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| "Death of St. Francis" by Giotto, Bardi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy |
This reflection was given during a Transitus service commemorating the death of St. Francis on October 3, 2017 at St. Francis Mission Church in Elfrida, AZ.
A friend of mine once asked me, “Can you pick one word to describe what Franciscans are all about?” At first I wanted to say, “Humility!” But then I thought, “That won’t be a very humble thing to say.” So I paused and thought hard. Then it came to me: Lovers! We, Franciscans, are great lovers! I will explain why in a minute. But to understand why, we need to go back to the man who started it all: St. Francis of Assisi.
Francis was born around 1182 in a small Italian town of Assisi. He was the son of a cloth merchant, in a family that had money. Francis had no problem spending his time and money for food, drinks, and parties. He liked being the center of attention. To gain more fame, he wanted to become a knight, going to battles and win an honor for his own name. Unfortunately, during one such battle, he was captured by the enemy and imprisoned for a period of time.
There are many versions of what happened next. Some said God talked to Francis in a dream. Another said he heard Jesus talking through a crucifix. But they all seemed to agree on something: Francis went through a profound conversion. I personally like the version that came from Francis’ own writing. In what is called his Testament, he wrote:
“The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance in this way: for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I showed mercy to them. And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body. And afterwards I delayed a little and left the world.”
Francis, in his own word, attributed his conversion to an encounter with the lepers. At that time, lepers, people who were sick with leprosy, were considered outcast. They had to move out and live outside the city. Nobody wanted to do anything with them. But it was this experience that turned Francis’ life around. He began to embrace them as his brothers and sisters. Not only that, he embraced all God’s creation, like the sun and the moon, as his brothers and sisters too. We heard that in the song earlier. He considered all of them brothers and sisters because he was able to see that we were all created by God in Jesus Christ. We are all related. We are all brothers and sisters of Jesus.
And because we all came from God, Francis loved everyone and everything. He saw the world as good, just as God saw all creation as good in the story we find in the book of Genesis. He loved the world because he believed that was the reason God created everything. The love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit was so great that it poured out into the world and everything in it. And God the Father sent his only Son first and foremost because God so loved the world. Christ became human because he loved us and wanted to be with us. That was the primary reason. Not to condemn us because we’ve been bad. Not to fix us because we’ve been broken. But to show how he loved us.
Francis fell in love with this kind of loving God, and he also fell in love with all God’s creation.
So what now? Who is Francis for us today?
If we want to really follow his footsteps, then, like Francis, a conversion is in order. Are we able to see God as someone who loves us unconditionally, or do we see him as a judge that watches everything we do, waiting for us to make a mistake and punish us? Do we see God as forgiving or do we want him to punish everyone whom we don’t like? Do we see others as brothers and sisters or as competitors, as those who don’t deserve our love or attention, as resources to be exploited?
The world we live in can seem so dark sometime. We are faced with sickness, with deaths in the family, with the breaking of relationships, with political turmoil among our elected officials, with natural or human-caused disasters and tragedies. But if we share the faith that Francis had, that this world is fundamentally good because it was created by God as such, then we can be the ones who wake the world up and help others to recognize their innate goodness. If we are convinced that God so loved the world, then we can be the channel of God’s love to others, especially to those who have been outcast, rejected, and condemned by our society.
My prayer is that tonight, you feel inspired by the example of St. Francis. My hope is that you too can be Franciscans, not necessarily wearing a brown habit, but as people who will bring about peace, reconciliation, justice, goodness in this world. Our world today is in desperate need of love more then ever. I hope that you too will be inspired to become lovers - great lovers - of God, of others, and of all creation. Amen.
Sam Nasada, OFM received his Master of Divinity degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Oceanside, CA this past summer. He is currently part of a new initiative of the Province of St. Barbara: a small intentional community near the Arizona-Mexico border that is focused on contemplation and helping those in the margins. He hopes that this experience will help in his formation to become a priest who will not be afraid to, borrowing a term from Pope Francis, "smell like his sheep".
Franciscan Friars
Office of Vocations
1500 34th Ave.
Oakland, CA 94601
Phone: (408) 903-3422
Email: vocations@sbofm.org
Friar Matt Tumulty has had the richness of living in two Provinces, Holy Name (NY) and Santa Barbara (CA). He served for over 5 years as a missionary in Japan and worked with a Small Eucharistic Community for fifteen years in San Anselmo, CA. In Portland, OR he helped start Franciscan Enterprise which renovated abandoned houses with volunteers to house low-income families. He also once served as a co-pastor to a Lutheran/Roman Catholic joint community and ministered to the homeless and to migrants at the Arizona-Mexico border. He is presently retired and living at Mission San Luis Rey, Oceanside, CA.
