Today is the Feast of St. Francis

As always, Fish Eaters has a nice little intro on what it's all about.  

St. Francis was one of those doors through which I walked to become Catholic.  Like other clergy converts (the few of us who were actual clergy converts), St. Francis loomed large in my thinking, along with such other luminaries as then Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Others such as G.K. Chesterton and Cardinal John Henry Newman played their part as well.

But those came later in my life, either because I began putting things together as I read them (Lewis/Tolkien) or because I discovered them as I began to rethink Protestantism and look for alternatives to following the Gospel (Newman/Chesterton).   Francis, however, was there all along, coming to my attention way back in my younger days as an undergrad.  

I remember reading of him in history texts, especially those focused on the Middle Ages.  Even reading of him while I was a somewhat lackadaisical non-believing college student, the story of St. Francis impressed me.  He came across as a person who truly lived out what the ideal presented in the Gospels suggested: that the only real way to be a disciple is to sell everything you have, leave father and mother and wife and children, take up the cross and devote yourselves entirely to the revelation of God in Christ.   

Thank goodness for most of us the Church modified those requirements, huh?  And it didn't just happen centuries later.  Remember, when St. Luke penned his famous tribute to Communism in Acts 2, where the Church was not really a Communist paradise on Earth, that was written decades after the fact.  By the time Luke was writing, we know there were Christians who had much, and others who had little.  We know from Paul's letters to the Corinthians that it was no longer share and share alike.  Perhaps Luke hoped to prod the fledgling church back to its more ascetic roots, but such individual sacrifice was clearly no longer common by the time his history of the early church was being circulated. 

It was the same with selling everything and leaving everything and everyone.  As perfect as such devotion is - and St. Francis showed it was still possible - by the time the Gospel narratives were being put down into writing, most in the Church were no longer living on that level.  True, by the time most of the Gospels were written, the first of what would become too familiar waves of persecution (that really happened, despite some modern scholars trying to suggest otherwise) was sweeping the Church.  And yes, there would be times when those believers had to choose between life and faith.

On the whole, however, the day to day was no longer one of sleeping in fields, renouncing all possessions, leaving hearth and home and vocation behind and carrying the cross daily.  It was for most believers, by the time of the written Gospels, very close to our own time: live life, eat, drink, pay bills, go to work, hang with the family, and go to Mass when available.  

St. Francis was one, however, who believed it was possible to live the pure Gospel discipleship as penned by the Evangelists.  He was every bit as wordly as we are, living life, getting money, spending money, going through the day to day.  He was able to step away from it all, however, sell everything he had, take up his cross, and follow Christ. 

It's also fitting that St. Francis's feast is in October.  St. Francis may have sold everything, but he did so joyfully.  As one Medieval scholar wrote, he embraced his lady poverty, and it was a happy marriage.  He rejoiced and was glad.  If he had nothing to call his own, it was that nothing he loved so much.  And not only the loss of everything, but even death itself became a cause for joy. 

So it's fitting that in October, that colorful threshold between the vibrancy of summer and the dead of winter, that we stop to celebrate St. Francis.  A man who could make thinking about death a cause for celebration.  From years ago in another age, Mark Shea wrote a fine piece about the poetry of this time of year and the fitting celebration of St. Francis.  

Thinking on this autumnal time of year, when so much of what we assumed and took for granted a mere handful of years ago is now in question, it's probably not a bad thing to reflect on the life and ministry of St. Francis.  The days of easy discipleship may be coming to an end, and a costly discipleship as Bonhoeffer once reflected on, may become the only option we have. 

Oh, and I should mention St. Francis is my saint. During my sojourn with the Orthodox, though they appreciate St. Francis, he was not a recognized saint.  I chose St. David as an alternative, since it seemed appropriate.  But my heart was always on St. Francis and I continued to turn to him  as a matter of course.  So it's nice to be back.  Who knows, maybe someday my admiration for St. Francis will prod a little more out of me than just acknowledgement of his awesomeness.