"Almighty God, Most High, Most Holy and Sovereign God. For your very self we give you thanks, because by your holy will and through your only Son in the Holy Spirit, you have created everything spiritual and corporal, and you placed us, made according to your image and likeness, in Paradise; and it was through our fault that we fell" St. Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi had a vision of human nature patterned on the Incarnate Word. The human body itself is, for him, to be evaluated on the basis of its similarity to Christ's body rather than on the basis of its relation to the material world. This perspective enabled him to reject any negative approach to the body, which he saw rather as "brother" of the spirit and "cell" of the wandering soul. The notorious problem of a conflict between spirit and body (which derives from Greek dualism) is transcended in the Franciscan sources to a degree unexcelled in the entire ascetic and mystical literature of Christendom.

Every human being, precisely because he or she is a human being, is an image of Christ and a similitude of the Father.

Francis's vision of the human is fundamentally optimistic. No individual, not even the sinner, can be condemned. On the contrary, every human being, precisely because he or she is a human being, is an image of Christ and a similitude of the Father. His relationships with others were always marked by an unconditional respect to which he gave similar expression in the case of Popes, bishops, priests, sisters, nobles, the poor, thieves, robbers, the sick and unbelievers. In the mystical experience of the Saint of Assisi there are no limitations of condition, of time, or of place imposed on his appreciation of the worth of every human being.

Francis showed, both in his writings and in his life, a particular esteem and consideration for two classes of people, in whom he saw a very special presence of Christ: lepers and priests. The lepers were for him a living image of the suffering Christ, towards whom his thoughts turned whenever he sought to fathom the depths of God's love. The loving tenderness that he actually expressed in the service of lepers was a sign of his own real conversion to the Gospel.

In priests, Francis saw the son of God and those who in this world minister to us the Eucharist, as they alone consecrate the Body and Blood of Christ and place the incarnate and living Son of God at the disposal of his brothers.

Knowing as he did from concrete personal experience the social and political ills of his society, Francis of Assisi was able to arouse in the Church a renewed sensitivity to human beings and their problems. He sought wherever possible to alleviate the conditions that made it so difficult for people to live in harmony - conditions that were the source of ever increasing suffering. He dreamed constantly of his Order's role as the most perfect image possible of the Church. He knew only too well that only one who is himself free of the debilitating influence of riches and egoism can understand the needs of those who have less, can effectively espouse the cause of the poor.

Poverty to Francis was more than "not having," it was first of all a sharing with others — especially with society's "least."

Poverty - both for the individual and for the Order as a whole - was for Francis only secondarily a "not having." It was first of all a sharing with others - especially with society's "least" - of one's goods and one's life. Those who sought to be Friars Minor and Poor Ladies were thus directed first to distribute their goods to the poor. Even the name "minors" given to the brothers and sisters was not only evangelical in inspiration and ascetic in meaning: it also had a social significance of solidarity with those society considered its "least" and whom it sought to exclude.

Francis continually sought to establish peace among citizens divided by hatred due to unequal enforcement of civil rights, between civil and ecclesiastical authorities competing for dominance, and between laborers and their employers, who hated one another because of unequal distribution of wealth. For Francis, the true evangelist was properly and necessarily one committed to healing the social environment by removing the causes of tension and conflict - by seeking to convert both sides in the social struggle in accord with God's word. In this sense, Francis saw the minister of the Gospel as directly responsible for promoting the welfare both of individuals and of the entire human community.

Once he had left his family and become a servant of the Most High, Francis undertook a commitment that was to rise to ever new heights. Making the entire world his home, he found that mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends, admirers and followers flocked to him in ever-increasing numbers, just as the Gospel had promised. The spirit of universality that so pervaded his ideal moved him to seek approval of his Order directly from the Pope so that it would not be limited in its scope to the confines of a diocese. And the same spirit inspired him to write the Letter to All the Faithful and the Letter to the Rulers of People, which served as an effective remedy for the civil as well as the ecclesiastical disintegration resulting from the feudal system.

It was this same spirit, finally, with its unlimited perspective, that quickened Francis's missionary zeal and made him so effective a mediator between the two religio-political blocs of his day: Christianity and Islam. It led him to propose that the military crusade favoured by the political establishment be replaced by a peaceful endeavor to communicate and by missionary activity. He visited the Sultan of Egypt and conversed with him, man to man, believer to believer, with no authoritative mandate.

The friars were to pattern their mutual relationships upon those between a mother and her son.

To his friars, who were to live in communion of spirit as well as in a complete sharing of temporal goods, Francis proposed as a model of such a life, not the traditional monastic life, but rather the natural human family. The friars were to pattern their mutual relationships upon those between a mother and her son. They were to create a family-like atmosphere among themselves as spiritual brothers called together by the Spirit. His dramatic departure from his own family, which he would not allow to compromise the new ideals that had been revealed to him from above, did not occasion in him any disapproval or surrender of the fundamental value of family life. "Woe to him who is alone," says the author of the Sacrum Commercium, "because no one can help him."