All Praise Goes To Jesus

When he ad been preaching to the people in Rieti in the market place of the city, after the preaching was finished, the bishop of that city straightway rose up, a man both discreet and spiritual and said to the people, “The Lord, from the first day in which He planted and built up His church has always adorned it with holy men, to nourish it by word and example.  But now, in this latest hour He has adorned it with the poor and despised and unlettered man, Francis, and therefore are we bound to love and honor the Lord, and beware of sin.  For he has not done after this manner to any nation.”  Having finished these words, the bishop came down from the place where he had preached and entered the Cathedral.  And Francis coming to him, throwing himself at his feet, bowed down before him and said, “In truth I say to you, my lord Bishop, that no man has done so much honor to me in this life as you have done to me today.  Now those men say, “This is a holy man” attributing to me glory and sanctity and not to the Creator.  But you, as one discreet, have separated the precious from the vile.”

            For when Francis used to be praised and called holy, he tended to respond to such speeches this way, “I am not yet so secure that I may not have sons and daughters.  For at whatever hour the Lord should take away from me the treasure which He has commended to me, what else would remain to me, what else would remain to me but body and soul, which even infidels have?  No, I ought to believe that if the Lord should have granted so many and so great gifts to a thief or an infidel as to me they would have been more faithful to their Lord than I.  For, as in the picture of the Lord and the Virgin painted on wood, the Lord and the Virgin are honored, and yet the wood and the picture take nothing of it to themselves, so the servant of God is in a manner a picture of God, wherein God is honored  on account of His goodness.  But he ought to take nothing of this to himself, since in respect of God, he is less than the wood and the picture—rather he is pure nothing.  And therefore unto God alone must the glory and honor be rendered but unto him only shame and tribulation while he lives among the miseries of this life.”

                        -Mirror of Perfection, Section IV, Chapter 45