GOD'S TROUBADOUR | KAIROS GLOBAL | SEPTEMBER 2026

Author: Joseph Anthraper

Audio

Intro: Joseph Anthrapher writes about St Francis’ love, for God and man, that still resonates 800 years later.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love (John 15:9). 

History, some say, is written by victors; it might be, though probably isn’t! But I believe that this universe of ours is continually sustained and nourished solely by those who truly love – in the truest sense and meaning of the word. Were that not the case, long ago evil would have had its decisive victory – vanquishing and annihilating everything that is truly good, pure and beautiful. The God-man from Galilee, while His arms were being stretched wide and nails hammered into them, exhorted His disciples to love as I have loved you (John 13:34-35). And across the history of Christendom, few have loved as truly, deeply and madly as the poor little pauper from Assisi, Francis. 

It is difficult, nigh impossible, to write or even know where to start writing about this God’s Troubadour. Much ink has been spilt across the centuries on the life, spirituality and ecology of this little pauper – yet, there is only so much one can write about love. Love transcends words, and St Francis transcends everything one can write or say about him – yet, as in the past, even today, the experience of his love is made manifest in a very real and tangible way to all who seek him, desiring to know him and his Love. Acknowledging my huge inadequacy in the face of this love made manifest in Assisi, I will take a few stories from the life of this great saint.

Scene One: Deep into a cold winter’s night, in the tiny shack of a home at Rivo Torto (not long after the burgeoning penitent community from Assisi started attracting young men from across the land), a whisper of a moan rises from the corner. All the other occupants are fast asleep; the sound of the cry gradually rises above the rhythmic breathing of the friars. Very quickly it turns into a wail, startling and waking the small community, tired from a long day of caring for the lepers, work and prayer. Panicking, everyone gathers around the friar who is crying aloud. In comes Francis, whom they call ‘The Brother’, who asks the crying friar what has happened. ‘I am dying, I am dying,’ says he, ‘I am dying of hunger!’ Now everyone turns their attention to ‘The Brother’, wondering what his response might be, given the arduousness of his penance, prayer, fasting and asceticism. Without a thought, Francis says, ‘I too am very hungry, brother. Tell you what, let’s all have some food together as I myself won’t make it through the night otherwise!’ Brother Francis wouldn’t want to make the hungry friar feel guilty or embarrassed. 

Scene Two: Francis is mostly incapacitated and near death. His most terrible suffering is from his eye disease, which hurts profoundly even in faint daylight. Treatments in previous months have made matters worse, and now his companions have bandaged his eyes, shielding them from heat and light of the day. On one summer’s day, Francis calls Brother Leo and asks for a parchment and there in dictates the first, and arguably one of the greatest literary masterpieces of Italian literature, The Canticle of the Sun. Precisely when the sun, with its light and heat, was giving him the greatest imaginable suffering, Francis wrote an ode to brother sun, sister moon and sister water – those very elements of the created order that made his suffering worse. This was not the work of a romantic ecologist or a conservationist; there was something more transcendental at work here. This was someone who loved his master and Lord so passionately, so intimately, so dearly – the true Troubadour, who could then love light, heat and the created order, precisely because it helped him become one with the One he loved.

Lady Poverty & Jongleur of God

St Francis is often called the second Christ, and not without reason. The papal bull of canonisation amply testifies to his radical poverty as an imitation of Christ and the many miracles during and after his life. Everyone knows the story of Francis stripping off his clothes in the presence of Bishop Guido, giving them back to his father, and embracing the life of evangelical poverty. And then there is the story of Francis asking to sell the only Bible in the community, when a poor widow came begging, and the friars had nothing to give her. Francis is not the first Christian in history to give away his possessions to fully embrace the life of the Gospel. We read about such practices in the Acts of the Apostles and much later, St Anthony of the Desert, the founder of Christian monasticism, famously did the same back in the third century. However, what makes Francis’ revolution different is not just the embrace of material poverty, but that this poverty permeated all aspects of his life. 

Francis somehow got the ‘secret of life’ – if one can call it that. He was like the merchant who sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price. Or the man who, on finding the treasure in the field, covered it up, and then in his joy, sold all he had to buy it (Matthew 13). Chesterton, in his book on Francis, describes it as looking at a world upside down and seeing everything hanging down, hanging by the thread of God’s mercy alone. One can only guess at what Francis’ inner conversion entailed, but once Francis understood this total dependence on Him – ‘The being’ that is not contingent – he truly saw how abjectly poor we are! And he embraced this poverty as one flings oneself into the arms of the lover, confident in that love and welcome. And in that love the truth of the Gospel became manifest.

St Francis was arguably one of the most joyful souls who ever lived. There is this story of Cardinal Hugolino arranging for Francis to preach to Pope Honorius III and the papal court. True to his nature, Francis forgot the memorised sermon and began to dance and cry as he spoke spontaneously about God’s love, mercy and the need for repentance! It is probably this realisation of our complete dependence on God that made Francis want to be the servant of all – whoever would be great among you must be your servant (Matthew 20:26), become not just a lofty idea to practice, but a rational way of life. 

In this Jubilee year of St Francis, the Church gives thanks to the Almighty Father for the gift of over 800 years of grace received through this God’s Pauper. For some, he is the greatest miracle worker after Christ; for some, it is his love for nature and animals that is paramount, and for others, his radical poverty and evangelistic zeal that took him across enemy lines to the Sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade trumps all. I, too, have passed through phases of adoration, adulation and romantic embrace of Francis’ virtues. Yet, in this Jubilee year, here is a man with flesh and bones, with the same fears, worries, anxieties, struggles and weaknesses as me, yet had the strange and perplexing audacity to love – and let that love take him over. Two thousand years ago, a woman loved God so deeply and profoundly that she literally conceived God in her womb; eight hundred years ago, a man loved her son so deeply, totally and profoundly, that his body – his hands, his feet and his heart literally conceived and bore that great love story of Golgotha – what people call Stigmata!

Joseph Anthraper lives near Southampton, UK with his wife Mahima and their five children. He masquerades as a software engineer by day and is mostly confused during the rest of the time. Inspired by his namesake St Joseph, his life ambition is to have God speak to him in his dreams, and so to facilitate that, tries hard at sleeping, in the hope that those dreams are just a sleep away. Loves reading and (unlike St Joseph) monologues to anyone willing to listen.