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//All Things Catholic//
What St. Francis and Lepers Can Teach Us About Love
Minute Meditation – Love Them as Christ Does
Every year, massive numbers of migrants attempt the passage into the United States. And every year, many don’t survive the journey. Whether those who attempt to cross make it here and find a way to stay, get caught and deported back across the border, or perish along the way, they are largely a shadowy, nameless, and faceless group in American society. They are nearly invisible, but when they are seen, they’re often viewed with distrust.
In St. Francis’ time, the lepers in the valley below Assisi were seen in much the same way. Today, migrants and other marginalized groups are the lepers in our society. And just as St. Francis realized in one of the most important moments in his life, we are called not only to see them, but also to embrace them, to love them as Christ does.
—Daniel Imwalle, “Franciscans at the Border”
St. Anthony Messenger, June/July 2022 issue
Minute Meditation – Go and Repair My House
Absence was beginning to be replaced by presence, silence with voices. Or were the voices only in his head? Whatever. They moved him to act, to do positive things with his life, a pattern Francis would follow from then on. Once he knew God’s will, whether from some mystical voice or from listening to the scriptures, he would immediately try to live it out. He was filled with what theologians called, “devotion,” an alacrity in doing God’s will. And that is how Francis began to change. He knew now that Christ is to be found in unexpected places and people. He had experienced the abstract God in the person of Jesus Christ who was the incarnation of the God he thought had abandoned him. And he had experienced this Jesus in the most excluded and feared people of his time, the lepers who, instead of bad things, brought him the greatest good, Jesus Christ. And now he had heard the voice of this Christ. It came from his crucified image in an abandoned church. It was a voice that gave him his life’s task: “Go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling into ruins.”
— from Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//