A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi
Find today’s readings here.
“Whoever rejects you rejects me.” (Lk 10:16)
It didn’t happen often, but every once in a while, one of my grade school teachers would ask me to bring something to the main office. I loved it. I’d get a special pass, stroll through empty hallways and present myself to the school secretary.
“Good afternoon. I’ve got a message for Mr. Black from Mr. Rezak.”
I’d leave the letter, or stack of forms or whatever it was. And then I’d go back to class, through those same empty hallways. It didn’t matter what the message was. Even though it was rare, I felt great to be trusted with it.
But the truth is that most of the kids in my class—with the notable exceptions of my friends Art and Chris B.—could be trusted with delivering little messages like this. It didn’t really matter who delivered it. If I was chosen, I didn’t care what message I was delivering. And, year after year, it didn’t matter who sent me.
It’s different when it comes to being a messenger for Jesus. The message matters a lot, and so does the one who sends it. And I’m pretty sure God chooses specific people to deliver certain messages. Like St. Francis of Assisi.
God chose St. Francis for so many messages, it’s hard to choose which is the most well-known. There’s the St. Francis Prayer itself, which begins, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” Or the Canticle of Creation, “Praise be you, my lord, with all your creatures…” St. Francis developed the first Nativity Scene, or crèche, in the town of Grecio, according to St. Bonaventure.
Catholics know St. Francis is the patron saint of animals. So many of our parishes have a blessing of pets on or near his feast day. Pope Francis, who took the Italian saint as his namesake, drew attention to St. Francis in his landmark encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si’ (Praised Be).”
“The poverty and austerity of St. Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled,” the pope wrote of the patron saint of ecology.
St. Francis is also the patron saint of messengers. In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers,
Whoever listens to you listens to me.
Whoever rejects you rejects me.
And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.
If I want to be a follower of Jesus, I must go beyond simply relaying his message. To follow Jesus means to grow in my identification with him. I must be Christ for others, and find Christ in them. From what I can tell from the lives of others, this transformation does not happen all at once. It is a gradual process through which the followers of Jesus become, day by day, more like him. By his life (and death), St. Francis shows us how it can be done. He models how to become a messenger of Christ.
