On this beautiful Feast of St. Francis, I think of how
relevant the story of St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio is for us today, in a
world torn by war and hatred. For the
people of Gubbio, the wolf is not just a ruthless killer, he is even worse than that. In their eyes he is irrational. He has no personhood. He is simply the adversary. He has no conscience and can’t be reasoned
with—he is beyond conversion, beyond
redemption. He is an inhuman
monster. Is this not the way that we, as
individuals and nations, always depict our enemies? We can hate them without guilt because they
are not persons in our eyes, because we believe them to be invincibly evil (and
ourselves the champions of good), which gives us the certainty that the only
solution is to destroy them, brutally and without remorse. But Francis courageously seeks out the wolf,
boldly confronts him face-to-face, armed only with love and the hope of
reconciliation, and calls him “brother.”
He begins by recognizing the personhood of Brother Wolf. He enlightens him, aware that in order to do so he must begin with an understanding of who the wolf is—where the wolf is “coming from”—his hunger, his loneliness. And then he helps the wolf to recognize a path
to transformation, to the adoption of a new way of living. He shows him the way to a new mode of being with
others. He brokers a peace between the
wolf and the people of Gubbio. So
perfect is the peace he creates between the people and the wolf that they
end up neighbors and friends. They come
to love and care about each other. That
is the power of active non-violence, its power to conquer fear and hatred, if one is simply courageous enough to call the snarling, bloodthirsty enemy “brother”
or “sister,” and to make peace, not by destroying that enemy, but by the redemptive, the transformative, power of love. Each of us, and most
especially our leaders, the ones who give the orders to kill on a mass scale,
must follow the path that Francis took—for no other path can succeed—if we truly want our cities and our
world to live in peace and safety, and if we truly desire a world where we will live like brothers and sisters.
