Francis' Story

This following story is about St Francis which is fictional, but based on his famous quote about the end of the world.

We lived in a small bunch of huts, near Rivoreto, in the centre of Italy. Not much to look at really, but it was home for us, and we knew what we were taking on when we came here. Well, sort of. You see we were following St. Francis in his dream of having a community who owned nothing, but who loved each other and god deeply. Yet Francis is such a charismatic person that the reality of cold grinding poverty doesn't tend to sink in for a while, but when it does, phew it really does! But I think I'm beginning to get used to it all. My name is Arturo, and I still have a lot to learn, I watch Francis and the others, I listen, I pray, and somehow I try to learn the meaning of it all. We beg, grow or work for what we eat. We have no personal property at all, and even the land we work and live on is simply borrowed, unwanted by anyone else. We spend time travelling from town to town, talking to people about God, and helping them when we can. But we also spend time growing our food. Once, as Francis and I worked in the garden I asked him. "I thought your father was a merchant. How did you learn to grow vegetables? How did you know you were even any good at it?" He answered. "I wasn't at first. I made mistakes like most people do, and my old friends often used to like throwing things at me when they passed me out in the fields,laughing at my inexperience and my rags. But this is one of my gifts that has come with practice, and need. If we can't feed ourselves then we're not going to have all that much to eat are we?" And so, every Thursday, I helped Francis with the gardening, the hoeing, the planting, the weeding. And I too learned how to make things grow.

And as time went on, and we grew larger, and more famous in a strange sort of way, we began to get visitors, sometimes from far-off places. And one Wednesday a particularly fine nobleman came with a question. I was busy watering their horses while they were talking, as I could see their tongues were parched from the journey, and so I heard much of the conversation. "Brother Francis. What would you do if you knew for sure that Christ was returning tomorrow?"

I pricked my ears. What a fascinating question. Would Francis want to go to the desert as many did when the millennium turned? Would he spend tonight in prayer? Would he do the one last thing, that he had always wanted to do before the dawn of eternity came? But the answer was quick in coming. There was no hesitation.

He replied, "I would go out and hoe my garden."

For the next day was Thursday, his day to tend the garden. Even so I was surprised by his answer, and, as I was returning back to the well, I met brother Bernard and thought I would talk this through with him. After filling Bernard in on the whole event I asked him "Brother Bernard. Why would he hoe the garden if he knew that the vegetables would not have time to grow?"