"Song, music, and poetry were so deeply a part of the nature of Saint Francis that in times of sorrow and sickness as well as of joy and good health he spontaneously gave voice in song to his feelings, his inspirations, and his prayers."

taken from: The Classics of Western Spirituality - Francis & Clare - Translation and Introduction by: Regis J. Armstrong, OFM, Cap. and Ignatius C. Brady, OFM).

ROMANO GUARDINI
in an Afterword to the "Mirror of Perfection"

"His being is so fashioned; his words, bearing and whole life are so constituted that they form immediate materializations of the Gospel-a literal discipleship, straightforward realization of Jesus' existence without any mitigation or interpretation. Thus Christ's face looks out of his, Christ's bearing becomes clear in his. I know of no one else of whom this can be said.

Here one finds the originality of his mission. No one told him what God wanted of him. No one indicated the content of his life to him. He repeatedly emphasized that God himself, Christ himself had taught him. He knew himself as one taught by God in the truest sense, but without entering into opposition with the authority of the Church as the interpreter of Christ's message.

His life can be understood only as a sacrifice that echoed the deepest loneliness in Christ. His work never became what it could have become. It accepted the limited character all Christian expressions receive when the messianic possibility has not been accepted. But in this very sacrifice St. Francis lives on. In his work, Francis appears other than Benedict, Bernard or Dominic. The relationship is puzzling, and brings the observer to the danger of misunderstanding it as tragic or protestant. if we look closely, Francis lives on as Christ does in Christian history-the disciple imitating the master. Francis is the author, the founder, the original image-but as a living sacrifice to the master. In every instance those continuing Francis's work can call upon him and so in every instance find not only Francis' but also Christ's face in themselves."

MAX PICARD
Zerstorte und unzerstorbare Welt, 1951.
Destroyed and Indestructible World, 1951.

"St. Francis of Assisi was completely and totally an exceptional man-exceptional in the immediacy of his love of Christ. With him, one did not find a path to Christ, immediacy had absorbed every path. In Francis, one finds immediacy in itself, absolute immediacy. Only love can be this absolute immediacy. Love, like immediacy, has no genesis, no development and no history; genesis, development and history are all absorbed in the being of love."

REINHOLD SCHNEIDER
Die Stunde des heiligen Franz von Assisi, 1943
The Hour of St. Francis of Assisi, 1943

"The image of Francis does not live only in the community of his brothers. It lives in homes and fortresses, at markets and among travelers. The visible signs are lost because Francis has entered the very being of people. There, where no eye sees him, he still prepares for the Reign of God. Thoughts, prayers and the spirit in which work is performed all transform themselves under the saint's influence. The power of his interiority, seriousness and joy flow into spiritual reality. This transformation contributes to the tenor of the times and to the current of fate. The saint certainly did not become the Lord of Time: the conflicting powers would have been too strong, too numerous. Yet in him a constellation appeared. It drew glances toward itself and exercised its irresistible influence on human dispositions. And deeds strive toward the direction in which dispositions have turned."

HEINRICH FEDERER
Ins Land der Apfelsinen 1926
Into the Land of Pineapples, 1926

" He is the saint who sings, the saint who laughs, the saint who kisses, who plays the violin by bowing a stick on his arm, a dancing angel. He is the saint who joyfully sings to nature, who joyfully loves the nature God has created. He does so not as a pantheist, but clearly in all things, as a gardner loves each flower in his garden for itself. Joy! Joy! It is nothing other than music. He hangs from God on a golden thread, swaying back and forth with life's joy - the troubadour of God. He is inebriated with music and joyful love. Of all the saints, he is the poet; all his deeds are spontaneous rhymes, his words music! And even more than a poetic saint, one would prefer to call him a holy poet."

G. K. CHESTERSON

St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves ... He was not only humanist, especially in the everyday sense of a man who is always humorous, who goes his way and does what no one else would have done ... He was the world's once quite democrat.

H. Hesse Einleitung zu Franz v. Assisi, 1904
Introduction to Francis of Assisi, 1904

From time immemorial the earth has seen both great and glorious persons who have not endeavored to gain praise by individual gargantuan deeds or writing works of poetry or books.

These spirits have nonetheless powerfully affected entire peoples and ages. Everyone knew them, spoke of them with enthusiasm and attempted to experience more of them.

Their names and reputations were on everyone's lips and throughout the centuries were never lost in the waves and currents of time. Persons so constituted did not derive their effect from individual, separated speeches and works of art. Much more it emanated from the appearance of their whole lives as born of a single, great and individual spirit that all eyes saw as a bright and divine image and example.

WALTER DIRKS

We sense that the world situation demands decisive renunciations of consumption. We also sense that we must personalize the redistribution of property and wealth in an attitude of interior freedom from the desire for ownership and power. For such attitudes, there is no better example, other than Jesus of Nazareth, than Francis of Assisi.

VOLTAIRE 1649 - 1778

A savage madman who ran around naked, spoke to animals, gave religious instruction to a wolf and built himself a wife out of snow.

ERNEST RENAN

The only perfect Christian since Jesus.

ANDRE GIDE

My God, give me happiness - not Nietsche's tragic and ferocious happiness, which I do admire, but St. Francis's happiness: a radiating happiness worthy of adoration.

LUDWIG MARCUSE

The example Francis sets says more to me than a classless society, which can only be the precondition of such an example.