THE PASSIONS OF SAINT FRANCIS

by Charles Gaines ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The companions of a great saint reflect on his life in Gaines’ novel.

Sensing that her death might be imminent, Mother Chiara Offreducio, founder of the Order of Poor Sisters, agrees to dictate the most pivotal events of her life to a young woman named Cecilia. After all, Mother Chiara’s life has been the topic of much speculation and hearsay in the 13th-century Church. “I too have been in love with a man,” she begins. “I am still in love with him, though he has been dead for twenty-seven years.” Having read the account recorded by Cecilia, Brother Leo, once a friar belonging to the Order of Lesser Brothers, now suspended for smashing a collection box, shares with her his own narrative of his years with Francesco, founder of that order, who will come to be known as St. Francis. Together the two accounts comprise much of the narrative. Francesco begins life “a wealthy, careless, merry, arrogant boy,” eager for battle. But after being captured and imprisoned—and after a fateful encounter with a beggar outside his father’s shop—he dedicates himself to the Gospel. Fearing the Church has forgotten Christ’s call to compassion, he strips himself naked in the town square, declaring, “I thank all of you for coming today to celebrate my wedding to my queen, Lady Poverty!” This behavior provokes a crisis for young Chiara, who’s passionately in love with Francesco, as he is with her. The greatest act of renunciation awaits them as they reluctantly abandon any hope of marrying and devote themselves instead to a lifetime of serving Christ’s poor. Over the following decades, St. Francis journeys to the Middle East to meet the great sultan Malik Al Kamil. He suffers in the wilderness a dark night of the soul. His order flourishes, and several of his 12 disciples suffer martyrdom in distant lands.

Gaines ponders life’s existential questions through the lens of St. Francis’s life: Why is there suffering? Does God love us? What, if anything, awaits us after death? The book is all the more powerful for avoiding the trap of hagiography: Though indisputably a saint, Francis is also human. He loves Chiara with an earthy (though never consummated) love, and, in his darkest moments, fears that there is no heaven. In classic Dostoyevskian fashion, Gaines gives both sides a fair hearing in the never-ending debate between skepticism and faith, ultimately settling on ambiguity rather than making any explicit proclamations. One also senses the fanaticism that both animated St. Francis and often dismayed his contemporaries. But it sometimes also seems as though Gaines is writing a final statement on his experience in the world. Echoing Bede’s famous sparrow parable, he writes, “It seems to me we pass through life rather like a child passing through a room in which a very wise man is speaking all the truths there ever were.” It’s hard to imagine a more touching or beautiful final statement than this.

A worthy conclusion to a remarkable saintly career is depicted in this imaginative and elegantly written historical novel.

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Review Posted Online: today

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION