Kissing The Beggar’s Lips

Kissing the Beggar’s Lips

He was christened Giovanni, the Italian name for John. His mother named him after John the Baptist in hopes that he would be devoted to Jesus. But Giovanni was hardly devout. As the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, the boy was a spoiled rich kid. Though his father hoped he would take over the family business, Giovanni frittered away his days listening to troubadours in the marketplace. At night he played the fop, prancing from one debauchery to another. He wasted his father’s money on prostitutes and his energy in street brawls. Yet he existed in disillusionment and despair.

One day a beggar in the marketplace asked Giovanni for a handout. His rich young friends shoved the panhandler aside. But Giovanni remembered a line he heard at Sunday Mass: “When you feed the hungry, you minister to Christ.” He grabbed hold of the beggar, gave him everything in his pockets, and kissed him full on his lips.

That evening he informed his family that he wanted to give everything away to the poor. His enraged father forced Giovanni to enlist in the army, and he was sent off to war. After he was captured, he said that Christ visited him in his prison. When he returned home, he no longer wanted to party with his friends. They jokingly asked if he was planning to marry and settle down. He replied, “Yes, I shall soon wed Lady Poverty.” He moved into a charity hospital where he fed and bathed the most repulsive of the sick. On winter nights he climbed into bed with lepers, wrapping them in his arms to keep them warm.

By day, this son of wealth sat on the steps of the cathedral begging for money to feed the poor. When his father’s cardinal friend, the confessor to Pope Innocent, came up the steps, he begged for permission to start a new order to minister to the poor. With the pope’s blessing, he gathered disciples who gave away all their possessions to follow Jesus. They crisscrossed Europe, ministering to the poor, comforting the sick, and evangelizing the forgotten. Giovanni was the only missionary that the caliph ever allowed to preach in North Africa. This supreme leader of Islam said, “He is the rarest of all Christians who truly lives out his faith.”

While still in his early forties, Giovanni caught a fatal disease from a sick wretch that he held in his arms. In October of 1226 he fell prostrate on the cold ground and whispered, “Welcome, Sister Death.” Then he gasped his final words to his brothers: “I have done my part. May Jesus teach you to do yours.” You remember Giovanni di Bernardone by the name his father later gave him: Francesco. History memorializes him as St. Francis of Assisi. His last words challenge each of us. Have we done our part? If you don’t know what your part is, ask Jesus. If you already know but find it impossible to accomplish, Jesus stands ready to give you what St. Francis said makes it possible:

To give largely, liberally, and cheerfully requires a new heart.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26, NIV