One day Francis of Assisi was riding on horseback down the road that went by a leper hospital situated far from Assisi, for then, as in biblical times, lepers were a rejected lot. Francis, at the time, was not yet the saint of history; he was still caught between the lure of wealth and glory (he assisted in his father's successful cloth business, and he longed to become a gallant knight) and the life of discipleship (he had recently sensed God leading him into a life of spiritual service). As he rode along, he was absorbed in his thoughts.

We pick up the story as recorded by historian Arnoldo Fortini:

Suddenly the horse jerked to the side of the road. With difficulty Francis pulled him back by a violent jerk at the reins. The young man looked up and recoiled in horror. A leper stood in the middle of the road a short distance away, unmoving and looking at him. He was no different from the others: the usual wan specter with stained face, shaved head, dressed in gray sackcloth. He did not speak and showed no sign of moving or of getting out of the way. He looked at the horseman fixedly, strangely, with an acute and penetrating gaze.

An instant that seemed eternity passed. Slowly Francis dismounted, went to the man, and took his hand. It was a poor emaciated hand, bloodstained, twisted, inert, and cold like that of a corpse. He put a mite of charity in it, pressed it, carried it to his lips. And suddenly, as he kissed the lacerated flesh of the creature who was the most abject, the most hated, the most scorned, of all human beings, he was flooded with a wave of emotion, one that shut out everything around him, one that he would remember even on his death bed.

It was an early step in Francis's conversion, which took many months. But he was learning that to follow Christ may require doing some things that may naturally repulse us. What Francis didn't know at the time was that something greater was prompting him, allowing him to do that which, humanly speaking, he was incapable of doing.