A REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF ST. FRANCIS BORGIA
An interesting phenomenon occurs about this time every year. It is the slow and almost imperceptible approach of darkness and death into our daily lives. We don’t need to explain the perfectly natural and astronomical reasons why this happens: suffice it to point out that the very nature God created is our annual reminder that we too shall one day die. As the sun sets a little earlier every evening, as the dark hours of the night lengthen, we realize the same thing is happening to the days of our life. Slowly, yet inexorably, we approach the eternal night. As if to reinforce the feeling of dread we inevitably face during the month of October, the trees begin the yearly process of dying for the winter. The autumn leaves start to fall, and one by one they fade and die, only to be swept away and forgotten.
On this tenth day of October, in the midst of our increasing trepidation, we celebrate the feast of St. Francis Borgia. How appropriate it is to dwell for a moment on the intense horror he suffered as he was suddenly subjected to the sight of one particular death, and how he reacted to this experience in the manner of a true saint.
Francis was born in Spain the son of John Borgia, Duke of Gandia and Joan of Aragon, granddaughter of the King of Aragon, Ferdinand V. His childhood was one of great innocence and godliness, and he was renowned for his Christian graces and the hardness of his living. He eventually was appointed to the Court of the Emperor Charles V, and was made Viceroy of Catalonia. The Empress Isabella died, and Francis, as master of her horse, was commanded to accompany her body to Granada, where it was to be buried. When they reached Granada, the coffin of the Empress Isabella was opened, in order that Francis might swear to the magistrates of the city that it was indeed the body of the late Empress. The body was so disfigured that no one knew it, and he could only swear to its identity because, from the care he had taken, he was sure no one could have changed it on the road. The sight of the awful change which death had made in her countenance so thrilled him with the thought of our mortality and corruption, that he bound himself by vow, as soon as he lawfully might, to give up all things, and to serve only the King of Kings from then on. He so advanced in Christian graces, that his life reached an image of perfection usually attained only in a cloister.
The Borgia family is not well renowned for its holiness, to say the least, and yet, Francis Borgia was able to reach sanctity despite his circumstances. By the sudden realization that “in the midst of life we are in death” he was made to understand the importance of living that life in such a way as to prepare for what lies beyond death’s portal. He was able to see for himself how the bodies we so tragically pamper and indulge, even the bodies of kings and empresses, will eventually decompose in the grave, and that it is only in caring for our souls and preserving in them the grace of God that we will arise from death to a far more glorious destiny. Let this be in our thoughts this October as the leaves fall around us and the darkness comes to swallow up the unprepared.
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