Francis had noticed that when he went begging, few people looked into his eyes. They seemed to avoid eye contact, either from fear or contempt. There were, of course, the few bright-eyed, open people whose eyes were surely the lamps of their whole selves radiating love and goodness and trust. It was marvelous how people became who they really were once you reached out your hand to them in the gesture of the beggar. Even the insight into people he had gained in his father’s shop paled when compared to what he learned begging in the streets of Assisi. So often the veneer of respectability would be sloughed off and something like a monster would emerge, cursing and destroying you with the venom of words and gestures. It was an experience only beggars understood.
From these harrowing experiences Francis determined to be always on the outside what he was on the inside. He knew that some of the brothers felt he overdid this obsession with sincerity, but Francis feared duplicity and hypocrisy more than anything. It was against hypocrisy that Jesus had railed again and again in the Gospels, and Francis was sure Jesus would never speak harshly against anything unless it spoiled the human heart and made the Holy Spirit’s entry there impossible.
—from the book Francis: The Journey and the Dream
by Murray Bodo, OFM
