Some time last year, Fr. Phelps, as part of his project of giving away books, gave me a copy of a little book that was published in English in this country in 1948, a year after the French-language original was published in France. Its title is “The Seven Miracles of Gubbio, And the Eighth.” The book expands on the story of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio, which tells of how St. Francis established peace with the vicious Wolf that had terrified the people of Gubbio. The telling of that story features the recitation of the way Francis elicited from the Wolf a promise to cease its marauding ways, and also the pledge of that promise, by having the Wolf place its paw familiarly in St. Francis’s hand in a kind of handshake. It was a French Dominican priest who spun the tale out from that point, in those years just after the Second World War, by offering the conceit that St. Francis endowed the Wolf of Gubbio with the power to perform seven miracles using that favored right paw.
So, on this Sunday when the feast of St. Francis lies just beneath the surface; here beginneth, in paraphrase, the story of the Seven Miracles of the Wolf of Gubbio, and the Eighth.
Having been given the power to work wonders, the Wolf got right down to business. First, he rescued a boy who’d tumbled off the city wall to his likely peril.
Next he saved a flock of sheep who were threatened by a flash flood, by holding back the flood waters, like Moses holding back the waters of the Red Sea.
His third miracle was to prevent the destruction of the town when an earthquake hit.
His fourth miracle was for the benefit of the mistreated daughter of the large family with whom the Wolf had taken up residence. The girl was an outcast because, the tale tells us, she was “ugly as sin.” Her name was Formicella.
(Begging your pardon, I ask you to accept the story on its own terms, aware, as we are, of old gender stereotypes it reinforces, among other outmoded sensibilities.)
For her appearance, the girl was shunned. “She had a little dirty attic for her bedroom, and it was in this wretched hovel that she passed her days, sleeping, or with her forehead pressed against the windowpane, watching the passers-by in the street, crying or sometimes singing sadly to herself.”
One morning, the Holy Wolf walked into the girl’s room, raised his right paw, and, while she was still sleeping, the girl’s appearance was transformed, and she became a ravishing beauty.
A deep bond developed between the girl (who was becoming a young woman, and very popular all of a sudden) and the Wolf, who now accompanied her everywhere. And the Wolf was besotted. He delighted to do whatever the girl desired. “He learned to serve champagne,” so that he could promote revelry when he was with her in the company of others.
The Wolf squandered a miracle (his fifth) in order to help Formicella, the object of his untamed affection, win a childish game. And then he wasted another miracle (his next-to-last) in order to provide fireworks at a party, at which they’d both drunk too much champagne, and the girl implored him to entertain them thus. (This is not, you can see, a feminist tale.)
Alas, all this while, trouble had been brewing on the political scene, and a rival army was marching toward Gubbio. But the defenses of Gubbio were no match for the approaching menace. A miracle was needed! And the Wolf was known to be in possession of the power to perform one last miracle. So the Holy Wolf was enlisted to lead the men of Gubbio into battle. Cunning, as he was, on the eve of battle, the Wolf led a sortie through a secret tunnel, deep behind enemy lines. There, he snuck into the tent of the opposing general and killed him.
“There was a young greyhound” in the tent with the general, “elegant and white, who began to bark.” This alarm brought the officers into the tent, all of whom the Wolf dispatched easily. The men of Gubbio then stormed the encampment, now in chaos, and overwhelmed the enemy. Victory belonged to Gubbio!
Everyone assumed that the Holy Wolf had used his final miracle to win this victory for Gubbio. But “the Wolf alone knew the nature of the victory... there was not the least miracle involved... but solely his wolfly courage, his warrior propensities, which he accomplished simply by becoming his former self.”
Bloodied and tired from battle, the Wolf made a retreat from the celebrations, and quietly limped home, noticing that he was being followed by the greyhound whom he’d encountered in the enemy camp. Home, “at the end of his strength,” the Wolf lay down to lick his wounds and rest, while the city rejoiced. “They would have done better,” he thought, “to wash me and dry my wounds.” “He knew that he was able to heal himself with his seventh and last miracle. But he preferred to hold it in reserve.”
In the aftermath of the battle, the Holy Wolf was “a long time recovering,” and while he did, the affections of the people of Gubbio began to wane. His beloved Formicella was now a little infatuated with the greyhound, who more easily entertained her than the recuperating Wolf. In fact, everyone regarded the Wolf differently, now that they assumed his miracle-wielding power was depleted. And one day, Formicella, whose outward beauty had been bestowed on her by the Wolf himself, looked down at the war-wounded creature and said to him, “My poor Wolf. Look at you now. You are just a beast like the others.”
How those words stung. “He felt it bitterly.... Ah, what a weight he [now] had on his heart. He had shown her that he was not a beast like others - and he could show her again.... [And] in the morning,” with a dark resentment rising in his heart, “he strangled the greyhound.”
“He had no sooner committed this murder than he repented it,” but it hardly mattered. The deed was discovered, and a cry went up: “A savage beast always remains just a savage beast.... He might strangle us all. If we do not kill him, he will kill us,” the people said. Forgetting all that he had done for them, the people of Gubbio went after the Wolf “with sticks and forks and the crowd... shouting cries of death.”
Seeing them come for him, “the Holy Wolf watched the crowd and believed that his heart would burst from sorrow and disillusionment.” Cornered, he considered reverting to his violent, wolfish ways, and wreaking vengeance. But then the Wolf “remembered his seventh miracle.” He wondered if his recent sins had annulled the power to work wonders, but he had no way of knowing. So, “he invoked St. Francis in his heart, asking for mercy and protection.”
And suddenly, the crowd witnessed with their own eyes the seventh miracle of the Wolf of Gubbio: the sight of the Holy Wolf rising into the air and being carried slowly across the sky beyond the city limits and toward the forest, from whence he had once come. And then, although searched for and hunted, and even lured by Formicella herself, the Wolf was never apprehended. But night after night “he continued to bay at the moon.”
One night, the Wolf heard the bells of Gubbio ring out joyously at a late hour, and “he remembered that [the bells] never rang thus in the middle of the night except for Yuletide.” Christmas.
Recalling the many blessings he had received, the Wolf, “prayed in his heart to St. Francis to bring him into the grace of Noël. He experienced suddenly a profound nostalgia of love, of the desire to reconcile himself to, and to confide himself in, God.” And so he wended his way stealthily toward the city, eventually arriving at the church.
“He dared not enter but waited in the shadow of the porch for the moment of the Elevation. He knew that then each [worshiper] would incline the head and no one would notice him enter.... He glided into the church, creeping low along the side aisle, and came to rest softly under the manger, his nose outside to see and to breathe the incense, the warm odor of the House of God. His soul filled with well-being.”
“At the moment of Communion, he saw all the faithful rise and go to the holy table. They passed before him. He recognized all and each,” and he felt again, the bile of resentment rising in his breast.
“After communicating, [they all] returned to pass again before him. And then there was an extraordinary thing, more marvelous than all the miracles. Each time that a faithful [person], carrying the Body of God that he had just received, passed before the manger, the Wolf could not but adore the majesty of this Presence, and all his pain melted deliciously in his heart and in his being. It appeared to him that his wolfly soul participated in this communion, in this peace extending over all. He benefitted, he also, from this divine Presence.”
After communion, while the music played, “the Wolf sensed that... his heart, his old savage heart, resisted no more and broke from an overflowing of sweet serenity.... [And] the Wolf groaned very softly. [And] he was dead.”
“The Mass was finished and the children encircled the manger to venerate it. One of them noticed the nose of the Wolf under the manger. They respectfully removed his poor dead body. His mouth was full of honey. They cried, again, a miracle! But if it was a miracle it was but the power of Charity, sovereign, all powerful, and very precious Charity.” Which you and I would call love.
Why tell a story like this, on a morning like this, when I might have preached on the parable our Lord told, instead?
Perhaps it’s because we need to be drawn back in to a narrative that teaches us to expect grace, mercy, and forgiveness, rather than retribution and revenge.
Perhaps it’s because some of us might feel very much like we are one of the people of Gubbio, beset by danger and risk on nearly every side, and even in our own midst.
Perhaps it’s because some of us feel very much like the Wolf, one way or another.
Perhaps it’s because of the unlikely ending, brought about by the experience of God’s gracious Presence in the most holy sacrament of the Altar, carried by God’s people, no matter how flawed, or how foolish.
Perhaps it’s because we believe that the power of God to work wonders has been depleted, and yet, we can hear the wolves howling in the night, and it leaves us wondering what else we can do but take up arms.
Perhaps we need to tell any story we can that reminds us of the transforming power of God’s love.
In any case, I think it’s a story worth telling. I hope you do too.
Here endeth the story of the seven miracles of Gubbio, and the eighth.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
4 October 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia
* The Seven Miracles of Gubbio, and the Eighth, by Raymond Leopold Bruckberger, OP, translated from the French by Peter Lauck, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1948
