St. Francis and the Wolf

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.