves had stolen the precious vestments prepared for the Pope’s burial. Jacques found the body of one of the most powerful men in Christendom fere nudum—almost naked.

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The sight became for Jacques a meditation on the passing glory of this world. Here was a man before whom princes had stood, now stripped of the visible signs of power and dignity. Everything that had surrounded his earthly office had suddenly become powerless before death.

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Ten years later, another man lay dying in Umbria, and he too would lie almost naked upon the earth. But no thief stripped Francis of Assisi. Francis asked to be stripped.

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There is no disrespect to Innocent III in this comparison. Innocent bore an immense responsibility for the Church, and Francis himself sought the judgment and blessing of the Roman Church. Yet the contrast between their deaths contains a lesson worthy of every penitent. The Pope possessed the splendid vestments appropriate to his office, and eventually they were taken from him. Francis possessed only a poor habit, and in his final hour he freely surrendered even that.

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Francis asked his brothers to place him upon the bare earth. He wanted to meet Sister Death possessing nothing because he had spent his life learning that Christ was enough. Finally, both Pope and Poor Man stood before God as every human being must eventually stand before Him: without possessions, offices, honors, accomplishments, or earthly security, carrying only the truth of what each had become before God.

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This is precisely where the Transitus speaks so powerfully to the penitential vocation.

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The life of penance is, at its deepest level, the lifelong practice of surrendering willingly what death will eventually take from us anyway. We learn to loosen our grasp upon possessions before possessions are taken away. We surrender our pride before our reputation disappears. We relinquish our insistence upon our own will before circumstances make our plans impossible. We practice detachment from comfort before age or illness deprives us of it. Above all, we surrender sin so that when the hour comes to surrender life itself, our hearts have already learned how to say: everything belongs to God.

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Perhaps this is why Francis could say something as astonishing as “Welcome, my Sister Death.” He could call death his sister because everything already belonged to God. Brother Sun and Sister Moon belonged to God. Brother Fire and Sister Water belonged to God. Poverty belonged to God. Suffering belonged to God. His brothers belonged to God. The Order belonged to God. His successes and failures belonged to God. His body, marked with the wounds of Christ, belonged to God. Finally, his life itself belonged to God.

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Death could not take from Francis what Francis had already freely surrendered.

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That is the secret of the Transitus. We are not merely commemorating the death of a saint. We are remembering the completion of an offering that had begun decades earlier. Francis had been dying to himself long before October 3, 1226. He died to himself when he embraced the leper, when he stripped himself before the Bishop of Assisi, when he surrendered his dreams of knighthood, when the Gospel became his form of life, and when he relinquished control of the Order he had founded.

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At La Verna, when the wounds of the Crucified appeared upon his flesh, what had been happening spiritually for years became visible upon his body. Francis was being conformed to Christ. By the time Sister Death arrived, there was very little left for her to take, because Francis already belonged to the Crucified.

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As his final hour approached, Francis asked that the book of the Gospels be brought to him. He wanted his brothers to read the beginning of Saint John’s account of the Last Supper: “Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.” Francis understood his own death through the death of Jesus. His transitus, his passing over, was possible because Christ had first passed through death and transformed it.

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Francis did not love death because death is good in itself. He loved Christ so completely that even death became another place where Christ could be followed.

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There is also something beautiful about Francis asking for the Gospel at the end of his life. His vocation had begun with the Gospel. He and his first companions had opened the Gospel to discover how they were to live, and Francis had spent the intervening years trying, with all his weakness and imperfections, to make the Gospel his form of life. Now, as earthly life slipped away, he wanted the Gospel opened once again. At the beginning was the Gospel. At the end was the Gospel. Between those two moments was a lifetime spent trying to become what he had heard.

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Eight hundred years later, this is the challenge Francis places before every member of the Confraternity of Penitents. Our vocation cannot consist merely in admiring Saint Francis, preserving Franciscan customs, or remembering a beautiful spiritual heritage. Francis always points beyond himself to Christ. Near the end of his life he told his brothers: “I have done what was mine; may Christ teach you what is yours.”

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Those words deserve to become an examination of conscience for every penitent. What is mine to do? What remains unsurrendered in my life? Where am I still resisting the Gospel? What poverty am I afraid to accept? What forgiveness am I withholding? What obedience am I resisting? What cross am I trying to escape? What am I desperately attempting to possess, protect, or control as though it belonged to me rather than to God?

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Francis teaches us that holiness is ultimately the freedom to give everything back.

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This is why the discipline of a penitential life matters. Prayer, fasting, simplicity, works of mercy, examination of conscience, obedience, fidelity to one’s duties, and voluntary acts of self-denial are not ends in themselves. They train the heart for freedom. Every genuine act of penance says in some small way, “Lord, this does not own me. My comfort does not own me. My possessions do not own me. My appetites do not own me. My plans do not own me. Even my life does not belong absolutely to me. I belong to You.”

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Eventually every Christian will celebrate his or her own transitus.

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There will come an hour when possessions, titles, accomplishments, strength, plans, and even the body itself must be surrendered. The great question is whether we will begin that surrender only then, or whether we are learning it now. Saint Francis spent a lifetime preparing for his final poverty, and therefore when Sister Death arrived she found a man already free.

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As the Church and the Franciscan family commemorate these eight hundred years since the evening of October 3, 1226, perhaps the most fitting way to honor Francis is not simply to look backward toward the Portiuncula, but forward toward our own final meeting with Christ. Francis has completed his Transitus. Ours is still before us.

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Shortly before his death, Francis expressed the simplicity of his hope in words that beautifully summarize the meaning of this anniversary: “I am on my way to God, and I commend you all to His favor.”

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May our Seraphic Father Francis pray for the Confraternity of Penitents during this anniversary year. May he teach us to live the Gospel with greater simplicity, to surrender more freely, to do penance more generously, to forgive more readily, and to cling less anxiously to the things that must someday pass away. Above all, may he teach us to love Jesus Christ, the Poor and Crucified Lord, so completely that when our own Transitus finally comes, we too may say without fear: “I am on my way to God.”

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— Fr. Joseph Tuscan, OFM Cap.
Spiritual Guardian, Confraternity of Penitents (reprinted on line in www.FranciscanPenanceLibrary2.com