Fascinating Francis Footnote: "PREACH the gospel at all times ..."

"Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary use words," St. Francis is supposed to have said. That, at least, is the widespread sentimental conceit. Is it just me, or does that slogan also strike you as a perfect contemporary pretext for not preaching anything at all?

As luck would have it, we just received this timely email -- straight from the free promotional Blackberry of our HBCU (Hist. Black College & University) Correspondent on site in Assisi, Italy:

No, he was not the Christian answer to Euell Gibbons, nor a Birkenstock-sporting spouter of America Magazine- or Fr. James Martin-like platitudes. In fact, I wonder if he might even find the Crunchy Cons a bit too eager to embrace their 'Can't We All Just Get Along' Monday morning water cooler pacifism. ... But one thing is certain, and not at all surprising to me: all the folks who so eagerly eulogize Saint Francis' feed-the-birds, lawn-ornament affinities seem to have it more than a bit skewed in terms of the saint's celebrated rhetorical soft gloves. The same man who preached to the air threw himself in a fire. He was hardly harmless, in word or deed.

Our HBCU Correspondent then refers us to the following observations from Mark Galli, "Speak the Gospel" (Christianity Today, Mary 21, 2009):

I've heard the quote once too often. It's time to set the record straight—about the quote, and about the gospel.

Francis of Assisi is said to have said, "Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words."

This saying is carted out whenever someone wants to suggest that Christians talk about the gospel too much, and live the gospel too little. Fair enough—that can be a problem. Much of the rhetorical power of the quotation comes from the assumption that Francis not only said it but lived it.

The problem is that he did not say it. Nor did he live it. And those two contra-facts tell us something about the spirit of our age.

Let's commit a little history ...

First, no biography written within the first 200 years of his death contains the saying. It's not likely that a pithy quote like this would have been missed by his earliest disciples.

Second, in his day, Francis was known as much for his preaching as for his lifestyle.

... He apparently was a bit of a showman. He imitated the troubadours, employing poetry and word pictures to drive the message home. When he described the Nativity, listeners felt as if Mary was giving birth before their eyes; in rehearsing the crucifixion, the crowd (as did Francis) would shed tears.

Contrary to his current meek and mild image, Francis's preaching was known for both his kindness and severity. One moment, he was friendly and cheerful—prancing about as if he were playing a fiddle on a stick, or breaking out in song in praise to God and his creation. Another moment, he would turn fierce: "He denounced evil whenever he found it," wrote one early biographer, "and made no effort to palliate it; from him a life of sin met with outspoken rebuke, not support. He spoke with equal candor to great and small."

... In the fall of 1208, he sent the brothers out two by two to distant reaches. What did he tell them to say? In an early guide written during this period, Francis instructed his brothers to tell their listeners to "do penance, performing worthy fruits of penance, because we shall soon die … . Blessed are those who die in penance for they shall be in the kingdom of heaven. Woe to those who do not die in penance, for they shall be children of the devil whose works they do and they shall go into everlasting fire."

... Why is it, then, that we "remember" Francis as a wimp of a man who petted bunnies and never said a cross word, let alone much about the Cross?

I suspect we sentimentalize Francis—like we do many saints of ages past—because we live in a sentimental age. We want it to be true that we can be nice and sweet and all will be well....

"Preach the gospel; use words if necessary" goes hand in hand with a postmodern assumption that words are finally empty of meaning.... Of course we want our actions to match our words as much as possible. But the gospel is a message, news about an event and a person upon which the history of the planet turns. As blogger Justin Taylor recently put it, the Good News can no more be communicated by deeds than can the nightly news.

[Hat tip to J.M.]