Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi, religious
All week we have been hearing the familiar story of Job – the one who loses everything and calls upon God for answers. God’s answer to Job is a three chapter long an assertion of His power over everything, which illustrates how God’s ways are not the ways of humanity. In today’s first reading we see Job’s response to God’s speech. Let us note the profound humility with which Job responds to God. Confronted with the utter majesty of God, Job realizes that he does not know and cannot do all that God knows and does, therefore he respectfully withdraws his challenges to God (Jb 42:2-6).
While the Christian virtue of humility does always call us to be more in line with God, it does not, however, always call upon us to pull back our outrage. Sometimes humility asks us to recognize God’s call to be righteously outraged and to place it above other desires that we might have for our lives. This is the example of humility given to us by St. Francis of Assisi, whose memorial we celebrate today.
Though often only recognized as a day to bless animals, today’s feast should also be the celebration of this great reformer, ascetic, champion of voluntary poverty, of humility, and of peace. As a young man, Francis was interested primarily in partying. He then underwent a profound conversion. While in fervent prayer, God instructed him to go out and “build my up house, for it is nearly falling down.” Like the disciples who return to Jesus in today’s gospel, Francis carried “no money bag, no sack, no sandals” (Lk 10:4). He is the founder of the Franciscans, who were mendicant friars. At this time, religious brothers didn’t exist outside of a monastery. The mendicant friar was a new kind of monk outside of the monastery, who spread the gospel in the cities and begged for his food and funding. Francis and the Franciscans served the Church by calling its members back to the Gospel, while remaining voraciously loyal to it. Also like the disciples in today’s gospel, Francis, who completely emptied himself, was able to see the call to peace and humility of the gospel that many of his well-respected contemporaries could not (cf. Lk 10:24).
Let us pray in the words of today’s psalm, “Lord, let your face shine upon me,” so that we may respond to such a divine encounter with humility as both Job and St. Francis did!
- Tim Gabrielli