Humble Service

Dear Friend,

The Feast of St. Francis is getting closer and I’m looking forward to our “Franciscan Fiesta” and our various remembrances and celebrations of the life of Francis and his companion, St. Clare. Turns out, this Sunday’s Gospel - sobering as it is - seems very appropriate in its focus on humble service, the day-to-day exercise of our discipleship. According to his biographers, that’s exactly where St. Francis directed the brothers, especially as he entered the last stage of his journey to “Sister Death.” 

By this time, Francis was famous far beyond his hometown, and the attention and esteem was generating lots of mixed feelings inside him. Francis longed to return to that place where it all started, a place where he experienced a “simplicity” in serving others, specifically the lepers. Celano writes that “he wanted to return to serving lepers and to be held in contempt, just as he used to be.” He’d come a long way from being ridiculed as Assisi’s crazy person. 

There was also frustration in those final days and Celano pointedly describes Francis’s experience of watching his brothers: “He [St. Francis] saw many rushing for positions of authority. Despising their arrogance, he strove by his own example to call them back from such sickness.” Strong words! And since Celano was writing only a few years after Francis’s death, you have to wonder: did he have certain particular brothers in mind…?

I’ll conclude with my favorite section of Celano’s account: “He [Francis] used to say, ‘Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up until now we have done little or nothing’. He did not consider that he had already attained his goal, but tireless in pursuit of holy newness, he constantly hoped to begin again.”

May the Lord give us peace!

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor