«Blessed is the Lord, the God of Israel,/ for he has visited and redeemed his people» (Lk 1:68).
Francis, a gift from Heaven sent to prepare God's ways, after Providence led him to complete conversion, was transformed by the Spirit into a Prophet for his time and beyond.
In the Major Legend, St. Bonaventure offers us the original figure and experience of the Poor Man of Assisi.
Like John, born to point to the Lamb of God, so was the young merchant's son. Renewed by his new spiritual birth, he sang the Mystery of the Incarnation in the fibres of his own flesh.
In the Sources we read:
"The Grace of God, our Saviour, in these last times has appeared in his servant Francis, to all those who are truly humble and truly friends of holy poverty.
For while they venerate in him the superabundance of God's mercy, they are instructed by his example to radically deny ungodliness and worldly desires, to live in conformity with Christ and to yearn, with insatiable thirst and desire, for blessed hope.
On him, truly poor and contrite of heart, God rested his gaze with great condescension and goodness; not only did he lift him, a beggar, from the dust of worldly life, but he made him a champion, guide and herald of evangelical perfection and chose him as a light, for believers, so that, having become a witness to the light, he might prepare for the Lord the way of light and peace in the hearts of the faithful" (FF 1020).
"Like the morning star, appearing in the midst of the clouds, with the radiant rays of his life and teaching, he drew to the light those who lay in the shadow of death; like the rainbow shining through the bright clouds, bearing in himself the sign of the covenant with the Lord, he proclaimed to men the Gospel of peace and salvation.
Angel of true peace, he too, in imitation of the Precursor, was predestined by God to prepare the way in the desert of the highest poverty and to preach penance by example and word" (FF 1021).
«And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High/ because you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways» (Lk 1:76)
Feria proper of 24 December - Christmas Eve (Lk 1:67-79)
