Today we celebrate our Province feast day, feast of the Sacred Stigmata of Saint Francis.

From the biography of St. Bonaventure:

“For immediately the marks of nails begin to appear in [Francis’] hands and feet just as he has seen a little before in the figure of the man crucified. His hands and feet seemed to be pierced through the center by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing on the inner side of the hands and the upper side of the feet and their points on the opposite sides. The heads of the nails in his hands and his feet were round and black; their points were oblong and bent as if driven by a hammer, and they emerged from the flesh in stuck out beyond it. Also his right side, as if pierced with a lance, was marked with a red wound from which his sacred blood often flowed…” (The Major Legend of St. Francis)



Image: Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (c. 1420) by Gentile da Fabriano