I have tried to learn from St. Francis. In my home, pinned to the curtain of my front door, is a reminder—”Remember to remember God.” In the Hebrew tradition, it is the mezuzah to be touched, to remind one of the sacred words on the scroll. To remind me of the sacred. Such a concept! To use each doorway as a portal. To pass through each doorway and remind oneself to do better, to live life just a little more virtuously—such a concept.
It wasn’t just the San Damiano crucifix for Francis—the cave, the lepers, and the poor began to speak to him of God, until eventually Francis could look at nothing without seeing God.
—from the book God’s Love Song: The Vision of Francis and Clare by Murray Bodo, OFM, and Susan Saint Sing
At the heart of Francis’s and Clare’s biblical vision was the Sermon on the Mount, and most especially the Beatitudes. Just as Jesus turned the world upside down, ushering in God’s new age of shalom, liberating captives, and proclaiming God’s shalom (see Luke 4:18–19), Francis’s message of peace and simplicity turned upside down the divisiveness and violence of twelfth-century Italy and the opulence of the Roman Catholic Church.
Francis lived out the prophetic spirit of the Beatitudes, presenting an alternative vision to both church and state, as he sought to be God’s companion in healing the world, beginning with the transformation of church, and expanding his mission to include healing the whole earth, Christian and non-Christian, human and nonhuman. Francis invites us to embody the Beatitudes in our time.
—from the book Simplicity, Spirituality, Service: The Timeless Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure Rev. Dr. Bruce G. Epperly
The stigmata Francis received in his final years revealed God’s pain within his pain. The stigmata reflected God’s empathy expanding Francis’s own empathy and circle of love to include all creation. Francis’s God is not aloof or apathetic. God is embedded in the pain and joy of the world. Our calling, as Francis and Clare discovered, is to identify the pain of the least of these as God’s pain. God experiences the pain and joy of creatures, which touch the heart of our immanent and intimate God. As Bonaventure writes, God is “totally submerged in the waters from the sole of the foot to the top of the head…. [God] appeared to you as your beloved cut through with wound upon wound in order to heal you.”
Gazing on the cross, as Clare counseled the royal Agnes of Prague, is not an abstract intellectual exercise, but a personal identification with God’s pain on the cross and in every moment of human misery. Clare’s gazing upon Jesus inspired her own solidarity with the pain of the world, and the divine and human empathy toward those who suffer also encompasses the joy of experiencing Christ’s resurrection, God’s loving triumph that brings healing to all creation and invites us to be messengers of hope to those who have been crushed by suffering and injustice.
—from the book Simplicity, Spirituality, Service: The Timeless Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure by Bruce G. Epperly
Francis came to view his whole life as a prayer. As we will discover in our reflections on Francis’s “Canticle of Creatures,” prayer joins us as healing partners with all creation. In a world where everything fits together seamlessly, every thought, word, and act can bring healing and beauty to the world. All creation praises its Creator. All things find their origin and completion in God’s love.
The meek are blessed precisely because they recognize their dependence on the generosity of God and creation, and out of their dependence, the humble commit themselves to be Christ to others, claiming their vocation as God’s companions in healing the earth. The privileged become blessed in prayerfully letting go of their sense of superiority and seeing themselves as united with humanity and all creation, sharing their possessions and working for a world in which everyone has a fair chance to enjoy the fruits of this good earth.
—from the book Simplicity, Spirituality, Service: The Timeless Wisdom of Francis, Clare, and Bonaventure by Bruce G. Epperly
St. Francis knew the Psalms by heart, and those who followed him quickly did so too. They learned the Bible’s other most famous prayers and could pray them as they walked from place to place, reflecting on what God had accomplished through them in their previous location and preparing for what God might be asking from them in the next place.
Francis was as much subject to self-doubt as any of us. His motives were purified in prayer; his ego became right-sized there. His prayer was both private and public; one without the other tends to lead the person praying into some type of illusion. Instead, prayer leads us into deeper and more radical honesty while enabling us to deal with the consequences of any newfound honesty.
—from the book Peace and Good: Through the Year with Francis of Assisi by Pat McCloskey, OFM
I thought we would have a bit of scriptural study today. Joseph “had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus” (Matthew 1:25). You might think, “Joseph could have had relations with her afterward.” But you are presuming facts not in evidence. Just because it didn’t happen before the birth doesn’t mean it happened afterward. You are reading into scripture to prove a point.
What is love? Love is our Savior in the manger. It is also our Lord’s presence in the Tabernacle. But the greatest act of love happened on the Cross. These are the three greatest acts of love by God. About Christmas Day, Bishop Sheen said, “On this day, a man no longer has to look up to Heaven to see God. He can look down at the manger to see Him.” The Wise Men and shepherds came so that they could look down at God. You could today, and every day you come to church, replace their faces with a picture of yours because you come here to be in the presence of God Himself.
Now, you keen observers in the parish may have noticed that we have new figurines for our crèche (manger scene). The idea of a crèche was created by Saint Francis over 800 years ago. Here’s a fun thing you can do when you see non-Catholics with a crèche. You can say, “Oh, I see that you are Catholic.” “I’m not Catholic!” “Well, that’s a Catholic symbol. Saint Francis of Assisi is the guy who came up with the idea. You know – the guy who liked birds.” Oops! So, what is a crèche? It is visible scripture. When Saint Francis came up with the idea, many people couldn’t read but they could see. In our creche, we have beautiful, hand-carved wood figurines. Notice that everyone has their attention on the Savior. A short distance away, we have the three Wise Men. They aren’t at the manger yet but will finally arrive in a few weeks to see the infant Jesus. Have you ever noticed that a lot of people are late for church?
Who do you find around our Lord whether it’s at the manger or the foot of the Cross? You find the very holy – the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph. You also find those who know that they don’t know anything. The Wise Men were very educated and had achieved the fruits of their education. What are the fruits of an education? You discover that you don’t know everything. The Wise Men had learned that. The shepherds already knew that they knew nothing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been in pastures walking around sheep dung in the middle of a Palestinian night. I’ve been there, and it is very, very cold. You don’t want to be out there. It’s 40 degrees, but when the temperature drops from 80 to 40 in a couple of hours, you freeze. So that’s who you will always find around our Lord. And when you come here to be with our Lord, you have a choice of which to be…educated or uneducated. But either way, we come to adore our good Lord.
Christ is coming into the world and made manifest to us all. But Christ has never left the world. “Father, didn’t He ascend to Heaven?” Well, His human nature which He took from the Blessed Mother and with which He taught, healed, suffered, and rose from the dead went to Heaven. But He has always been in the world. He is there in the Blessed Sacrament. His divine nature in the form of consecrated bread and wine is in the Tabernacle. He did not leave.
At Christmas, Jesus is made manifest to the world in human form. He was already in the world nine months before that in the womb of His mother. Now He is made manifest to the world so that all can come see the beginning of the greatest gift of all. This is the beginning and not the end. That comes 33 years later which shows the fullness of His love. I am sure that I will be meditating today on all the gifts my parents gave me. I’ll meditate about their love, patience, and all the wonderful things they did as parents by God’s grace. This may be why I became a priest.
Catholics can celebrate Christmas all year long. Every day is your Christmas. Every day you are the shepherds and the Wise Men who came to be in the presence of our Lord. When you are here, you take their place. Our Lord shows the greatness of His love, not by taking a human nature upon Himself, but by suffering at the hands of His own creatures and being put to death by His own ungrateful creatures on the Cross. Mary Magdalene, Mary of Clopas, Saint John, and the Blessed Mother stood at the foot of the Cross. You take their place at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by being with Christ during the Mass. As they were there during His original suffering which is always before the Father and made present during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you take their place. So, when you come to Mass, when you come into the presence of our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, you are a part of that.
God is with us and not just in the spiritual sense. He is physically here. But it was not enough for Him to come into the world; what He wants most is to come into our souls. We can experience His incarnation. Today, if you catch me in a good mood, I’ll hear your confession so that Christ can come into your soul and remove your sins. By the way, I’m running a 3 Hail Mary Special from now until New Year’s Day.
I hope you all have a crèche at home. If not, we have them in the bookstore. Put your family’s faces over the faces of the shepherds and Wise Men. That’s what we are called to be and what we will be in Heaven.
Father’s Reflections . . . I was thinking back on the Christmases that I’ve enjoyed. Some of those overseas, I wouldn’t want to repeat, but that’s the roll of the dice you take. The gift of love that was given is still unfolding. I’m still a young man – Hah! – and I’m still working to understand the gifts of love that were given. They all have a deeper meaning, not only on a human level that includes your family and friends but also on a spiritual level.
“Father, we should have a Mass at dawn.” Really? I want to see the guy who can get up to do the Mass at dawn after doing the Vigil Mass at 5 p.m. and then the Midnight Mass. That ain’t me. I’m getting too old for that. We have priests in the diocese who are in their 80’s, and I don’t see them celebrating Masses at midnight. My days are getting shorter on that too. But like any real man, my mind writes checks my body can’t cash. I still think I’m 18 with a big red “S” on my chest and able to bend steel with my bare hands. Uh no.
How will you apply this message to your life? ________________________________________
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“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).
Francis used this passage from Scripture to rebuke the guardian of one of the houses where the brothers were living. The guardian had driven away a band of thieves from the house and proudly told Francis of his deed.
St. Francis scolded him severely, saying: “You acted in a cruel way, because sinners are led back to God by holy meekness better than by cruel scolding. For our Master Jesus Christ, whose Gospel we have promised to observe, says that the doctor is not needed by those who are well but by the sick, and ‘I have come to call not the just but sinners to penance,’ and therefore He often ate with them. So, since you acted against charity and against the example of Jesus Christ, I order you under holy obedience to take right now this sack of bread and jug of wine which I begged. Go and look carefully for those robbers over the mountains and valleys until you find them. And offer them all this bread and this wine for me. And then kneel down before them and humbly accuse yourself of your sin of cruelty.
We find it difficult to admit when we’re wrong, when we’ve sinned. And it seems the more we try to live good Christian lives, the harder it gets to acknowledge how often we fail. It is that acknowledgment, though, that allows us to find the forgiveness and grace we need to change our lives.
—from the book Lent with St. Francis: Daily Reflections by Diane M. Houdek
Groups of penitents existed before the Franciscans, and from the beginning, Francis and his brothers identified themselves as penitents from Assisi. Many individuals in these penitent groups desired to be associated with Francis and the brothers, and from this emerged what might be called the Franciscan penitential movement and eventually the Third Order. In a spontaneous response to Francis’ teaching about conversion, members of every social class were moved to a change of heart, to renounce sin and turn away from worldly concerns to serve the Lord in all states of life: cleric, religious, and lay. As Francis and the brothers reached out to them with admonitions and instructions on how to live the Gospel, groups of devout souls began to gravitate to the churches where the friars were located, turning to them for counsel, seeking a deeper understanding of the spiritual life.
The preaching and example of St. Francis exercised such a powerful attraction for people throughout Italy that many of the laity began to desire a deeper experience of God. Because they were bound by family responsibilities, Francis encouraged them to begin leading a Gospel-rooted life in their own homes or places of work, thus inspiring a new “third order” for the universal salvation of all people. Francis admonished them to live simply within the bonds of marriage, or singly, and to love and serve the Lord by serving their neighbor and participating more fully in the life of the Church.
The touch of Jesus. How it burned! And how sweet the sensation of this love in its searing penetration. Francis lay upon the cold ground of his hut at St. Mary of the Angels and felt nothing but the touch of Jesus in his feet and hands and side.
He would die with the brothers witnessing the way a traveler with Jesus dies. Poor. Broken in body. Radiant in the light of the Spirit glowing from his eyes and from the marks of Jesus’ touch. And the peace of his departing would seal the genuineness of their own vocations as Lesser Brothers of the Lord.
To be real at the end. In that the brothers would be sure they were also authentically on the road with Jesus. They need only persevere as Francis had and Christ Himself would touch them with his perfect Peace.
He looked around the hut and prayed for everyone he saw dimly standing above him and for the Lady Clare and her sisters. The Dream was theirs, the Journey lay before them.
