By Your Holy Cross You Redeemed The World

 

With his companions Francis now went to live in an abandoned hut near Assisi, where they lived from hand to mouth according to the rule of poverty, in toil and penury, drawing their strength rather from tears of compunction than from any bodily food. They spent the time praying continuously, devoting themselves especially to fervent mental prayer; they had not yet got any of the liturgical books, so that they could not chant the Divine Office. Christ's cross was their book and they studied it day and night, at the exhortation and after the example of their father who never stopped talking to them about the cross. When the friars asked him to teach them how to pray, he said, "When you pray, say the Our Father, and We adore you, O Christ, in all your churches in the whole world and we thank you, because by your holy cross you redeemed the world."

Saint Francis of Assisi
Bonaventure, Major Life
CHAPTER IV

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