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In many ways, as a true servant of Jesus Christ, St. Francis was given to the world as Christ himself had been: for its salvation. God’s will was accomplished through Francis, as we saw in the lives of the twelve companions, the mysteries of the stigmata, and in the continuous fasting of holy Lent that Francis kept in the following manner.
He was living near the Perugia Lake on Carnival Day, in the home of a friend, when he was inspired to spend Lent on an island in that lake. So he asked his friend to take him in his small craft out into the lake to that island that no one inhabited. He asked the friend to do this quietly on Ash Wednesday, so that no one would notice.
That good friend and follower followed Francis’s wish and prepared his little boat in the middle of the night for the short journey. Francis took along only two small loaves of bread.
When the friend was dropping Francis off at the island, Francis begged of him not to mention this to anyone. And he asked him not to return for him until Holy Thursday had come. And so the friend left, and Francis remained.
There were no buildings of any kind on this uninhabited island, and so Francis made a shelter in the midst of some thickets and bushes. There, he began to pray and contemplate divine things. There, he stayed for all of Lent, eating only from those loaves of bread, and drinking nothing at all.
On Holy Thursday, St. Francis’s friend returned. The friend found one of the loaves still whole and the other only half-eaten. It is believed that Francis only ate the half in reverence to the fasting of our Lord, who for forty days and forty nights took nothing at all; so Francis took half a loaf in order to avoid the sin of pride, that he might not follow too closely the example of Jesus Christ.
God would later perform many miracles in that place where Francis endured such beautiful abstinence. From that Lent forward, people began to live on that island, and before very long a small town was there. A friary is there now too, and all of the men and women who live in that place know the story of the reverence and devotion of Francis that Lent.
[#7 of 53]