Why Did St. Francis Call Death His “Sister”?

Near the end of his life, St. Francis of Assisi added extraordinary words to his famous Canticle of the Creatures:

By the time these words were written, Francis knew that his own earthly life was drawing to a close. He was seriously ill, nearly blind and suffering from the wounds of the stigmata.

He was not speaking about death from a safe distance.

He was facing it.

Why did Francis say “Sister”?

The language of St. Francis can sound unusual to modern ears. He called the sun brother, the moon sister and the earth mother. He saw the whole of creation as one great family existing through the goodness of a single Creator.

That is why even unavoidable bodily death found a place in his song of praise.

By calling death “Sister”, Francis did not deny its pain or seriousness. Instead, he refused to treat it as something completely meaningless and outside the providence of God.

Death could not separate him from Christ.

If all creation belongs to God, then the end of earthly life also remains in His hands.

The final days of Francis

By the autumn of 1226, Francis was seriously ill. He asked to be taken to the Portiuncula, the little chapel of Our Lady of the Angels outside Assisi that had played such an important role in his vocation.

It was there that he had lived with his first brothers. It was there that the Franciscan community had taken shape. And it was there that he wanted to spend his final hours.

On October 3, 1226, his brother friars gathered around him.

According to Franciscan tradition, Francis asked them to sing the Canticle of the Creatures. A passage from the Gospel of John connected with the Last Supper was also read aloud.

That evening Francis died.

What is the Transitus of St. Francis?

Each year on the evening of October 3, Franciscan communities around the world remember the death of Francis in an observance known as the Transitus.

The Latin word transitus means a passage, crossing or movement from one state to another.

It is a profoundly Christian way of speaking about death.

It does not say: “Everything has ended.”

It says: “The journey continues.”

For the Christian, bodily death truly ends earthly life, but it does not mean the annihilation of the person.

Francis did not romanticise suffering

It would be easy to imagine his final hours as a beautiful religious picture: a saint, his brothers, singing, a chapel and a peaceful death.

The reality was more difficult.

Francis was physically suffering. His body had been weakened by illness. His eyesight was failing. The wounds of the stigmata caused him pain.

Christian hope therefore does not mean pretending that suffering is not real.

It means believing that neither suffering nor death can remove a person from the hands of God.

Should a Christian be afraid of death?

Fear of death is deeply human.

Christianity does not require emotional indifference towards dying.

We may fear pain, separation from those we love, the unknown and the moment of our final departure.

Faith does not automatically remove those emotions.

It gives us, however, something fear cannot provide: hope.

Christ died and rose again.

Death is therefore no longer a wall with no opening.

It is a doorway through which Jesus has gone before us.

A holy death begins with a holy life

Francis was able to entrust his final moments to God because his entire life had become a preparation for that meeting.

This did not mean constantly thinking about death.

It meant living the Gospel now.

Reconciliation.

Forgiveness.

Prayer.

The Eucharist.

Service to the poor.

Freedom from whatever draws the heart away from God.

A holy death does not begin only during the final minutes of life. We prepare for it through every decision in which we choose Christ.

Why pray for a holy death?

Christian tradition has long encouraged believers to ask God for the grace of a good and holy death.

This is not a prayer to die sooner.

It is a prayer to remain united with God when the hour of death eventually comes.

We can ask for the grace of reconciliation with God and with other people, for the sacraments, for forgiveness and for the ability to depart in peace.

We can also pray for those who are dying today in loneliness, suddenly or in fear.

Eight hundred years later

Eight centuries have passed since the death of Francis, but the lesson of his final hours has not lost its meaning.

Modern culture often tries to move death beyond the horizon of everyday life. We rarely speak about it until it reaches our own family.

Francis proposes another way.

He does not ask us to live in fear of death.

He teaches us to live so that we do not need to turn away from the truth of our own mortality.

We were created for eternal life with God.