or rather, it is not I who live, but Christ who liveth in me." This utterance is not an isolated exclamation with him, it is the very centre of his religious consciousness, and he goes so far as to say, at the risk of scandalizing many a Christian: "I fill up in my body that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ, for his body's sake, which is the Church." Perhaps it has not been useless to enter into these thoughts, to show to what point Francis during the last years of his life, where he renews in his body the passion of Christ, is allied to the apostolic tradition.
In the solitudes of the Verna, as formerly at St.Damian, Jesus presented himself to him under his form of the Crucified One, the man of sorrows.[16] That this intercourse has been described to us in a poetic and inexact form is nothing surprising.

It is the contrary that would be surprising.
In the paroxysms of divine love there are _ineffabilia_ which, far from being able to relate them or make them understood, we can hardly recall to our own minds.
Francis on the Verna was even more absorbed than usual in his ardent desire to suffer for Jesus and with him.

His days went by divided between exercises of piety in the humble sanctuary on the mountain-top and meditation in the depths of the forest.

It even happened to him to forget the services, and to remain several days alone in some cave of the rock, going over in his heart the memories of Golgotha.

At other times he would remain for long hours at the foot of the altar, reading and re-reading the Gospel, and entreating God to show him the way in which he ought to walk.[17] The book almost always opened of itself to the story of the Passion, and this simple coincidence, though easy enough to explain, was enough of itself to excite him.
The vision of the Crucified One took the fuller possession of his faculties as the day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross drew near (September 14th), a festival now relegated to the background, but in the thirteenth century celebrated with a fervor and zeal very natural for a solemnity which might be considered the patronal festival of the Crusades.
Francis doubled his fastings and prayers, "quite transformed into Jesus by love and compassion," says one of the legends.