THE WILL OF GOD

If you are the kind of person who reads a book like this, if you wonder about God and the meaning and purpose of your life, if you are at all like me, then you really want to know: what is the will of God? And specifically, what is God's will for me? The intensity of the question rises and falls, depending on the vagaries of life.

But how do you know? I have taken many stabs at divining God's will, although a few times I have felt like a cowboy out on the parched prairie meandering about with a forked stick, desperately thirsty under cloudless skies, yearning for some slight tug that would set me to shoveling for underground water.

The first time I was in Assisi, as powerful as my sense of Francis's presence was, somehow I missed his answer to this most crucial question. What is God's will? Perhaps I wasn't ready to know or even to ask. Maybe I was (and still am?) the kind of person who is too easily distracted, or maybe I'm just plain slow.

But in preparation for my second visit, I read the story of another slow learner's junket to Assisi. Gerard Thomas Straub was a producer of soap operas (like General Hospital), an atheist in Hollywood, who through a serpentine twist of circumstances wound up in Assisi—on a chance remark from a priest from whom he was really seeking a restaurant recommendation. The visit changed his life and his career, and I clutched the coattails of his transformation as I read his memoir, The Sun and Moon Over Assisi.

Francis would love Straub: a cynic, a worldly guy, all about fashion, style, connections with people who are cool—just like Francis during his early years when he finally began to ask, What is God's will? Gulping down his story in huge chunks, I stumbled on what I had missed years earlier, right there on page 467: a prayer, the very words Francis prayed. With my pen I began to underline, then I drew a big circle around it, then with a rush of urgency I sketched a sizable arrow pointing to it. I decided: I will pray this when I get to Assisi—and maybe even right now.

Most high,
glorious God,
enlighten the darkness of my heart
and give me, Lord,
correct faith,
firm hope,
perfect charity,
wisdom and perception,
that I may do
what is truly your most holy will.

What is God's will? How would Francis answer? "Kneel with me, and pray these words. And not just once, but over and over, today, and later today, and tomorrow, and the next day." The persistence of Francis's quest for God's will is striking. Like the visitor Jesus told us about, banging on the door at midnight, so relentless he would not stop until the friend inside got up to give him some bread (Luke 11:8), Francis prayed this prayer during an extended period when he wrestled with God, when he struggled to discern God's will for him.

Notice the words extended period. Francis prayed this prayer many times, every day, for weeks and then months, for nearly two years—and probably habitually throughout his life. Kneeling beside me, Francis reminds me that God's will isn't something you can just dial up and hear right now; you can't Google it. Nothing worth knowing is so swift, so easy, so cheap. To know the unspeakably rich treasure, you have to look, look again, ask,inquire again, dig, stumble, grow weary, find your legs again, press energetically, fail and fail again, but you continue to strive, restlessly seeking. You knock late into the night and all the next day too. When Francis walked, he would always stop to say his prayers; if he was riding on horseback, he would halt and get down to say his prayers.

The delight is in the quest. The joy is the relationship won by saying to God, "You matter enough, this is important enough, I will not be denied." How lovely were the words Thomas of Celano used to describe this gallant period of Francis's life, and the consistent virtue of all of his existence: "He prayed with all his heart that the eternal and true God guide his way and teach him to do His will. He endured great suffering in his soul, and he was not able to rest until he accomplished in action what he had conceived in his heart."

WHERE DOES PRAYER HAPPEN?

If Francis can teach us about the will of God, we might consider where he prayed what he prayed: not just anywhere, but in a church, the small stone chapel called San Damiano, crumbling, unimpressive, but yet a sacred space. Francis took time to get himself bodily to such a place, to invest time in the precincts where the Lord's Supper was blessed and served, where the Word was read and proclaimed, where baptisms and penance and even last rites were performed. What is God's will? Francis says, Kneel with me, but kneel in a church. "The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him" (Habakkuk 2:20 RSV).

And what was the focal point in this church? A large wooden cross, Romanesque in style, painted a few decades before Francis was born, adorned with complex iconography, featuring small figures of Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, soldiers, onlookers, angels, and even saints like St. Michael, John the Baptist, St. Paul. Hovering above them all is the hand of God the Father, protruding downward out of heaven, in a gesture of blessing.

But dominating the cross, at the heart of it all, is Jesus. We see his body pierced with nails, his head crowned with thorns, the soldier's lance in his side, little streams of blood seeming to squirt from his body. Yet this Jesus seems strong, placid, almost luminescent, his eyes angled so very slightly upward, not fierce but shedding love.

Centuries ago church authorities moved this cross to a more trafficked location in the heart of the city, the beautiful church called Santa Chiara, only about a five-minute walk from my hotel. I decided that a visit to this church, and praying before the cross Francis prayed before, would be a good way to start my day—and might not be a bad way to start any day.

After breakfast, I gathered my things to walk straight to Santa Chiara. Should I carry the Straub book with me so I can pray the prayer on page 467? More than six hundred pages in length, it's heavy ... I'll just write it down—which I did, although unnecessarily. How had I missed this on my previous visit? Right outside my hotel, in every shop window, and at the entrance to every church in Assisi, there were little cards with Francis's prayer printed on them. I bought a few, planning to stick them in letters to friends, and to have a handful back home I could give to people who were trying to divine where the water might be.

Then I went in the church. The cross is not visible in the nave, but hangs in a small chapel to the right, the Oratorio del Crocifisso. This crucifix isn't a photo opportunity. The sanctity of the room tugs you down onto your knees. I knelt. Was Francis there? I bowed my head, then gazed up at the face of Jesus, took it all in for a long time, then retrieved the prayer I'd copied, and began to speak to Jesus, silently at first, then in a murmured...