In the Gospels, the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a net that gathers all sorts of fish, which are then selected by the fishermen.
One day Francis, walking with Aegidius, confided to him the following:
"«Our religious movement will be similar to the fisherman, who casts his nets into the water and catches a multitude of fish; then, letting the small ones fall into the water, he piles up the big ones in baskets».
He prophesied with this simile the expansion of his Order" (FF 1436).
At the same time he never forgot the judgement of God who discerns Good and Evil, and the Lords whom we have served. Hence the final judgement on our actions.
Francis lived his entire existence in the fear of God and so did Clare; committed to ensuring that there were good fish in their Order.
And again, in the Legend of the Three Companions:
"Divine Grace had profoundly changed him. Although he did not wear a religious habit, he longed to find himself unknown in some city, where he could barter his clothes for the rags of a beggar and himself try begging for the love of God' (FF 1405).
The Minim knew that what a poor man received was addressed to Christ himself and that a single glass of water given to the small and marginalised was offered to Jesus.
His encounter with the leper in the plain of Assisi had turned bitterness into true sweetness in him.
Francis feared divine judgement and wanted to correspond to what the Word of God demanded of him.
He wanted to be that good fish at the service of the kingdom of heaven through a life spent for his neighbour.
«The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea, which gathers all kinds of fish. When it was full, and having hauled it up on the shore, they [the fishermen] gathered the good fish into baskets but threw out the bad ones» (Mt 13:47-48)
Thursday of the 17th wk. in O.T. (Mt 13,47-53)
