(This article originally appeared in the TAU-USA Fall 2024 Issue #113)
Assembled by Bret Thoman, OFS
Major Life, Bonaventure (1240)
He certainly wanted to conform in everything to Christ crucified, who poor and suffering and naked remained hanging on the cross.
Legend of the Three Companions (1483)
This burning love and the incessant memory of the Passion of Christ, which he hid in his heart, the Lord wished to show to the whole world by means of the stupendous prerogative of an exceptional privilege, with which he decorated him while he was still alive in the flesh.
Major Legend, Bonaventure (1223-1224)
Two years before he gave up his spirit to God, after many and varied labors, divine Providence took him aside and led him to a high mountain called Mount Verna. Here he had begun, according to his custom, to fast during Lent in honor of St. Michael the Archangel, when he began to feel himself inundated with an extraordinary sweetness in contemplation, inflamed by a more vivid flame of heavenly desires, filled with richer divine gifts.
The Little Flowers (1919)
The following day came, that is, the day of the most Holy Cross, and Saint Francis, early in the morning before daybreak, threw himself in prayer before the door of his cell, turning his face toward the east, and prayed in this way: “O my Lord Jesus Christ, I beg you to grant me two graces before I die: the first, that in my life I may feel in my soul and body, as much as possible, that pain which you, sweet Jesus, endured in the hour of your most bitter Passion; the second is that I may feel in my heart, as much as possible, that excessive love with which you, Son of God, were inflamed to willingly endure such a great Passion for us sinners.”
Major Legend, Bonaventure (1228)
Thus the true love of Christ had transformed the lover into the very image of the Beloved.
First Life, Celano (484-485)
[Then,] a man appeared to him, in the form of a Seraph, with wings, hovering above him, with his hands outstretched and his feet together, nailed to a cross. […] While he was in this state of worry and total uncertainty, behold: on his hands and feet began to appear the same marks of the nails that he had just seen on that mysterious crucified man. Francis’ hands and feet appeared to be pierced in the middle by nails, the heads of which were visible in the palms of the hands and on the backs of the feet, while the points protruded from the opposite side. Those marks were round on the inside of the hands, and elongated on the outside, and formed almost a fleshy excrescence, as if they were the points of nails bent and hammered back. Likewise on the feet were imprinted the marks of the nails protruding from the rest of the flesh. The right side was also pierced as if by a spear, with a wide scar, and often bled, wetting the tunic and the undergarments with that sacred blood.
St. Francis with the Stigmata
Minor Legend, Bonaventure (1377-1378)
[Then,] the angelic man, Francis, came down from the mountain: and he carried with him the image of the Crucified, not depicted on tablets of stone or wood by the hand of an artisan, but written in the members of the flesh by the finger of the living God.
Treatise of Miracles, Celano (830-831)
We have indeed seen these things which we narrate, with the hands with which we write we have touched them, and what we testify with our lips we have seen with moved eyes, confirming for all time what we swore only once by touching the sacred objects.
St Francis with the Stigmata
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