“Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whom no living man can escape.”
St. Francis of Assisi included this praise of mortality in his Canticle of the Sun, in which he thanked God for every blessing of creation, from the sun, moon, and stars, and to water, wind, and creatures.
Eight hundred years after he met his own mortal end at the Chapel of the Portiuncula in Santa Maria degli Angeli, outside Assisi, devotees of the saint gathered in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on Saturday Oct. 3 to commemorate his Transitus, or “passage” from this life to the next. The evening was organized by the Holy Land Franciscan Friars, custodians of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America.
The commemoration of St. Francis’s Transitus began shortly before 6 p.m. with a procession that began on the University Mall of The Catholic University of America, outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and proceeded to the monastery. After the opening prayer on the lawn adjoining the basilica, the faithful left the university and processed up Michigan Avenue and Quincy Street.
During the procession, attendees prayed the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary for mental health ministry, Pope Leo XIV’s intention for the month of October, and sang hymns and chants of praise, including the “Salve Regina” prayer. The friar who led the opening prayer noted that, since the Holy Father has designated 2026 as a Franciscan Jubilee Year, praying a rosary for his monthly intention would fulfill part of the conditions required for a plenary indulgence.
Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, apostolic nuncio to the United States, led the procession alongside a contingent of Franciscan friars.
After the faithful had arrived at the monastery and taken their places in the church sanctuary, the Transitus service began, led by Archbishop Caccia and Franciscan Father Ramzi Sidawi, guardian of the monastery. Representatives of various Franciscan apostolates in Washington, including the Franciscan Action Network and Franciscan Mission Service, were also in attendance.
Much of the service consisted of chanted psalmody, including Psalm 142, which St. Francis is said to have sung while dying. Each of the psalms were bookended by an antiphon that captured the essence of the saint’s ministry; the antiphons included “Francis, a thoroughly Catholic and apostolic man, was sent to prepare the way for the Gospel of peace,” and “During his lifetime he supported the house of God, and in his days he strengthened the temple.”
Capuchin Franciscan Brother Thomas Piolata, an assistant professor of systematic theology at Catholic University, offered a reflection in which he spoke of St. Francis’s “threefold conformity to Christ: living, dying, and dead.” The most important facet of this conformity, he said, was St. Francis’s humility and voluntary poverty, a principle which the saint lived until the very moment of his death.
Brother Piolata recounted that, according to St. Bonaventure’s Life of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis had asked to be “placed naked upon the earth” as he was dying, but that in the end he accepted a tunic from a brother, as a gift rather than as property. Both in his desire to die naked and in his ultimate decision to accept his brother’s gift, Brother Piolata said St. Francis exemplified radical humility and obedience to God’s will.
The themes of sleep and wakefulness pervaded Brother Piolata’s reflection. He described much of contemporary society as “sleepwalking” through life, identifying several sedatives: “the sucking black hole that emerges when I stare into a screen,” the “hollow promises of political ideologies,” and the “idolatry of capital.”
“In contrast to a relational life stands an egocentric existence, closed off to others,” Brother Piolata said. St. Francis, on the other hand, surmounted the temptation of sleepwalking by “entering into the lives of others: the poor, lepers, and ultimately Christ,” he said.
Brother Piolata also emphasized that *St. Francis’s life of conformity to Christ was intrinsically liturgical. “As a man of praise,” he said, “he becomes a man awakened.”
Liturgy and worship permeated the entirety of St. Francis’s life, from his effusive odes to God’s glory – particularly his Canticle of the Sun, which is engraved on the walls of the St. Anthony Chapel at Washington’s own Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle – to the day when he received Christ’s stigmata at Mount Alverna. Brother Piolata pointed out that the seraphic angel who appeared to St. Francis at Alverna is a “liturgical angel,” known in the Gospels for proclaiming God as “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.”
“Wake up to the living God!,” Brother Piolata exhorted the faithful as he concluded his reflection.
The service concluded with a candlelit procession through the monastery’s gardens to its replica of the Chapel of the Portiuncula, with the faithful singing the Taizé refrain “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Once the procession had reached the Portiuncula, Archbishop Caccia blessed the faithful with a relic of St. Francis.
The final blessing was followed by a light reception featuring almond cookies, an Italian treat that St. Francis’s devoted friend Blessed Jacoba of Settesoli often baked for him.
