Saint Francis and His Adopted Father

When his father saw that Francis had embraced the Hfe of a beggar, he was filled with grief and shame, and used to curse him wherever he found him. But the man of God, marking his father's curses, took to him a certain poor, despised man to be his father, and he said to him: 'Come with me, and I will give you from the alms that are given to me. And when you shall see my father cursing me, I will say to you: "Bless me, father!" and you shall make the sign of the cross over me and bless me in his stead.' And so, when that poor man blessed him, the man of God said to his father: 'Think you not that God can provide me a father to give me his blessing against thy curses?' Many of those who mocked him, seeing him thus derided, and bearing it all patiently, were filled with exceeding wonder.

- text taken from Franciscan Days: being selections for every day in the year from ancient Franciscan writings, translated and arranged by Alan George Ferrers Howell