While the Stigmata of Our Holy Father St. Francis is regarded as an honor which God bestowed upon him while he was at prayer atop Mt. LaVerna, we also have to admit that St. Francis was still harboring some doubts about whether God had forgiven him the sins of his early life. Two years before his death, after years of living a life of penance, St. Francis was still worried about God’s mercy. This was one of the reasons why he spent long periods of time in prayer and fasting in caves and in out of the way spots. He would take one of the brothers with him, but would draw away for solitary prayer. The brother would hear Francis as he wept and sobbed through his prayer, eventually falling silent and simply kneeling in prayer.
In his prayer on Mt. LaVerna, he asked God to let him feel just some of the pain that Jesus had felt as he was crucified. He reasoned that if God granted him this prayer, it would be a sign that God had truly forgiven him. A six-winged seraph appeared to him and left his body marked with the nail marks and the wound in his side.
Failure to place our trust in God’s mercy is a reflection of our own inability to forgive ourselves and others. It is far easier to accept our own inability to forgive than it is to accept God’s promise of mercy. Yet the Scriptures are full of words that assure us over and over again that God does forgive unconditionally.
St. Francis’ doubts reveal his limitations. We can take heart in his doubts because I suspect that most of us have had the same kind of doubts ourselves. If we read the lives of the saints, we are sure to become familiar with the fact that they all suffered the same difficulty. The “dark night of the soul” seems to be a very common experience. Staying close to God through prayer, the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Penance are all ways that the Church provides to us to remind us of God’s unfailing mercy.
When doubts appear, it is helpful to simply repeat to ourselves over and over, “I am forgiven. God is mercy. I am forgiven.”
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator