ST.FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND CHARITY
We (Friar brothers) who lived with him bear testimony that whether sick or well, the Holy Father displayed a great deal of charity and pity not only toward his brothers but also toward the poor, the sick, and the healthy. He deprived himself of necessary things, which the brothers procured for him with great difficulty but most willingly; and after having cajoled us not to be angry, he gave away with great interior and external joy what he had denied his own body. That is why the minister general and his guardian forbade him to give his tunic to any brother without their permission. Some brothers, in fact, sometimes would ask him for it out of devotion, and he would immediately give it to them. It also sometimes happened that when he saw a sick or poorly clad brother, he would cut his habit in half and give him one part and keep the other for himself, for he had and wanted to have only one tunic. Once when he was traveling through a province preaching, two brothers from France met him; and the meeting gave them much consolation. At its conclusion, they asked him for his tunic for the love of God and out of devotion to him. As soon as he heard the love of God invoked, he took off his tunic and remained scantily dressed for a moment. When someone said to him: Give me your tunic or your cord or some other thing for the love of God, it was his custom to give it to them at once out of respect for the Lord who is called “Love.” But he was greatly displeased, and, in fact, he often reproved the others if they invoked the love of God for a mere trifle. He said: “The love of God is so great and noble a thing that we should say the word only rarely, in case of necessity and with profound respect.” Then one of the French brothers took off his tunic and gave it to him.