I mentioned in a previous post how Francis prayed in the ruins of San Damiano church and heard Christ speak to him from the painted Byzantine crucifix: "Repair my church." With others, he literally repaired this building - and it shows. The angles on the walls are never quite right, the arches are out of line, there are workarounds everywhere. It's a rough piece of work by a young man brought up as a cloth merchant's son, not as a builder.
It became the heart of the early Franciscan movement, first as the home of the friars minor (the 'little brothers') and then as the convent gathered around St Clare. And somehow it's managed to keep its Franciscan character. Small, simple, inelegant and beautiful, rough and delightful. It's one of the few places you can imagine Francis and Clare visiting today and still thinking of as home.
What can I say, other than that praying here in the tiny chapel was a greater joy than every great basilica in Assis, Rome and anywhere else all put together.
It's always enough just to sit on your rickety wooden bench and hold silentium in your heart before God.
🧡
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