Admonition 1: The Body of Christ
One way to know a person is to listen to the sort of advice he or she gives. Some people always seem to give sad advice pointing out what can go wrong. Others encourage us to be happy and look at what is bright in our lives. Saint Francis has left us twenty-eight snippets of advice, known as Admonitions, so by looking at these we can see what sort of a person Francis was. It can be said first of all that he was a person who was concerned with the most important thing in life, namely, how to recognize Jesus. Francis said that when the apostles saw the Lord they saw a man like themselves and when we look at the Lord we see only sacred bread. But what the Apostles saw with their eyes was only part of the truth for the Person they saw was God. So when we look at the host during Mass we see only bread but we believe that we are looking at God. So Francis advises us: 'Let us, as we see bread and wine with our bodily eyes, see and firmly believe that they are His most holy Body and Blood living and true'. We commonly use the word admonition to mean a warning. But Francis in his these twenty-eight Admonitions is not so much warning us as giving us advice. It is hoped in these articles to look at more of these Admonitions and so build up a picture of Francis. To know Francis is to know Franciscan spirituality because the aim of Franciscan spirituality is to look at life, prayer, creation, the Church and God in the way that Francis looked at them.
