Thinking back to
grammar school days, when we were to learn something, I mean really learn and
remember it, the teacher would make us repeat it, over and over, whether
conjugating verbs or our multiplication tables or the catechism.
Well I think the Lord or at least
Holy Mother Church must have the same thing in mind because we have the same
theme in today’s Gospel for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, for the fourth
time this week (and if you’re here tomorrow you’ll hear it yet again!). Three times this week we have heard that we
must be humble like little children and in today’s reading from Matthew, Our
Lord tells us that those things the Father has hidden from the wise and
learned, He has revealed to the…childlike.
And tomorrow? - we’ll hear the
almost identical version from Luke’s Gospel!
Obviously, the Lord is trying to
tell us something! That message is that
we are to humble ourselves, that we are to empty ourselves of ourselves. “May I never boast of anything,” St. Paul writes
to the Galatians, “except in the cross of the Lord.”
These readings from Galatians and
Matthew are the mass readings for today’s feast in honor of St. Francis of
Assisi, the saint who comes first to my mind when I hear the word
humility. Francis grew up privileged and
wealthy but, like so many great saints, had a profound conversion in his early
adulthood, leading him to radically reject the power, and privilege and wealth
he was accustomed to. Rather, he sought
to model himself completely after the humility and stark poverty of the
Lord. Who radically embraced poverty, as
he did the poor. Francis made it his
mission to be meek and humble of heart, as was the Lord.
St. Bonaventure, in his biography of
St. Francis, recalls this quote of St. Francis:
“Know, brothers, that poverty is the special way to salvation, as the stimulus
of humility and the root of perfection, whose fruit is manifold but
hidden.” To Francis, poverty and
humility went hand in hand. And in
today’s Office of Readings, we read this from a letter Francis wrote to the
faithful: “We must not be wise and
prudent according to the flesh. Rather
we must be simple, humble and pure.”
This year we should take special
note of today’s Feast, I think, in light of the fact that Cardinal Jorge
Bergoglio chose the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, upon his
election as pope this past March. For in
Pope Francis, we are truly blessed to have a shepherd who is endeavoring to be
nothing more than simple, humble and pure.
Who is placing special emphasis on embracing and lifting up the
poor. And who wishes all of us to focus,
as St. Francis did, on the great love and bountiful mercy of the Lord.
Let us take time this day to
meditate on the life of St. Francis, and ask Our Lord to make each of us
simple, humble and pure. To give you and
me the grace to embrace and lift up the poor.
And to be, as St. Francis himself wrote, channels of Christ’s peace to
the world around us.
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