Florence was a flourishing city as Dante wandered through it looking around, seeing everything and everyone, embracing some while rejecting others with a sense of dismissal, and yes, often revenge. However, he was delighted to see the Franciscan friars increasing almost daily. Some lived in the hills above Florence, occasionally entering the city to preach, care for the sick and dying, feeding the hungry and listening to the forgotten before returning to their friaries in the hills. There were other friars who lived at Santa Croce, a home for the many people of Florence, who were artists, poets and labourers who also sought companionship and a life of sanctity. Dante participated with them, learning much about Saint Francis of Assisi, whom he came to admire and struggled to imitate.
Some of these friars prayed and sang Francis’ Cantice of Creation. It did not take Dante long before he had the Canticle not only memorized but also sealed deeply in his heart. This is obvious from his own writings because in the third book of the Divine Comedy, Canto X, he writes:
Now feed yourself,
Since all my attentions must turn back
To the matter I’ve been made scribe for
The premier minister of nature,
Which imprints heaven’s worth on the world,
And measures time with its light.
On reflection, it becomes obvious that the poet Francis is influencing the poet Dante. Many years later he took up the same theme with the same emphasis and care: concern for the world and all of that is in it. It is Dante at his best.
But then we know that Dante, like Francis himself, had to go through grim times to come to their conclusions. For Francis, it was sickness that weakened him along with disillusionment with what was happening to the fraternity that the Lord led him to lead. For Dante it was his experience of the Inferno and Purgatorio.
It should be obvious that in the years ahead, unlike the friars of Florence, some friars began to preach from the perspective of Dante’s Inferno rather than his Paradiso. The Bernadines of Siena and John Capistranos and their fellow preachers railed against their listeners, their sins, and their repercussions.
We should not be too harsh in judging them because their form of preaching continued up until the Second Vatican Council when Franciscan preachers went from parish to parish to preach damnation and  condemnation. We must remember that even the Blessed Mother is unfortunately credited with leading the children of Fatima to the horrors of hell as they stood at the edge of a pit to stare into hell, seeing the pain and suffering of those who sinned so badly that they would be in hell for eternity. It makes one wonder about the validity of the story of Fatima. It is not the image of Mary which we embrace.
Francis in his salutation honouring the Blessed Virgin Mary reveals a loving mother caring for her children. He uses many striking images of her, most notably the image of Mary as our home as well as a tabernacle.
The image of Mary as our home is one that fills our hearts with love, warmth, and safety. For those who never experienced this in our homes we can now experience a place where we can be ourselves, simply sitting and talking without any false faces and attitudes.
The other image that Francis uses that is important here is Mary as tabernacle. We understand this when applied to her for she presents Jesus to the world in her very being. What we often miss is that we too are tabernacles bringing Jesus with us or more appropriately Jesus brings us with Him.
These images of Mary given to us by Francis also point out that the Paradiso has already begun, for the images become a realty lived here and now while leading us to heaven.
We are witnessing the interactions of two poets in dialogue, Francis leading the conversation, Dante responding.
Listen attentively to Dante in Canto XI:
… a sun arose on this world
As it sometimes does from the Ganges.
So, whoever talks about this place,
Don’t call it Assisi, which would be saying
Too little, but The East, if you want to be precise.
The sun is Francis and Assisi is his birthplace.
Our difficulty is that we have ‘de-poetised’ Francis losing much of his meaning. The poet Dante did not make that mistake. He embraces Francis, as Francis embraced Lady Poverty, making it the love affair it was for Francis. We have forgotten this, so we spend useless time and talent discussing the meaning of poverty as a virtue. Dante would have none of that legalistic jargon.
Recently another poet Ann Wroes published a book of poetry recounting the life of Francis. She too realized it is best to be a poet with a poet, so the book is unique in its telling the story of Francis in poetry rather than prose leading us to often pause and reflect.
Dante acted in like manner (Canto XI):
He commended his most beloved lady
To his brothers, as his rightful heirs,
And commanded them to faithfully love her.
Not only do we need to follow the advice of Dante here but also in our understanding of the afterlife. Jesus speaks little of it; He only really says that there are many mansions in the Kingdom. Have we even bothered to pursue the image? How many are there? Who inhabits them? Where will mine be? As we do this it may dawn on us that when we do this we are already in Paradise. If we do not find paradise here, we will never find it in the afterlife.
To help us do that we turn to Bonaventure. We might think that Dante gives Bonaventure little space but what he says is important as it places Bonaventure in the history of Franciscan development and thought, so Dante allows him to speak for himself (Canto XII):
I am the living essence, Bonaventure,
Of Bagnoregio, who, in the highest office,
Always delayed dealing with worldly matters.
In these brief words, Dante situates Bonaventure outside the battle fought between the spiritualists and the so-called relaxed friars, that is, those who long for the old days and those who want to adapt to novel times and places. Dante’s Bonaventure will not deal with their worldly concerns but is still solidly within his own clarified spiritual tradition without identifying with the spiritualists, so he becomes known as a spiritual theologian. The teaching of Bonaventure that is applicable here is his teaching on deifications: we are on a journey to being more Godlike. In other words, we are already in paradise. We are graced to be here. It is our identify here and now. It is clear then that if we want the fullness of paradise, we begin by discovering the sparks of paradise within us and around us.