My dear friend St. Francis of Assisi would have
been proud of me this past Sunday when we had 12 dogs, 2 cats, and a lizard for
the blessing of the animals because I didn't flinch one single time while I
blessed them. Not even when Jax, the lizard, was on my shoulder for at
least 5 seconds! I know St. Francis loved animals and lived in peace with them,
but some of his animal friends who showed up for the blessing were not exactly
at peace with me.
Until I learned something about St. Francis and his life, I did not
understand the purpose for blessing animals. I noticed that many of you have a
statue of St. Francis in your gardens so you must have a devotion to him. I
learned much about St. Francis of Assisi when I watched an old movie from the
70's called, "Brother Sun, Sister Moon." The most dramatic scene that
I recall from that movie is the scene where Francis' dad took Francis in front
of the bishop in the town square. Amidst the crowd gathered there, his dad complained to the bishop that his son was giving away the family's
possessions: "God only knows how much I gave him, how I gave him the best.
And today, he threw all my possessions out of the window...all the years of
hard work!" Francis explained to the bishop, "I want to be happy...I
want to experience the freedom and purity that birds experience. If the purpose
of life is this loveless toil, then it is not for me. There must be something
better. Man is a spirit, he has a soul. That is what I want to recapture, my
soul...without possessions. I want to be a beggar like Christ and his
disciples. What is born of the spirit is of the spirit. Father, I give you back
all that belongs to you--your clothes, your possessions, and even your
name." Francis gave away all his possessions for he knew that it was in
his poverty that he was able to enter into an intimate relationship with the
Lord. Francis encountered and embraced the same Lord we spoke about in
today's responsorial psalm when we said, "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall
not want nothing. In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters
he leads me; he refreshes my soul." (Psalm 23)
The first time I mentioned to my dad that I wanted to go to the seminary he responded with, "I'm going to disown you if you enter the seminary." Angry at me, he then went to his room, but moments later he came back and said, "Tell you what, if you take the job that has been offered to you and work for 3 years, and after that, if you still feel like going to the seminary, I won't stop you." I still ponder how I came to make that decision to let go of all that I had and enter the seminary. I had worked hard at the university, staying up many nights studying for exams and preparing for interviews with major chemical companies. I thought that a chemical engineering career was my ultimate goal, that is, until I dated a girl for 3 years. Then I thought marriage and family life were part of even a greater goal. Some how, though, something didn't seem right inside of me. Finally, I came to a realization, just as St. Francis did, that there was something better, something that would fill my soul without having to resort to possessions. It was clear to me that someone was promising that I would be filled to my heart's content, if I would just say 'yes.'
St. Paul had a similar experience, as he explained in the Second Reading. He said, "Brothers and sisters: I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance.
In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me. My God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus."
After the morning mass this past Tuesday, which was the feast day of St. Francis, I sat down in a pew in the dark church to pray. With just a few rays of sunlight revealing the contour of the stripped body of Jesus hanging from the cross, I thought, 'How poor he is to be stripped down to nothing, possessing nothing, to be abandoned by most of his friends...Yet, he said he was rich...Rich in what? That everything that His Father had was his. And everything that his Father had, Jesus said he was giving to us...What could he possibly give us?' I thought. Then the Prayer of St. Francis came to my mind: "Lord make me a channel of your peace..." In this prayer, we are asking our Heavenly Father to grant us one of the greatest treasures--His peace--and to make us His instrument of peace. Yet to 'possess' and to be filled with this peace, we have to do something counter-intuitive, that is, to give it away through the work of our hands...that we need to love first where we find hatred, that we need to sow hope where there is despair, to prefer to console first than to seek consolation, to try to understand than expect others to understand us. This thought is not new to us. Yet we often miss the message of the Cross and fail to carry it out. We hear Jesus speaking to us in the quiet of the morning just before waking up how he is going to give us everything we need for the day, but as soon as the alarm clock chimes, our mind gets quickly filled with all the to-do's for the day, and off we go, rushing from one thing to another. This is the challenge of each day, that we look at those we are suppose to love and love them, that we look at those who need consolation, and we console them, that we look that those who need understanding and we listen to them. It is through this that we become aware of the riches that Father gives us.
