Another Christmas. In Rieti next December 17
Rieti
Conference of the special commissioner of the Province of Rieti Tourist Board, Tersilio Leggio, during the presentation events surrounding the debut of the Sabina Tourist Card.Sunday, December 17, at 11:00 a.m., at the central office of the Province of Rieti Tourist Board, at via Cintia, 87.
The city of Rieti and the Reatina Valley, also called the Holy Valley, even in its entirety, with its saint-related travels and the emphasis placed on such sources, played an important role in the life of Saint Francis. This role became more specific in one particular year, more than any other1223with two fundamental stops: November 29, when Pope Honorius III finally approved the so-called Later Rule, or Regula Bullata, complied by Saint Francis in 1221 in the sanctuary of Fontecolombo in the Reatina Valley; and December 24 with the recreation of the Nativity of Christ in the Sanctury of Greccio.
Recent re-readings of the written and iconographic source documents have allowed for a fuller understanding of the spirit in which Saint Francis organized the celebration of Christmas Eve at Greccio. The idea of visually representing Christmas through the simple use of a feed trough full of hay, an ox and a donkey became a strong proposition of his major ecumenical project and the revival of the 16th chapter of his earlier Regula, which opened with a quote from the Gospel of Matthew, 10:16 "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves", strongly mitigated in the later, approved version.
In fact, according to the Vita Prima (First Life) of Tommaso da Celano, his first biographer, some fifteen days before Christmas 1223 Saint Francis had summoned the nobleman Giovanni da Greccio, with whom he had cordial relations and conversations regarding the virtues of man, and told him that, if he wanted the rapidly approaching festivities to be celebrated in Greccio, he had to prepare a setting that would allow for the reconstruction of the memory of the Child born in Bethlehem, showing to the eyes of all the discomforts hed had to face when, just born, he was laid on the hay of a simple feed trough between an ox and a donkey.
It was in Greccio, therefore, that Saint Francis began an extraordinary message of peace and inter-religious dialogue, which soon elevated his presence, moving him on to Rieti and the Holy Reatina Valley, and which even today remains a prophetically current idea.
