October 7, 2007

It was a problem that needed addressing. The Church, since its earliest beginnings, had honored the lives of its saints - the twelve disciples, well, make that eleven, the original apostles, like Paul, the first martyrs, like Stephen, the early Church fathers, like Ignatius & Clement, Jerome & Augustine, and women as well, like Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene.

For each saint honored, a day was set aside to tell again the inspiring story of that saint's life, a "feast day" in the Catholic vernacular, a mass in their remembrance to feed our faith and give God the glory. In time, blessedly, the problem arose. After several centuries of accumulating saints, the church had more saints than there were days on the calendar.

So addressing this problem Pope Gregory III in 741 A.D. established one special calendar day in which all of the saints might be honored together. Called All Saints' Day, we celebrate this day on - ? - November 1. My dearly departed mother's birthday, who passed away on this very day in 1969.

Of course, this is All Saints' Day stuff is get ahead of our story. We are not in November yet. It is hard enough to believe it is October, and our high school Homecomings are behind us.

Mind you, even after Pope Gregory established the generic All Saints' Day, other individual days were still maintained to "feast" the greatest of the saints, like those aforementioned, as well as others added after 741, like Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Becket and Theresa of Avila.

It still goes on today. As you know, another Teresa is currently being considered for canonization, though early investigations report they are digging up dirt about her doubt. I say, that Mother Teresa did all that she did while having her personal "dark nights of the soul," makes her all the more saintly. May she rest in peace.

At the end of the process, if she makes it to sainthood, she may very well be assigned an individual "feast" day. Which means one the saints already designated for that day may be removed from that date and dropped into the All Saints' Day bucket. So you see, even afterlife can be hard on saints. Ah, me.

This past week while we slept, a "Saints' Day" slipped past. October 4 is the "feast" day of one of these "latter day saints" that is, one of the saints assigned after Pope Gregory's establishment of All Saints' Day in 741 AD.

Born in 1182 A.D. in a small provincial village in central Italy, this saint-to-be was raised in wealth. His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a successful cloth merchant. Therefore Giovanni Francesco Bernardone had a comfortable and even spoiled childhood, if such was possible in the medieval years. That his education was scant was less a consequence of opportunity than of attention. Giovanni had his sights set on knighthood, as well as merrymaking and the other pleasures of privilege.

At the local tournaments and fairs Giovanni, or Francesco as his father called him, his dad being fond of everything French, including his wife, who was Giovanni's mother, Francesco was often selected "king of the feasts." He regaled the crowds in his sartorial splendor, courtesy of his dad's cloth shop, and enjoyed jousting and winning the ladies.

Which was a good thing for one of the honors of being named "king" of the carnival was picking up the tab for the entire affair. Francesco was able and happy to oblige, which no doubt encouraged votes in his favor.

At the age of 16 Francesco achieved his goal of becoming a soldier, fighting in his first feudal war, protecting the borders of his baron as well as his father's business.

A year spent as a prisoner of war proved a sobering experience for our pleasure loving knight-in-grooming. Then on the eve of entering another war, Francesco engaged in an uncharacteristic act of charity. Another nobleman, but poorer, had no suit of armor to wear into battle. So Francesco gave him his own armor that the other might wear it into battle the next day.

That night Francesco had a dream in which a sweet voice spoke to him and commended him for his generosity. The next day on their way to the battlefield Francesco laid down his arms and entered a church, where lying prostrate before the cross he heard the words, "Go, and repair my house because it is falling into ruins...scorn and abhor all that which you have desired and loved up to now according to the flesh, and fulfill my will."

Renouncing his life of self-indulgence, Francis (short for Francesco) stripped himself of his possessions, as well as his father's goods, and embraced Lady Poverty. Disinherited by his decimated father, Francis' new family became the poor, the sick, and the deprived, as he sought to "fulfill God's will."

For one year he lived with and ministered to a colony of lepers. Then, dressed in a coarse wool tunic with a knotted rope as his belt, he took to the countryside, becoming a mendicant minister by word and indeed, singing praises to God in the sweet lyrics he wrote, communing with the animals of the forest, and preaching penance to any persons who would listen, who were darn few. Mostly he was taunted and derisively derided.

Even the Church was not pleased with Francis. But then this was the medieval Church where monks had mansions, bishops had battalions and popes had progeny, contrary to celibacy.

Francis lived by doing chores and begging food, all the while greeting persons with the salutation "May God give you peace." His motto was "to walk as Christ walked," and he called others to give up their self-indulgent lifestyles for a life of service to the poor as well.

As a mustard seed upon the hardened soil of society, a few followed Frances, and thus began a simple, cheerful, peaceful community who wandered the Italian countryside caring for those in need.

They sought papal sanction as a religious order, and though Pope Innocent III seemed uncomfortable with this selfless service society, he knew they were in keeping with the Gospels, so with no recourse to refuse them, a Catholic Order was born.

Within ten years the Franciscans, as they were called, grew from a few to a few thousand, where the friars, consisting of both ordained monks and laymen, preached love and served the poor. Unique to this order was the vow of poverty each brother accepted, which read: "Friars are not to possess anything, neither house, nor lands, not anything else whatsoever. They are to pass through this world as pilgrims and foreigners serving the Lord in poverty, humility and begging alms with confidence and without shame. Let poverty be your party."

Other vows included chastity, humility, obedience, and gladness (they were to be joyful not jaded in their self-sacrifices.) Still the Order grew, requiring greater organization and more structure.

Not really in the style of our humble founding friar, where now thousands flocked to hear him preach, Francis withdrew to a more solitary life, where he spent his last years in prayer, in communion with nature, where it is said he was the first person to observe that animals could communicate with one another, and with a few friends.

The companions were later to testify that in his last days a red scar appeared on his side, as well as wounds in his hands and feet, as if driven through by a nail. So closely had Francis "walked with Christ" that in the end he bore the mark of the Stigmata.

Weakened by years of fasting and poverty, and now the Stigmata, Francis requested to be carried by stretcher to his home village of Assisi in central Italy, where now huge crowds greeted him. He was no longer taunted as the "madman of Assisi," but now proclaimed the "saint of Assisi."

On October 3, 1226, at the age of 44, with the words of the 142^nd Psalm upon his lips, "Free my soul from prison, so that I may praise Thy name," (142:7), Francis of Assisi ascended to heaven, at which time it is said a flock of skylarks rose from the roof of his house as if to accompany his soul on its final flight.

Two years later (July 16, 1228) Pope Gregory IX canonized Francis a saint, and declared October 4, the day following his death in which his body was born in triumphal procession throughout the city of Assisi, to be the "feast day of St. Francis."

You will remember St. Francis for one of his best known prayers, which we recited in our "Litany of Awareness" for today: "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace." St. Francis' prayer was answered. He became an instrument of God's peace.

Won't you join him on this World Communion Sunday? Let us pray...(communion prayer)