Francis and the Christmas Night at Greccio

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There is a hill in the middle of Italy, and on the hill there is a cave, and in the cave, on a cold night, someone has set a manger full of hay.

There is an ox standing beside it. There is a donkey, which has been told to behave, and is thinking about it. And all down the dark side of the mountain, through the trees, there is a thread of little lights, which is people, carrying candles and torches up the hill in the middle of the night, to see something that nobody has ever put on a hillside before.

It is a very simple thing. A little hay. Two animals. And a man in a plain brown habit, standing beside them with tears on his face, who is looking at the manger as though he can see someone in it.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Hello, and welcome to Saints by Candlelight, stories of saints, angels and patriarchs from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, told for bedtime. These episodes are written by an AI and read by a synthetic voice, and they try very hard to be faithful. Tonight's story is about Saint Francis of Assisi, who is a Catholic saint, much loved by many other Christians too, and it comes from the life of Francis written by one of his own friars. One part of it, a vision, is what the old writer reports and not something we can check, and we will say so when we get there. The small talk of the villagers, the weather and the manners of the animals are our own invention, and we will tell you at the end which parts those were. So get comfortable. Dim the lights. And let's begin.

It is the year twelve hundred and twenty-three, and Francis is not well.

He is about forty-two. He has been a friar for fourteen years, and in those years he has walked more miles than a postman, slept in more barns than a farmer's cat, and been laughed at in more market squares than he cares to remember. His eyes hurt. His stomach hurts. And he has just spent a good part of the year doing something that he finds very much harder than walking, which is writing rules.

By now there are thousands of friars. They have all heard Francis speak, or have heard of him, and they all want to know exactly how they are to live. So Francis, who would rather give a sermon to a flock of birds than to a committee, has had to sit down, with his friends, and write the whole way of life down. And then he has had to take it to Rome, and wait while the pope's people read it, and change it, and read it again. It is, I think, the part of holiness that does not make it into the picture books.

That autumn the pope approves the rule. And so, with the paper at last in his pocket, Francis goes up into the hills of the Rieti valley, to a little town called Greccio, where there is a hermitage, and where, I am happy to say, he can sit very quietly and do nothing official at all.

Greccio is a small place. It sits on a rocky hill with a view of a long green valley, and in those days it had a castle, a few dozen houses, and a great many goats. The friars' hermitage was a little way above it, built into the rock, with the cliff for one wall and a handful of tiny huts around it.

And the friend whom Francis loved best in Greccio was a man called John.

Thomas of Celano, who wrote Francis's first life, says that John was a man of good name, and a better life. He was a nobleman, which means that he had a house with more than one room, and a barn, and some land, and a reputation to look after. Celano says that Francis loved him very much. I believe it, because of what happens next.

About a fortnight before Christmas, Francis sends for John.

I do not know what John expected. Perhaps a sermon. Perhaps a request for a bit of bread for the friars, which he would gladly have given. What he gets is Francis, looking at him with that eager, shining face that everyone always mentions, and saying, very simply, that he has had an idea.

Now, we do not have the exact words. But Celano tells us what Francis wanted, and he tells us in a way that I think is close to what Francis said.

Francis said that he wanted to do something for the feast of the birth of the Lord. He wanted to remember the child who was born at Bethlehem. He wanted, he said, to see with his own bodily eyes how it had been for that baby, in all the hardship of having so little. How he lay in a manger. How there was an ox and a donkey standing by. How he was laid down on the hay.

And then he told John what he needed. A manger. Some hay. An ox, and a donkey. And would John be so kind as to have them ready in the cave, by the hermitage, on Christmas night.

John, I think, said yes before he had quite finished hearing.

We should say what had never been done, because we are so used to it now.

By the year twelve hundred and twenty-three, Christians had been keeping Christmas for about a thousand years. They had Masses and carols and long processions and a great deal of feasting. They had pictures of the birth, painted on church walls and carved in ivory. What they did not have was a crib in the way that we mean it, a little scene of the stable that you can stand in front of, and look at, and sit with, on the night itself.

That was Francis's idea, or at least Celano says it was, and he knew him. And it grew straight out of the way Francis loved the Lord. He did not love him as an idea. He loved him as a person who had, one night, been very small, and very cold, and very poor. And Francis, who had chosen to be poor himself, could not think of that baby without wanting to kneel down in the straw beside him.

And there was something else. Francis had a worry about people, which was that they could hear the story every year and still let it slide past them, like water off a roof. He wanted them to be able to see it. Not in a clever way. Just to stand in the place where it happened, with the smell of animals, and the dark, and a cold wind coming in at the door, and know, in the body as well as in the head, that God had really come down to this.

So John goes home.

I think that he did not sleep well that night, or the night after. There was the matter of the ox. There was the matter of the donkey. There was a manger to find, and it ought, he thought, to be a proper one, not the kind with a leak. There was hay to fetch, and there was the cave to sweep, which had not, in living memory, been swept.

And there was something else, which I think troubled John a little, and which he did not say to anyone. It was that Francis had asked for something very simple, and it was the hardest kind of thing to do well. If you ask a man to build a cathedral, he knows what to do. If you ask him to arrange a little hay and two animals, so that people will feel that God has come, there is nowhere to start.

So John did what a sensible man does. He did exactly what he had been asked, and nothing more. He found an ox that was steady and not too proud, and a donkey that was steady and, as far as anyone could tell, not at all proud. He borrowed a wooden manger from a neighbour who asked no questions. He had the hay brought up in a cart, and he stacked it in the cave, and he swept the floor, twice, and then, because he could not help himself, a third time.

Then he waited, as people do, for Christmas.

It was a long fortnight, because Francis did not spend it idle.

The friars at Greccio were a small family, and they lived the way Francis had asked all of them to live, which is to say, with very little. There were a few huts of wattle and branches against the rock. There was a little chapel, a garden that grew whatever the frost allowed, and a bell that was rung by whoever happened to be passing. In the evenings, the brothers sat together on the floor of the largest hut, and one of them read aloud, and the rest tried not to doze.

Francis, in those weeks, was mostly quiet. He prayed a great deal. He walked up and down the little paths between the huts with his hood pulled down against the cold. And every now and then, I think, he would stop at the mouth of the cave, and look in, as a man looks into a room that is about to be filled with guests.

One of the younger brothers, who had been sent to carry hay, asked him once, very shyly, what he was looking for. And Francis, who could have given an answer that would have taken until supper, only said that he was looking for where the baby would be.

The young brother carried his hay in thoughtful silence, and put it down a little more carefully than before.

I think that is how the whole of Greccio began to feel, in those two weeks. The people of the town came up in ones and twos to see what John was doing, and went away having been told only that there was to be a surprise. The goatherds heard of it. The women at the well heard of it. A man who sold cheese in the next valley heard of it, and sent up a round of his best, for the friars, with a message that he did not quite understand what it was for, but it seemed the right thing to do.

And the friars, who owned nothing, did what they always did. They said thank you, and they shared the cheese.

It came on a cold night.

In the valley, the frost had come down early, and the fields were silver in the last of the light. In the villages, the smoke stood straight up from the chimneys. And in Greccio, everyone was talking about the same thing, which was that something was going to happen in the cave tonight, and nobody was quite sure what.

Celano says that the friars were called together from many places, and that men and women came from all the farms of the countryside, each of them carrying torches and candles to light up the night. I like to think of them setting out in the dark in little groups, a grandmother here and a mule there, with children carried on shoulders, and the older boys running ahead, and somebody always dropping something.

I think there were arguments. I think that someone said it was too cold. I think that a man said it was all very strange, and a woman said, then why are you coming, and he said, well, I could hardly stay at home, could I, and everyone laughed, and went on up the hill.

And as they climbed, the lights went before them, up the side of the mountain, and a long way off in the valley, a shepherd who had been out late with his flock looked up, and saw a string of little flames climbing through the black trees, like a slow, quiet river running upwards. I do not know what he thought. I think he thought that it was beautiful. And I think, being a shepherd, he thought of someone else who had once looked up on a night like this and seen something he could not account for.

Earlier that afternoon, before any of this, John had led the two animals up the hill himself.

He had walked slowly, because the path was steep and the ox was in no hurry. The donkey followed on a long rope, stopping, as donkeys do, every few yards to consider the scenery. John did not mind. He talked to them as they went, in the low voice that people use to animals they respect, and told them that tonight they were going to be part of something, and that they were not to worry, and that there would be oats.

At the mouth of the cave he stopped, and Francis was already there, waiting. He did not say anything about the ox or the donkey. He only put his hand, very gently, on the ox's broad nose, and then on the donkey's, and stood for a while with his forehead against the donkey's neck. Then he took them in, and showed them where to stand, as one shows a guest to a seat.

I think that was the moment when John understood what he had been asked to do. It was not to stage a scene. It was to make a place where someone could be welcome, the oldest and simplest kind of hospitality there is.

John told his wife about it later, and she said that it was the most foolish thing she had ever heard, and then she asked him to tell it again.

The cave, when they arrived, was bright and very still.

John had set the manger in the middle, with the hay heaped around it. The ox was standing on one side, chewing, with the calm of an animal who has been asked to do very little and intends to do it well. The donkey was on the other, with an expression of watchful patience. There were torches along the rock wall, so that the whole place glowed, and the breath of the animals made small clouds in the cold air.

And the people came in, one by one, and found that nobody had to tell them what it was.

Celano says that there was great joy, a joy that was new. I do not think he means that they laughed. I think he means the kind of joy that makes people go quiet. A woman put her hand on her mouth. A boy asked, in a loud whisper, whether the baby would be there, and his father said, very softly, that the baby was always there, and the boy considered this and decided that he was satisfied.

And the woods, Celano says, rang with the voices of the people, and the rocks answered back.

Now, there is something important to say here, and it is a very Catholic thing, so I will say it plainly.

A priest came to Greccio that night, and the Mass was held right there, over the manger. Celano says that the manger was used as the altar. The Church does this in every church, every day, but I think that nobody had ever done it quite like this, with the bread and the wine placed on the very hay where, the people were thinking, the child had lain. It was Christ come again among them, as he comes at every Mass, in the same poor way. In the stable, and in the bread. In the hay, and in the bread. And the one who is always willing to be small.

And Francis was there, as a deacon.

You may know that Francis was never a priest. He was too humble for it, and he never wanted to be one. But he had been made a deacon, which means that he could sing the Gospel at Mass, and that is what he did that night. He stood up in his plain habit, with the torchlight on his face, and he sang the story from the second chapter of Luke, in a clear, sweet voice that, Celano says, was strong and also gentle, and that carried through the whole cave and out into the dark.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. And everyone heard, again, that there was no room at the inn, and that a young woman had wrapped her child in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, and that shepherds in the field had been told by an angel not to be afraid.

And then Francis preached. Celano tells us only a little of what he said. He says that Francis spoke about the birth of the poor king, and about the little town of Bethlehem. And he says something that I have always found rather lovely. When Francis said the name, the baby of Bethlehem, he would, in Celano's words, lick his lips, as though the very sound of it were so sweet that he could taste it.

I think that may be the truest thing in the whole account. A man who is hungry for a name, and who has found it.

Now, we come to the part that I told you about at the start.

Celano says that a knight, a man of good character and truth, who had come to Greccio that night, saw something. He says that the knight saw a little child lying in the manger, quite still, as though asleep. And that Francis came near, and took the child in his arms, and woke him.

That is what Celano says, and he says it because the knight told him, or told someone who told him. It is a vision. It is the kind of thing that the old writers love to report, and the Church has always been careful with such things. Nobody is required to believe it. Celano gives us the one knight, and nobody else. And I think it is worth saying that Francis himself, who was the main person in the account, did not make anything of it. We cannot check it, and we do not need to. It is told as the old writers told it, and we leave it there.

What I find more interesting is what Celano says next. He says that the vision was not strange, because the child Jesus had been forgotten in the hearts of many. And that through his servant Francis, the child was, as he puts it, raised up again, and his memory stamped deep on their minds.

That, I think, is what actually happened at Greccio. Not that a baby appeared in a manger. But that a great number of people, who had heard the story of Christmas all their lives, heard it that night as though for the first time.

The Mass ended, and the people went home.

I think they went more slowly than they had come. I think that there was less talking, and that the children, who ought to have been tired, were wide awake. And I think that some of them went home by a different road, as someone once did, for a different reason.

Celano says that John, who had arranged it all, went home that night with a peace in his heart that he had not had for years. I do not know if that is true. But I think it is likely. He had been asked to do a small thing, for love, and he had done it. That is a very good way to spend a Christmas.

And then there was the hay.

Celano tells us that the hay from the manger was kept. People took it home, and used it for their animals, and Celano says that many beasts which were sick, and in the countryside around Greccio there was a plague among the cattle, were healed by eating it. He says too that some women who were in a hard labour were helped when it was laid on them, and that many other sick people were cured, and that the place where the crib had stood was afterwards made into a little church.

Again, that is what the old writer says, and he is telling us what was said in the district. We can say two things for certain. One is that the church was built, and the little hermitage on the hill is there to this day, and people still go to it. The other is that the hay is not the point. The Church does not teach that hay can heal, and neither would Francis. If there were any cures, they were the Lord's, given to people who were praying, and the hay was only hay.

The crib did not stay in Greccio.

It was, as they say, a good idea, and good ideas are impossible to keep. The friars carried it with them, to other towns, and priests began to put up their own little scenes in their churches at Christmas, and families began to make them at home. In time, there were small clay shepherds, and wooden kings, and a great many sheep, and in some parts of Italy a whole village of tiny figures that is added to, a little at a time, for generations.

I do not think that Francis invented any of that. I think that what he did was simpler. He asked for an ox and a donkey and some hay, because he wanted to look at the thing he loved, and he invited his neighbours to look as well. Then he got out of the way.

That is all.

And now, nearly eight hundred years later, if you walk into a church in December, in almost any country in the world, you will probably see a manger, and some straw, and a very small figure that has not been put in yet, because it is not yet the night. That is a child's version of what happened in a cave in Greccio. It is a gift from a tired man with sore eyes, who wanted to see the baby, and thought that other people might like to see him too.

It is a quiet night now, in the hills of the Rieti valley.

The torches have burned down. The people have gone home, and the hermitage is dark, except for one small light in one small hut. The ox has been led back to his stall, and the donkey, I think, has had an extra handful of oats, in recognition of services rendered.

In the cave there is a manger, and some hay, and a great deal of quiet. The wind comes in at the mouth of the cave. The frost lies white on the hill. And somewhere on the hillside, a long way from the light, a very small brown mouse, who has been waiting patiently all evening, comes out at last to see what is left of the hay.

The old lives do not say what became of the mouse. But I think we may hope that it had a very good Christmas.

Now. Notes for the curious.

Everything in tonight's story that we say about the crib at Greccio comes from Thomas of Celano's First Life of Saint Francis, written within three years of Francis's death, with a retelling in Saint Bonaventure's Major Legend, about forty years later. The year, twelve hundred and twenty-three, the friend called John, the request for a manger, hay, an ox and a donkey, the wish to see with bodily eyes the hardship of the child, the crowd with torches and candles, the Mass said over the manger, Francis as deacon singing the Gospel and preaching, the sweetness he found in the name of the baby of Bethlehem, the vision of the knight, and the hay that was kept, are all in Celano. The approval of the rule by the pope that same year is a matter of history. The words of Francis, John and everyone else are told in plain paraphrase and not word for word. The birth of Jesus, and the manger, are in the second chapter of Luke.

What we invented is John's worries over the ox and the donkey and the sweeping of the cave, the quarrels and jokes of the people on the hill, the quiet fortnight in the huts, the young brother and the hay, the cheese-seller, the shepherd in the valley, the walk up the hill with the animals, John's wife, the boy and his father, the donkey's patience and the oats, and the mouse. The old lives do not say what became of the mouse.

A few details are worth being careful about. First, Celano says that Francis asked for leave from the pope before doing this, so that nobody could say that he was making a novelty, and we have kept that out of the story for the sake of the story and not because it is unimportant. Second, the vision of the knight is the old writer's report, as we said, and the cures from the hay are what was told in the district. The Church does not require anyone to believe either. Third, some writers have pointed out that the ox and the donkey are not in Luke's Gospel at all. They come from older Christian reading of a line in the prophet Isaiah, the ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, and from pictures. Francis's wish to have them there is a part of the tradition and not of the Gospel. Fourth, the hermitage at Greccio is still in the rock above the town, and the friars still live there. Finally, Francis is a Catholic saint, and Orthodox Christians do not keep his feast, though many Orthodox, and many Protestants, admire him greatly.

That's the story of Francis and the Christmas night at Greccio, for tonight. If you would like to remember Saint Francis in your prayers, the Catholic Church keeps his feast on the fourth of October. Thank you for listening to Saints by Candlelight. If you enjoyed it, share it with someone who could use a gentle story at the end of a long day.

And here is a blessing. May you have a friend who will find you an ox and a donkey, and ask no questions. May you never have to write a rule, unless you really want to. May you find, once this year, a small and plain thing that makes you go quiet. May the Lord who came so small be very near you, and may you be near to him, in the hay, and in the bread, and in whatever dark and cold place you find yourself tonight. And may the donkey of your life, whatever it is, behave itself.

Goodnight, and God bless.

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