800 Years of St. Francis · Day 19 of 31 · Monday, October 19, 2026

In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis did something almost everyone around him considered madness. At Damietta in Egypt, with the armies dug in on either side, he crossed the battle lines with one companion and asked to see the Sultan, al-Malik al-Kamil. He could easily have been killed. Instead, he was received, and the two men talked, the accounts say, for days. Francis came home unharmed. Tradition holds that the Sultan gave him an ivory horn, which is still kept in Assisi.

Francis did not arrive with a theological argument or a conversion strategy. He arrived the way he always arrived: open, without defenses, responding to the person actually in front of him rather than to the category that centuries of conflict had decided the Sultan must be. He didn’t see an enemy. He saw a brother.

This is the third movement of Sacred Noticing, the Response. It means responding to what the moment actually needs, not to what we prepared or what our side expects of us.

We may never cross a battlefield. But most of us know someone, or some group, whom we have stopped meeting as people and started meeting as a category.

Notice today: Whom have you been meeting as a category instead of a person?

He responded to who the Sultan actually was. That was the whole miracle.

At San Damiano: The Common Ground conversation series continues on Sunday, December 6, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, with “The Dignity of the Invisible,” on homelessness, labor, and a culture that too easily looks away from people. Details

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Day 19 of 31 · 800 Years of St. Francis: A Daily October Companion · spiritualbreak.com
Reflection © 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS.

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