Grace among the 'infidels'

Early start this morning: 5.30 rise (4.30 UK time!) with the community, as usual, followed by Matins at 6.00 and a small breakfast. And then, why hang about? I headed up to Assisi and arrived at the Basilica di Santa Francesco in time for the morning mass. Didn't plan that, but it was serendipity at work again, so I joined in.

Afterwards I tracked down the Franciscan relics I was most eager to see: his prayer horn. The story behind it is, I think, astonishing and inspiring.

Francis lived in the era of the crusades and, as a young man, dreamt of going to the Holy Land to glorify God by hacking Muslim infidels to death. That was the air he breathed, like all his contemporaries.

God showed him another option. After his conversion experiences, and after he'd founded his order based on simplicity, love, joy and peace, he did travel to the crusades ... but with the desire to share Christ, not kill in his name. He ended up in Egypt and, with the naive bravado that seemed to characterise so much of his life, crossed the lines between crusaders and Saracens, alone, unarmed, without permission and without any concrete plan.

He was immediately arrested by Muslim troops, suspected of being a spy, and beaten. But eventually word reached the Sultan of this strange and guileless little preacher, and the Sultan invited Francis to meet with him.

Somehow the language barrier was crossed, and Francis spoke with the Sultan about the love of Jesus for all people. Despite some later legends, the Sultan didn't become a secret Christian as a result. But according to more reliable sources he was deeply moved by Francis's words. Apparently he walked to the door of his tent, pulled back the flap, and showed Francis the crusader army on the other side of the river. "I would love to believe all you say about your loving Jesus," he said, "but every man over there longs to slit my throat - in his name."

But they parted friends, and Francis was given a document allowing him to pass freely around the Muslim camp. And the Sultan also presented him with this horn - a horn used by imams to call the faithful to prayer.

Francis carried it the rest of his life. He used it to summon his brothers to their prayers, and attached two wooden battens to the horn which he'd strike together to call for silence before readings from Scripture.

Francis, who as a youth wanted nothing more than to slaughter Muslims for God's glory, befriended the Muslim sovereign and used the imam's prayer horn all his life to summon the faithful to pray to Christ.

Something in that story is, I think, challenging and inspirational. I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not you agree.

///paraded.dynamics.herring