Paradiso: The Sphere of the Sun, on St. Francis

Saint Francis, pray for us! As the Dominican Thomas of Aquinas (not yet named a saint!) speaks in glowing terms of the founder of the Franciscans, he laments the degeneracy of his own order. Dominic, of course, had been Francis's "fellow helmsman, holding Peter's ship/ straight to its course across the dangerous sea" (119-20); sadly, though, the Dominicans have become scattered and have lost their way, which has contributed to as much as it has been influenced by the destruction of the Church triumphant as we saw in the allegory of the Tree of Good and Evil. It is for St. Dominic, replete as he is with God's bliss, as Aristotle anticipated, that "the good or bad fortunes of friends, then, seem to have some effects on the dead, but effects of such a kind and degree as neither to make the happy unhappy nor to produce any other change of the kind." Indeed, as we've seen in Dante's cosmos, those filled with bliss cannot be otherwise, and those filled with sorrow cannot raise their heads in hope, but there is an obvious interest in what is happening on the terrestrial scene.



Like St. Francis, St. Crescentia Hoess bade her deteriorating limbs be thankful they had the capacity to suffer, for in suffering, we come to know more fully humanity's relationship with God. St. Francis, after a lifetime of suffering, received the exquisite pain of the stigmata and was welcomed soon after into the kingdom of God, which he had served for two decades, inculcating others with the love of a poverty that enriched the soul.

S.