SAINT FRANCIS, THE LEPER AND CONVERSION
We have all heard about lepers (people suffering from Hansen’s disease). Throughout history, lepers were considered to be among the most repulsive of all human beings – really not even treated as human beings. The church of Francis’ day looked for ways to get rid of lepers, certainly not to help them. Towns like Assisi brought charges against lepers who risked entering the city. Anyone could beat a leper with impunity. Lepers were scum and were treated as such. This is the culture in which Francis grew up in a prosperous merchant family.
One day, while riding through the countryside near Assisi, Francis unexpectedly encountered a leper. His first reaction was fear and revulsion. Everything in him wanted to get away. But something changed. Rather than turning away, he dismounted from his horse, approached the man, gave him money and kissed him.
Francis didn’t merely perform an act of charity. He crossed a boundary. The leper represented everything Francis had been taught to fear and reject. Yet Francis encountered God precisely in the person he feared and wanted to avoid.
In his Testament, written near the end of his life, Francis looked back on this encounter and wrote that God himself led him among the lepers. Francis didn’t see this as something he heroically decided to do. He saw it as God’s grace working in him. The leper was, in a sense, his teacher.
This was a decisive movement from his old identity. The young Francis had dreamed of becoming a knight, achieving honor, and living an exciting and prestigious life. The leper represented the complete opposite: weakness, poverty, illness and social rejection. In embracing the leper, Francis was turning away from the world of status and honor toward the world of poverty and mercy.
This story is central to Franciscan spirituality – conversion begins when fear and self-protection are overcome by God’s grace. For Francis, the leper was not an obstacle between himself and God; the leper became the place where he encountered God. The person society regarded as repulsive was not someone to be avoided but a child of God deserving of love. It is particularly striking when you connect this event with Matthew 25, where Jesus says, “Whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Francis was beginning to live the gospel before he had fully articulated it.
The important thing is not merely that Francis forced himself to be kind to a leper. According to his own later testimony, the experience actually changed him internally. He says that what had been “bitter” was changed into “sweetness of soul and body.” This phrase tells us something profound about his spirituality. Francis didn’t believe holiness meant simply enduring things we dislike; he discovered that love can change the heart so that what once seemed unbearable can become an occasion of joy.
There is a beautiful Franciscan insight here. Francis did not say, “I decided to help a leper.” He said, “The Lord led me among them.” Francis understood his conversion as something God was doing to him, rather than something he had accomplished by his own determination.
This is one of the deepest lessons of Franciscan spirituality: conversion happens when we allow God to teach us to see another person differently.
WHAT DOES ST. FRANCIS’ CONVERSION HAVE TO DO WITH US?
Francis Bernadone was already a good person. He was kind, loving and generous. He loved God, but something was missing for him. He didn’t know what was God’s will for him. This is worth noting because often when we think of conversion, we think of something dramatic, like St. Paul, who was passionately opposed to the followers of Jesus. Paul was surrounded by brilliant light, fell to the ground and heard Jesus speaking to him in very clear terms.
St. Francis’ conversion was not at all like that. It was a gradual change in the way he saw God, himself and other people. Francis began with an idea of what would make him happy: success, recognition, adventure, and honor. God slowly led him somewhere very different. The turning point was his encounter with the leper, but it was a long, drawn-out process, with Francis sometimes misunderstanding what God was asking him to do at different points. This may speak to us in several ways.
Conversion means allowing God to change what is “bitter” to us. There may be people, circumstances, fears, or disappointments we want to avoid. Francis teaches us to ask, “Could God be inviting me to meet him here?”
Conversion means seeing differently. Francis did not simply become a nicer person. His whole way of looking at the world changed. The poor became his brothers and sisters. All of creation became a gift. Jesus became the center of his life.
Conversion often happens through small acts of surrender. Francis did not know where his journey would lead. He simply responded to the next invitation God placed before him.
Conversion is ongoing. It is not a one-and-done. Even after Francis had begun following Jesus, he continued to be changed. We, too, can ask each day, “Lord, what are you asking me to do or to let go of now?”
Perhaps the most important question is, “Where is Jesus meeting me today, especially in the person or situation I want to avoid?”
This is very close to the heart of Francis’ conversion: learning to recognize Jesus where we had previously seen only something difficult, frightening or undesirable.