Among other words used in conversation, Francis could never hear the love of God without a kind of transformation within himself. For immediately upon hearing the love of God, he would become excited, stirred, and inflamed, as though an inner chord of his heart had been plucked by the plectrum of the outward voice of the speaker. He said that to offer the love of God to get an alms was a noble prodigality, and those who valued it less than money were most foolish men. He himself kept unfailingly to his death the resolution he had made while he was still enmeshed in worldly things, namely, that he would never turn away a poor man who asked an alms for the love of God.
Saint Francis of Assisi
Celano, Second Life
Chapter CXLVIII
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