Penance according to St. Francis

From "Franciscan sources".

In the name of the Lord!

Of those who do penance

All those who love the Lord with all the heart, with all the soul and mind, with all strength and love their neighbors as themselves, and have in hatred their bodies with vices and sins, and receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ , and make fruits worthy of penance:

Oh, how blessed are those, when they do such things and persevere in them; because He will rest upon them the Spirit of the Lord and make his dwelling and dwelling with them; and they are the sons of the Heavenly Father, of whom the works are accomplished, and they are spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are married, when the faithful soul joins our Lord Jesus Christ by virtue of the Holy Spirit. We are his brethren, when we do the will of the father who is in heaven. We are mothers, when we bring Him to the heart and our body through the divine Love and pure and sincere conscience; we generate it through the holy Works, which must shine to others in example.

Oh, how glorious, holy and great to have a father in heaven!
Oh, how holy, source of consolation, beautiful and admirable to have such a bridegroom!
Oh, how holy and how it is dear, pleasant, humble, peaceful, sweet, lovable and desirable above all things have such a brother and such a son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who offers his life for his sheep, and begged his father saying : "Holy Father, keep in your name, those you have given me in the world were yours and you gave them to me. And the words which I have given to them; and they have accepted them and they really believed that I came out of you, and they knew that you sent me. I pray for them and not for the world. Bless and sanctify them! And for them I sanctify myself. I do not pray only for them, but also for those who believe in me for their word, so that they may be sanctified in unity, as we are too. And I want, father, that where I am, they are also be with me, that they may contemplate my glory. " (Jn 17.24) "In your Kingdom." (Mt 20.21). Amen.

CHAPTER II

Of those who do not repent

All those, instead, who do not live in penance, and do not receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and abandon themselves to vices and sins and walk behind the bad lust and the bad desires of their flesh, and do not observe those things that have promised the Lord, and serve with his own body to the world, to the carnal instincts and to the solicitudes of the world and to the worries of this life: they are prisoners of the devil, of whom they are children and make the works; They are blind, for they do not see the true light, the Lord our Jesus Christ. They do not have spiritual wisdom, for they do not possess the son of God, Who is the true wisdom of the father; Of them is said: "Their wisdom has been swallowed", and: "Cursed those who stray from your commandments." They see and recognize, know and do what is evil, and knowingly lose their souls.

You see, or blind, deceived by your enemies, that is, from the flesh, the world and the devil, that the body is a sweet thing to do sin and what bitter to undergo to serve God, since all vices and sins come out and proceed from the hearts of men, as the Lord says in the Gospel. And you have nothing in this world, nor in the other. And you believe that you have long the vanity of this century, but you deceive yourself, for it will come the day and the hour to which you do not think, you do not know and ignore. The body gets sick, death is approaching and so we die of bitter death.

And in any place, time and manner the man dies in mortal sin, without having done penance and given satisfaction, if he could give it and did not, the devil kidnaps the soul of him from his body, with such a great anguish and tribulation, that no one can know except with the one that proves it.
And all the talents and power and the science and wisdom, which they believed to possess, will be taken away from them. And they leave everything to relatives and friends. And behold, these have already taken and divided among themselves the patrimony of him, and then they said: "Cursed be his soul, because he could give us more and get more than he has procured!". The worms eat the corpse, and so they have lost the body and soul in this short life and they will go to hell, where they shall be tormented eternally.

All those to whom this letter will come, we pray, in the charity which is God, which welcome benignly with divine Love these fragrant words of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we have written. And those who do not know how to read, if they make them read often, and learn them by heart, putting them in practice holily until the end, because they are spirit and life. And those who do not do this will have to make it right on the Day of Judgment, before the Court of our Lord Jesus Christ.