Waldron offers us a Francis of Assisi who speaks to us of the twenty-first century, a Francis with whom modern people can identify. Robert Waldron's new book serves as an introduction to the life of the world's favorite saint. The author explores Francis from three perspectives: biographical, psychological and aesthetic. His book is innovative because he understands Francis through our new science of psychology and through the beauty of Bellini's masterpiece St. Francis in the Desert, the painting shown on the cover of the book. For a psychological understanding Waldron employes Carl Jung's theory of individuation: the steps taken by Francis to become his True Self. Waldron also employs Bellini's painting to shed light on St. Francis the mystic, he who was gifted by God with the Stigmata. Waldron also addresses Francis's poem The Canticle of the Creatures, offering an exegesis of the poem that also provides insights into the saint's life as Christian and as a mystic. Waldron's book provides a Study Guide that encourages the reader to go more deeply into understanding Francis's life; thus, it can be used in the classrooms of both high school and college. Robert Waldron's deeply contemplative book lets us meet a truly humble man who, as the light that suffuses Bellini's portrait awakens something in us too, seems to be asking, "What are you waiting for?" Alongside the Poverello, we experience the crucial brilliance of his Master emptying Himself for us, just as Francis, for whom Love enscaped itself on his mind and body, came to understand--as we too, thanks to Waldron's portrait, might come to understand.
Paul Mariani, poet, biographer and critic,
University Professor of English Emeritus at Boston College
Like the play of light in the famous Bellini painting of the Stigmata of St. Francis, Robert Waldron's meditation on St. Francis helps us see how he became the luminous saint he is. Waldron explores the major decisions in the life of St. Francis and discovers there the source of the light Francis shines not only on his contemporaries but also on us today. Through commentaries and study guides Waldron involves the reader in a journey of close reading of events and written sources of the life of St. Francis, as well as the interpretation of artists, that becomes an adventure into how God illumines those who do God's will.
Murray Bodo, OFM
Author and scholar of the life of St. Francis of Assisi