This morning as I was doing my contemplative ‘sit’ in the sun room of my house, I was surprised that I did not hear the birds chirping and singing outside the picture window in the front yard.   After my sit, I realized that it was October 4^th, and the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  So, I imagined that the birds may have been preoccupied with other things, hence their silence.  Perhaps they were listening to a sermon preached by the Poverello (“little poor man”)

[Had the garden statue of him come to life during the early morning hours for this “feathery” address?]

After my run, I walked through the front yard gardens and the birds were singing elatedly.  There was also much flight and excitement – flapping wings and competing songs.  As I observed the flowers in my mother’s garden a large beautiful red bird flew and perched on the white picket fence behind the garden.  The bird stood there long enough for me to want to grab my I-phone and try to take a shot, but then flew off in teasing fashion.  Two other cardinals then immediately flew from the other side of the yard over to the garden.

As I walked underneath the old and perhaps dying mimosa, I heard a strange chirping above.  Looking into the barren branches of the great tree, I saw two hummingbirds sitting on separate branches looking at one another and waiting for the other to move.  Once the one lighted from the branch, the other followed suit and they danced around each other, daring each other to be the first to taste the nectar of the garden flowers below.

There was much flirting and frolicking going on in the Franciscan morning.

Who was this 13^th century simple man who is as popular today as ever –  This mendicant Italian that has perhaps more references than any other ‘saint,’ and at times is seen solely in terms of sweetness and simple consolation – what Richard Rohr refers to as “birdbath Franciscanism”[i] – with the unfortunate consequence of admirers failing to appreciate the extreme conviction, passion and determination that characterized the “little poor man” who has challenged the world down through the centuries?

The Franciscan biographer, Omer Englebert, reminds us of that the joyous Canticle of the Sun was composed by Francis whose body at that time was wracked with not only stigmata but other maladies and suffering, not the least of which being blindness.[ii]  This hymn of inter-connection between all of creation resounds today with as much force as it did in medieval times, and is worth quoting:

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, All praise is Yours, all glory, all honour and all blessings.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong, and no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks,
And serve Him with great humility.

This may sound like highly sentimentalized poetry; however, it flows from the heart of a soul so concerned for the awareness of our deep connection with God, present in all things in our world, that he spent his life sharing this ‘message’ by literally ‘spending’ his life.  More through action than any words, Francis inspired healing and wholeness wherever brokenness and isolation existed.

So what is Francis telling us today?  As he looks about at all the destructions in the earth – earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, flooding, fires, mudslides – as well as the treacherous treatment that we engage in with each other – racism, classicism, misogyny, criminalization of poverty, mass incarceration, imperialism, only to name a few –  what would be  his “take” on all this?  I will not assume to know the answer to these questions.  I will venture to say though that as horrific and despairing as our times may seem to us, it would not be preposterous to say that Francis’ own time suffered from as many personal, social and communal brokenness as we find our world today.

Perhaps Omer Englebert provides us with a hint as to what Francis was about when he describes the audience who heard the saint sing his canticle… “the entire audience imitated him, moved by these accents of a beloved voice…singing the beauties of a world he could no longer see.”[iii]   Francis’ physical eyesight was gone.  He was blind, and still he could see, not a rose-colored Pollyanna veneer that cloaked the terrible reality of the world, but rather, a way of looking at, by engaging in, the world such that He so to speak, became the world.  To see beauty in a world that is for all outward appearances in shambles is to hold the “pain” of the world by allowing the world to “hold” you.

This “holding” of the world is a be-holding, a seeing and engaging that comes from a heart open and receptive to the world as the world.   It’s a dis-placement of what we might call the ‘self’ or ego by a re-placement of our real identity as creatures and children of God within us!  Sun, moon, water, fire, and yes even death can become our friends because they are part of our ‘placement’ in creation.  The placement here is always in terms of the Whole, never an isolating part.  In this light, we can see the other type of blindness – that of ignorance, indifference, violence and oppression – where we set ourselves up as the force who does the ‘placement’ of everything and everyone.  This is the serious blindness that Francis’ Canticle seeks to heal within our hearts.

More than healing, Francis I believe represents for us the Love that IS our God.  Francis could sing the beauties of the world and of God without physical sight because his eyes were in his soul and heart.   He could see MORE than the “surface.”  His was not the ego-driven blindness of ignorance nor of denying reality, but rather the ‘blindness’ that comes from a love that could be characterized as a brilliant darkness of trust in another to whom we belong.  I invite you to read this “other” as the world, your neighbor, your enemy, our God.  The “other” is with us as part of the whole of creation, given that we believe that creation is the birth of God’s life wanting to give Itself away.  Is that a definition that we can have for Divine Love?

If we can begin to embrace this sense of Divine Love IN our world, then we may be able to see as  Franciscan theologian, Ilia Delio, that God loves the world with the very same love that God IS.[iv].   What if it could be true that God, in creating, fills up each being with God’s being (love), but because the limits of any being cannot contain God (LOVE), then it must necessarily spill over and thus become excessive and abundant, and on top of that, something for which we all yearn for and thus seek.[v] So we seek it out in our world and in one another.

It seems to me that it is this sense of wholeness as Divine LOVE, that our Poverello “little poor man” – Francis – both saw and sought to be in communion with all his life.  Could this be his real ‘poverty’ – knowing both that he himself was part of Divine Love as created in the image of God and at the same time sought out MORE of this Love in the world he encountered – the sun, the moon, the stars, all brothers and sisters – because he knew that his life, all life depends upon this interconnectedness or inter-being?

What might it take for us to consider this?  How can we learn to sing the beauties of a world we can no longer see, i.e., to bear the fair and stormy, all weather’s moods?  Or better yet, how can we see with new eyes that seek more life and love rather than more control and “stuff?”  How can we become those who grant pardon for love of God and bear sickness and trial? 

This would be a ‘holding’ that is at the same time a ‘being held’ – an exercise in conscious and determined receptivity that loses no integrity but indeed passionately gives of true selfhood within creative interactions.   This is the power of transformation – not impositional ‘fixing’ but walking together humbly in addressing our shared dilemmas.  Dare we call this a stance of what we might call ‘justice?’  Ultimately, this is an invitation to dis-placement through re-placement that in the end is the only ‘placement’ that we truly have as part of this wonderful Whole Creation of being in Love with God!

 

[i] Richard Rohr, EAGER TO LOVE (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), p. xv

[ii] Omer Englebert, ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI: A BIOGRAPHY (Cincinnati, OH: Servant Books, 1979), pp. 250-251.

[iii] Ibid, p. 253.

[iv] Ilia Delio, THE UNBEARABLE WHOLENESS OF BEING: GOD, EVOLUTION, AND THE POWER OF LOVE (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), p. 71

[v] Ibid.

Peace,
Thomas