May God bless thee and keep thee in his holy love.
Patience in all things and everywhere, this, my Brother, is what I specially recommend.

Even if they oppose thee, if they strike thee, thou shouldst be grateful to them and desire that it should be thus and not otherwise.
In this will be manifest thy love for God and for me, his servant and thine; that there shall not be a single friar in the world who, having sinned as much as one can sin, and coming before thee, shall go away without having received thy pardon.
And if he does not ask it, do thou ask it for him, whether he wills or not.
And if he should return again a thousand times before thee, love him more than myself, in order to lead him to well-doing.

Have pity always on these Brothers.
These words show plainly enough how in former days Francis had directed the Order; in his dream the ministers-general were to stand in a relation of pure affection, of tender devotion toward those under them; but was this possible for one at the head of a family whose branches extended over the entire world?
It would be hazardous to say, for among his successors have not been wanting distinguished minds and noble hearts; but save for Giovanni di Parma and two or three others, this ideal is in sharp contrast with the reality.

St.Bonaventura himself will drag his master and friend, this very Giovanni of Parma, before an ecclesiastical tribunal, will cause him to be condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and it will need the intervention of a cardinal outside of the Order to secure the commutation of this sentence.[25] The agonies of grief endured by the dying Francis over the decadence of the Order would have been less poignant if they had not been mingled with self-reproaches for his own cowardice.

Why had he deserted his post, given up the direction of his family, if not from idleness and selfishness?
And now it was too late to take back this step; and in hours of frightful anguish he asked himself if God would not hold him responsible for this subversion of his ideal.
"Ah, if I could go once again to the chapter-general," he would sigh, "I would show them what my will is." Shattered as he was by fever, he would suddenly rise up in his bed, crying with a despairing intensity: "Where are they who have ravished my brethren from me?
Where are they who have stolen away my family ?" Alas, the real criminals were nearer to him than he thought.