800 Years of St. Francis · Day 3 of 31 · Saturday, October 3, 2026
Tonight marks eight hundred years since Francis died.
He asked to be laid on the bare ground, with nothing between him and the earth he had called his mother. He asked the brothers to sing the Canticle of the Creatures, the song he had written a year earlier, nearly blind and in great pain. By then he had added one final verse:
Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whom no living person can escape.
St. Bonaventure records that as evening fell, larks gathered over the roof and sang. Most of us spend our lives arguing with endings, and not only the final one. We argue with the end of a job, of a season, of a version of ourselves we were not ready to give up. Francis did something different. He did not pretend death was not coming, and he did not treat it as an enemy. He called it by a family name.
That is not resignation. It is the last and perhaps the fullest act of noticing: seeing even this as held inside a love larger than itself.
Notice today: Is there an ending in your life that you could meet as a sister rather than an enemy?
He did not fear her. He welcomed her in, and love was the last thing in the room.
Tonight at San Damiano: Evening Prayer Service: Transitus of St. Francis (800th Anniversary), 6:00 – 7:00 pm. Earlier today, 1:00 – 2:30 pm, the Blessing of the Animals. Transitus details
Day 3 of 31 · 800 Years of St. Francis: A Daily October Companion · spiritualbreak.com
Reflection © 2026 Michael J. Cunningham OFS.
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