St. Katherine Drexel Regional Fraternity
Regional Spiritual Assistant
St. Francis of Assisi Friary
1901 Prior Road
Wilmington, Delaware 19809
tel: (302) 798-1454 fax: (302) 798-3360 website: skdsfo email: pppgusa@gmail.com
October 2026
Dear Sisters and Brothers in St. Francis,
On the evening of 3 October 1226, at the little church of Saint Mary of the Angels, a great silence fell upon the Franciscan brotherhood. Francis of Assisi, the poor man who had chosen to follow Christ in poverty, humility, obedience, and perfect joy, had completed his earthly pilgrimage. He had embraced the Gospel not merely as a book to be studied but as a life to be lived. Now the man who had become father, brother, guide, and spiritual light to thousands of men and women had passed from this world into eternal life. The news of his death could not remain within the walls of the Portiuncula. It had to be carried to the brothers scattered throughout the world. Brother Elias, then Vicar General of the Order, assumed the painful responsibility of announcing the death of their beloved founder.
The letter traditionally known as the Encyclical Letter of Brother Elias on the Transitus of Saint Francis begins with an extraordinary cry of grief: Before I begin to speak, I sigh. The words immediately reveal that this is not simply an administrative communication. It is the lament of a son who has lost his father, of a disciple who has lost his master, and of a religious family that has suddenly been deprived of its visible center. Early Franciscan tradition records that Elias sent a letter of consolation throughout the Order, and the letter presents Francis’s death simultaneously as a profound sorrow and as a reason for Christian joy.
This tension between mourning and joy is at the heart of Christian spirituality. The Church mourns death because death is painful and because human love makes separation painful. Yet Christian faith refuses to regard death as the final word. Saint Paul declares, For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). The Christian does not rejoice because death itself is desirable, but because Christ has entered death and transformed it from a prison into a passage. For Francis, this passage was the culmination of an entire life spent following Christ crucified.
Brother Elias therefore does something spiritually important. He does not tell the brothers simply, “Francis has died.” He interprets the death. He invites them to understand what has happened through the mystery of Christ. Francis’s death cannot be separated from the life he lived. The true significance of his final hour is already contained throughout the lifetime experience of his conversion, his poverty, his service to lepers, his love of the Eucharist, his obedience to the Church, his fraternity, his preaching of peace, and finally his conformity to the crucified Lord.
The early Franciscan sources describe Francis’s final days as a kind of Gospel drama. Thomas of Celano tells us that when Francis knew death was approaching, he desired to return to the Portiuncula, the place where his vocation had become so clear to him. On the way, he blessed Assisi. At Saint Mary of the Angels, he asked the brothers to sing the praises of God. According to the Franciscan tradition, even when his body was weakened by illness, Francis continued to praise God and encouraged his companions to do the same. He asked that the Passion according to Saint John be read to him, recalling the Last Supper and the suffering of Christ.
There is a profound symbolism here. Francis began his Christian journey before the crucifix of San Damiano, hearing Christ call him to repair His Church. At the end of his life, he surrounded himself with the Gospel of Christ’s Passion. The beginning and the end of his vocation meet at the Cross. The man who had spent his life gazing upon Christ crucified now prepared to enter into the mystery of the Crucified One. What was impressed on his heart at San Damiano, was impressed on his body at La Verna.
Saint Paul writes, I bear the marks of Jesus on my body (Galatians 6:17). In Francis, the Franciscan tradition saw this verse expressed in a remarkable and literal manner through the Stigmata. Brother Elias’s letter famously announces that Francis appeared as one crucified, bearing in his body the wounds of Christ. The letter describes the wounds in the hands, feet, and side as signs of the Passion.
The spirituality of St. Francis makes it clear that the stigmata were not simply miraculous signs. Their deepest meaning was conformity to Christ that Francis sought throughout his life. Francis did not seek extraordinary experiences for their own sake. Once he discovered where true wealth could be found, his entire life was a movement toward becoming more like Jesus. The stigmata were understood by the early Franciscan tradition as the visible manifestation of an interior transformation that had been taking place for years.
This is why the letter of Elias connects the death of Francis so closely with the wounds of Christ. Francis did not merely die as a holy man; he died having configured his life to the pattern of the Gospel. Saint Francis had understood the words of Christ, If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Matthew 16:24), not as an abstract command but as the program of his life.
His poverty was a participation in Christ’s poverty. His humility was an imitation of Christ’s humility. His service to lepers was an imitation of Christ’s mercy. His fraternity reflected Christ’s gathering of disciples. His love for creation reflected his praise of the Creator. His suffering became a participation in the Cross. His death became a final surrender into the hands of God. His Journey Into God was now complete and fulfilled. Now he saw in the clarity of eternal light the One Whom he sought in the cloud of faith and by Whom he hoped to be embraced and Whom he hoped to embrace in the encounter of Eternal Love Who is God.
Francis himself had already expressed this spirituality in his writings. In his Testament, he looks back upon his conversion and says that when he was living in sin, “it seemed too bitter” to see lepers, but that the Lord Himself led him among them and gave him mercy. His entire vocation is therefore interpreted as grace. Francis does not present himself as the author of his own holiness. God acted first, and Francis ecstatically said “Yes”. This is what I want. This is what I seek, this is what I desire with all my heart.
This is important when reading Elias’s announcement. The letter is ultimately not a celebration of Francis as an isolated heroic individual. Its purpose is to point beyond Francis toward God. The miracle, the wounds, the holiness, the fraternity, the conversion, and the apostolic fruitfulness all belong to the action of divine grace. God is at work in us, through us, with us, for us.
The death of Francis therefore becomes a lesson in the Christian meaning of life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24). Francis had spent his life allowing the seed of the Gospel to die to self so that Christ might live in him. His physical death did not end that fruitfulness. In many ways, it intensified it. After his death, his example spread throughout the Church with extraordinary force.
Thomas of Celano, the first major biographer of Francis, wrote only a few years after the saint’s death. His First Life was commissioned by Pope Gregory IX and completed around 1230, giving it an important place among the early historical sources. Celano presents Francis’s final moments as filled with praise. Francis asked the brothers to sing, and he himself joined as far as he could. He even welcomed death as “Sister Death,” because he had learned to receive everything from the hands of God as “gift”.
This is one of the most distinctive aspects of Franciscan spirituality. Francis does not call death “enemy” alone. In the Canticle of the Creatures, he praises God even “through our Sister Bodily Death.” Such language would be impossible if Francis regarded death merely as annihilation. For him, death belongs within the providence of God. It is painful, but it is also a threshold. The creature returns to the Creator.
This attitude becomes even more powerful when placed beside the biblical words, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones” (Psalm 116:15). The death of the saint is precious not because suffering is good in itself, but because the life of the faithful person is finally gathered into God. Francis had given himself to God during life; in death he gave himself completely.
Brother Elias’s letter therefore teaches the friars how to grieve. They are not told to suppress their tears. Indeed, Elias openly invites them to mourn. The beloved father is gone. The one who had carried them spiritually is no longer physically present. They are, in a real sense, orphans.
Yet Christian mourning is never without hope. Jesus Himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus, even though He knew that Lazarus would rise (John 11:35). Christian hope does not eliminate grief; it transforms grief. The tears of the disciples are not a failure of faith. They are evidence of love. But the Christian can weep while still believing that Christ has conquered death.
The letter of Elias embodies precisely this spirituality: sorrow and joy, tears and thanksgiving, loss and hope, death and resurrection. Francis has died, but Christ has not died. The visible father of the brothers has been taken away, but the Father in heaven remains. Their earthly guide is gone, but the Gospel remains. Their community has lost its founder, but its true foundation is Christ.
Francis himself understood this. In his Testament, he directs his brothers back toward obedience to the Rule and to the Gospel. He does not want the Order to become merely a monument to his personality. His purpose is that the brothers continue to live the Gospel. The Franciscan vocation must survive not by preserving Francis as a memory but by allowing his evangelical vision to continue in concrete lives of poverty, fraternity, prayer, mercy, and peace.
The death of Francis thus becomes a question for every Franciscan generation: What does it mean to inherit Francis’s spirit? It is not enough to admire Francis. It is not enough to celebrate his feast. It is not enough to speak beautifully about his love of creation or his poverty. The true inheritance of Francis is a life conformed to Christ.
The early sources repeatedly return to this point. Saint Bonaventure, writing several decades after Francis’s death, describes Francis as a man whose holiness had become an example capable of guiding others toward Christ. Bonaventure records his death as the completion of his earthly pilgrimage and emphasizes the divine confirmation of his sanctity.
The testimony of these early sources allows us to see the death of Francis as the completion of a vocation. His life was not divided into separate compartments called “conversion,” “ministry,” “suffering,” and “death.” All of it was one movement toward Christ. His final suffering belonged to the same journey as his first encounter with the leper. His final praise belonged to the same journey as his first prayer before the crucifix. His final embrace of Sister Death belonged to the same journey as his first embrace of poverty.
There is also something deeply communal about Elias’s announcement. Francis does not die as an isolated mystic. He dies surrounded by brothers. His final concern is not simply his own salvation but the spiritual welfare of those whom God had entrusted to him. Francis blesses his brothers. According to the Franciscan tradition, he forgives them and sends them forth under God’s blessing.
This is significant because Franciscan spirituality is fundamentally fraternal. The vocation is not “Francis alone.” It is Francis and his brothers. It is the Gospel lived together. Francis understood that the brothers would have weaknesses, disagreements, failures, and different interpretations of the future. Nevertheless, he entrusted them to God.
Elias’s letter therefore performs an act of spiritual succession. Francis has died, but the fraternity continues. The brothers must now learn to live without the physical presence of the man who gathered them. This is perhaps one of the deepest lessons of the Transitus. Every Christian community eventually faces the experience of losing a beloved guide, founder, parent, or teacher. Faith requires learning to move from dependence upon a human presence toward deeper dependence upon God.
The letter also contains an extraordinary message of forgiveness. Francis, according to the letter’s account, had forgiven the brothers for their faults. This detail is spiritually important. The last legacy of Francis is not resentment but reconciliation. He does not leave his brothers burdened by guilt over what they failed to do. He leaves them with mercy.
That recalls the words of Christ from the Cross: “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). Francis had spent his life trying to imitate Christ; at the end, the spirit of forgiveness remained central. A Franciscan community can survive disagreements only if it continually returns to mercy.
The Franciscan Rule itself begins with the Gospel. The brothers are those who wish to follow the life and poverty of Jesus Christ. Consequently, the death of Francis cannot be understood merely as the death of an historical founder. It is a test of whether the brothers will continue to follow Christ when the human instrument through which God had guided them is no longer present.
There is also a valuable historical caution. The Letter of Elias has traditionally been received as an early Franciscan testimony, and Franciscan sources and later traditions have treated it as an important witness to Francis’s death and stigmata. Yet modern scholarship has questioned the certainty of its authorship and transmission. Some scholars have argued that the surviving form cannot be established with complete confidence as a document written exactly as traditionally attributed to Elias immediately after Francis’s death. This caution should not prevent spiritual reflection; rather, it should encourage intellectual honesty. Franciscan spirituality does not depend upon refusing historical questions. Faith can respect both devotion and historical investigation.
Even with this caution, the themes associated with the letter are strongly confirmed by other early Franciscan witnesses: Francis’s final praise, his reading of the Passion, his acceptance of death, his blessing of the brothers, his desire to return to the Portiuncula, and the early Franciscan testimony concerning the stigmata. The tradition surrounding his Transitus is therefore much broader than one document.
Perhaps the most beautiful lesson of all is that Francis teaches us how to die by teaching us how to live. He did not suddenly become prepared for death on the evening of 3 October 1226. He had been preparing for death every day by surrendering himself to God. He had practiced dying to pride, dying to wealth, dying to selfish ambition, dying to comfort, dying to revenge, and dying to the desire for control. That is why his death could become praise.
Saint Paul writes, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). These words can fittingly be placed beside the final hours of Francis. His race was finished. His earthly pilgrimage was complete. The poor man of Assisi had nothing left to possess except Christ.
And so Brother Elias’s announcement is ultimately more than an obituary. It is an invitation to conversion. It asks the brothers – and it asks us – what remains when the things we depend upon are taken away. What remains when health disappears? What remains when reputation disappears? What remains when possessions disappear? What remains when even those we love most must leave us? Francis’s answer is not “what remains” but “Who remains”? And the answer is Christ!
The final spiritual message of his Transitus is therefore not simply, “Francis has died.” It is, “Francis has passed over into the Lord.” His “Journey Into God” is complete. The Franciscan understanding of death is not centered upon disappearance but upon passage. The saint has completed his journey from the world into eternity, from following Christ in faith to seeing Him in glory.
For this reason, the death of Saint Francis is also a proclamation of hope. The wounds of the Crucified Christ became signs of resurrection. The poverty of Francis became spiritual richness. His weakness became strength. His death became witness. His departure became a new beginning for the Order.
None of those who gathered at the Portiuncula the night of 3 October 1226, mourning his passing, could not yet have known how widely the Spirit of the Poverello – the Franciscan charism – would have spread. They could not foresee the millions who would one day look to Francis as a model of Gospel living, peace, fraternity, care for creation, and love for the poor. But the seed had been planted. The words of Christ remain true: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24).
Francis had fallen into the soil of poverty, humility, suffering, and love. On 3 October 1226, that grain entered the darkness of death. But in Christ, darkness was not the end. The seed entered the earth so that its fruit might continue.
Therefore, when we contemplate Brother Elias announcing the death of Saint Francis, we should allow ourselves to hear both voices contained in the announcement. We hear the voice of mourning: “Our father is gone.” But we also hear the voice of faith: “He has gone home to Christ.” We hear the cry of human loss, but beneath it we hear the song of Resurrection.
Francis died as he had lived: poor, grateful, reconciled, praising God, surrounded by his brothers, contemplating the Passion of Christ, and entrusting himself entirely to divine mercy. Surrounded by his brothers, and “Fra Jacopa” who arrived just in time to see, greet, bring him the cookies he requested and so enjoyed, and the tunic she made for his burial.
This woman was the woman who had a “friar’s” heart and Francis’ unconditional permission to enter the friary. Even in dying, Francis never forgot the “gentilezza” (courtesy) of a good friend who never forgets a good faithful friend, Jacopa.
His final lesson is therefore simple and profound: live so completely in Christ that death becomes the final act of praise.
May the spirit that animated Francis continue to animate all who bear his name. May we learn from him to embrace the poor, forgive our brothers and sisters, love the Church, cherish creation, carry the Cross, and rejoice in the gifts of God. And when our own hour comes, may we be able to repeat the prayer that expressed the whole life of Francis: “Most High, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart.”
May the Lord give us the grace to live faithfully, to suffer courageously, to forgive generously, and finally, like Francis, to welcome Sister Death not as the end of our existence but as the doorway through which we return to the Father.
For “neither death, nor life…nor things present, nor things to come…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).
Francis has passed from our sight, but the Gospel he lived remains. His voice has fallen silent, but his life continues to preach. His body rests in Assisi, but his witness travels wherever men and women choose the Gospel over wealth, fraternity over division, mercy over judgment, peace over violence, and Christ over self.
This is the deeper meaning of Brother Elias’s announcement. It is an announcement of death, but even more profoundly, it is an announcement of hope. The father of the brothers has died, but the Father remains. The earthly journey has ended, but eternal life has begun. The disciple has followed the Crucified One through suffering and death and now, by the mercy of God, into glory.
And so we mourn Francis.
And we rejoice for Francis.
And above all, we praise the God whom Francis loved,
served, obeyed, and proclaimed throughout his life.
To Him be glory, honor, praise, and thanksgiving, now and forever.
Amen
Peace and Blessings
Fr. Francis A. Sariego, O.F.M. Cap
Regional Spiritual Assistant
