As Celano tells it, when Francis reached Malik al-Kamil, the sultan tried to “turn his mind to worldly riches.” Francis, wedded to poverty, declined. The sultan soon recognized his visitor as a holy man. Francis and his companion spent nearly two weeks in Egypt and navigated the Crusades with one goal: to build bridges. Peace, the brothers knew, cannot be walled in.
I notice as we hit the midway point of this journey along the US border that, though our group doesn’t set foot on Mexican soil, there is a breeze carrying traces of eucalyptus and rosemary over my shoulders traveling southward. I can only pause to appreciate this. It’s a moment of quiet grace that no fence or border can keep out. I think again of St. Francis. How is it that a 13th-century mystic can speak to a crisis that we face in our own time? Why do we seem more divided? When did we begin to favor suspicion over empathy?
Before he left, the sultan gave his new friend an ivory horn as a gift of goodwill. In the Basilica of St. Francis, it’s housed there still.
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “One Nation Under God“
by Christopher Heffron
