Friars hold St. Francis up to St. Clare's window

SAN DAMIANO, below Assisi, October 4, 1226 AD — In the last week of his life, Saint Francis of Assisi lay dying at the Porziuncola. The Porziuncola was a little church on the plain below Assisi. Saint Clare of Assisi lived up the slope at San Damiano, a small church about a quarter of a mile below the town. She was seriously ill too. She couldn’t go down to him, and he couldn’t come up to her.

St. Clare, the daughter of a knight of Assisi, was about thirty-two. As a young woman she had left her father’s house to follow St. Francis into poverty. On St. Francis’s advice she went to San Damiano, a church he had repaired. She had not left it since. Her sisters did not go out at all, and the friars brought them what they needed.

St. Clare was afraid she would die before St. Francis without seeing him again. She cried and could not be comforted. She sent a friar down to tell St. Francis. St. Francis wrote a letter blessing St. Clare and her sisters. He gave the friar a message to carry back. St. Francis told the friar: “Go and bid sister Clare put aside all sorrow and sadness on account of not being able to see me. But let her know in truth that before her death, she and her sisters shall see me, and shall be much consoled concerning me.”

Trumpets, candles and olive branches

St. Francis died on Saturday evening at the Porziuncola. All night his friars sang praises to God, and so did crowds from the nearby towns. A great many lights burned around him.

Early on Sunday morning, the people and clergy of Assisi came down to the plain for his body. They lifted him and set off up the hill toward the town, singing hymns. Trumpets sounded, and there were many wax candles. Every one of them carried a branch of olive or some other tree. On the way they stopped at San Damiano, where St. Clare and her sisters lived.

The window in the wall

The men carrying St. Francis brought his coffin into the church. They set it down and opened it. One wall of the church had a small window with an iron grating. The sisters were on the other side of that wall. They received Communion through that window.

The friars moved the grating aside and lifted St. Francis from the coffin. They held him in their arms at the window. There were wounds in his hands, his feet and his side. These were the stigmata.

St. Clare came to the window with her sisters and looked at him. The sisters sighed and wept, and cried out in choked voices: “Father, father, what shall we do? Why forsakest thou us in our misery, or to whom dost thou leave us in our desolation?” Then they stopped weeping. They were sad to lose St. Francis, and glad that he had gone to God. They kissed the stigmata on his hands.

The friars held St. Francis at the window a long time, until St. Clare and her sisters were comforted. Then the friars carried him out. The people carrying him went on up into Assisi. They laid St. Francis in the church of St. George. He had learned to read and write there as a boy.

St. Clare lived twenty-seven more years in the same house. Near the end of her life she wrote, in words she left for her sisters, of “the frailty that we feared in ourselves after the passing of our holy father Francis, who was our pillar, our only consolation after God, and our support.”