St. Francis of Assisi

Luke 9:57-62    Psalm 121    Galatians 6:14-18

Good morning – and Happy St. Francis of Assisi Day. While it’s true that in the Congregational Church, we do not venerate the saints, we have, nonetheless, certainly heard about them. We read many Bible passages whose writers are considered saints, and one saint who many people have heard of is St. Francis of Assisi, the friar in the brown robes, always pictured surrounded by birds and animals. Francis was an amazing character, devout in ways that might seem appalling to us today.

Sometime after first Vespers on the 3^rd of October 1226, in a sign of total poverty and detachment from the world, the friar named Francis requested his habit be removed and his naked body be laid on the ground – and surrounded by his brother friars, he went home to God. In the old calendar, the new day begins after sunset, and so, after First Vespers, the new day had begun – thus, we celebrate his feast day on October 4^th. Who was Francis?

 In 1181, Giovani di Pietro di Bernardone, later, nicknamed Francis, due to his love of all things French and his fluency in the language, was born in Assisi. The man who was later to become St. Francis began his life as a spoiled rich kid, thoroughly indulged by his parents. Once he was old enough to do so, he and other young men of his age and class enjoyed all the excesses available to them – wine, women and, and he did love troubadours, song. It was a life of pleasure and indulgence. No one would have pegged him as a candidate for sainthood.

Then in 1202 he joined the army. This is when things in his life began to change. He was captured and spent a year as a prisoner of war, during which time he became ill and began reevaluating his life.  He returned from war no longer interested in the life he had enjoyed before. Even today, this doesn’t sound unusual. So many men and women who have experienced military conflict, return home changed.

Once home, Francis spent time in lonely places, asking God for divine guidance. Then, suddenly, his prayer was answered. He was praying in the crumbling and forsaken country chapel of San Damiano when an icon of Jesus on the cross said to him, "Francis, Francis, go and repair My church which, as you can see, is falling into ruins." Francis took this to mean the ruined place in which he was praying, and so he turned his time and attention to the work of rebuilding the chapel.

At one point, his dedication to this work, and his desire to recompense a priest who had helped him, lead him to steal from his father, a wealthy cloth merchant. His father was enraged – not just by the theft, but because the boy he had raised to be a materialistic, greedy, merchant had become this peculiar, devout man, no longer holding or being held by worldly values. His father dragged him before the authorities – but Francis defied his father, stripped off all that he had, turned his back on his father and the authorities, and walked out into the world, according to some stories, totally naked, having thrown his luxurious clothes at his father’s feet.

And thus began his life as a mendicant, a beggar, a friar. Soon, other men joined him in his compassionate work among the poor and the lepers - and though a number of the pope's counsellors considered the mode of life proposed by Francis to be unsafe and impractical, on April 16, 1210 the pope recognized and thus established the Franciscan Order.

So, now you know who Francis was - a man who began his life as a very rich, spoiled, youth, to later become a devoutly religious oddball. And he was definitely different.

In one famous story, Francis preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their wonderful clothes, for their independence, and for God's care. The story tells us the birds stood still as he walked among them, only flying off when he said they could leave.

Despite his growing holiness, he wasn’t free from spiritual doubts and temptations.  To fight these feelings, he threw himself naked [just as God created him] into a patch of thorny brambles.  However, the moment his body touched the sharp branches, the thorns vanished and turned into soft, thornless red roses. The unique Rosa Canina Assisiensis still blooms in that exact garden in Assisi, and lore says if you try to plant cuttings from it anywhere else, the thorns grow back.

And next holiday season, as you admire your Christmas Creche, just know that the tradition of the Christmas Creche began with St. Francis, who staged the first live nativity scene on Christmas Eve, 1223.

It has been noted that in many ways, St. Francis’ life mirrors that of Jesus. Both were rather insignificant men who wandered around small villages preaching to whomever would listen. They didn’t have any political power and did not lead any armies into battle.

In Francis we see that what we need to do as Christians is follow the Gospel, live simply, and show our joy to the world. That is all that is required of us. When others see the beauty of a life united to God, they are immediately attracted to it. St. Francis never expected his little band of brothers to be of any significance, and yet today, 800 years later, they are one of the largest religious orders in the world!

In today’s Gospel reading, three people show their willingness to become followers of Jesus, physically walking with Him wherever He leads. However, the first one seems to lack an awareness of what is involved. The other two claim they have some important duties to attend to first at home. You would have thought that burying one’s father was indeed an important duty. However, the question implies that the man’s father is still alive and he is asking to wait at home until his father dies so that he can bury him, whenever that might happen. Jesus’ call to this man was too urgent for such an indefinite wait.

Jesus does not prevent the other person from saying goodbye to his family but warns him that following Him requires a clear focus, without constantly looking back over one’s shoulder to what has been left behind.  It took Francis a long time to make a commitment to Jesus, but when he did – he never looked back at the life he had left.

Today’s Gospel shows us that us that it is never too late to get our act together and make that total commitment to Jesus. He does demand a level of allegiance to Himself that is greater than the allegiance owed to family, though it is not in any sense incompatible with our family allegiances. Today’s Gospel brings home to us that walking in the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, is serious business.

We need to ask ourselves, how much we are investing in our relationship with God? Do we seek His presence in our daily lives, or are we too consumed by the demands of the world? Like St. Francis, we need to learn to detach ourselves from material concerns, and instead focus on the call to love, serve, and live in harmony with God's creation. Francis believed that a life lived authentically, rooted in the Gospel, has more power than any king or earthly ruler. We are called to change the world. This is never done by becoming powerful or rich according to earthly standards. It is done by loving others as Jesus Himself loves us. We need to begin slowly and simply, and through prayer and worship grow in grace. As Francis often encouraged his followers: “Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” 

The unexpected way St. Francis changed the world was through his example. His revolutionary way of thinking is so radically simple that anyone can do it! We are all called to become holy – and we can do it. Francis himself once said, “I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone”. All we need to do is follow the Gospel, live simply, and show our joy to the world.

Let u pray in the prayer attributed to St. Francis himself:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.