Sermon
8th February 26
The 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis will be the beginning of October this year. The PCC are planning for us to celebrate this significant date. In this year preceding it, I am preaching an occasional sermon on St Francis. Even Pope Leo has recently announced a special Jubilee Year in honour of this anniversary. For the Holy Father, that year began in January, three months after we began ours: typical American, they always come late to the party!
Two weeks ago, we celebrated the Conversion of St Paul. We saw how, on that road to Damascus, he was blinded by the light and heard Jesus speaking to him. It all happened in a matter of minutes. But for most folk, discerning God’s call can be a long and complicated process. So it was for St Francis.
I guess that all began on 1202 with the 20 year-old Francis spending the best part of a year in Perugia as a prisoner of war. While he waited to be ransomed, he had plenty of time to reflect on his life. He was the son of a rich cloth merchant and had been brought up with wealth and much partying. But he was dissatisfied. As he looked forward to the rest of his life, he yearned for something other than working in his father’s business.
After his release, he tried being a soldier but returned home, following a vision. He spent less time in the city of Assisi, and more in the contado (the countryside around the city). He met the lepers who were shunned by the city folk and forced to live outside the walls. He was not afraid to stay with them often.
He came across the derelict Church of San Damiano on the hillside below the city. (Those of you who were on our parish pilgrimage will remember our visit there on the first afternoon of our pilgrimage.) One day around 1205, when he was praying before the crucifix there, he had a vision that the crucifix spoke to him: “Francis, rebuild my house which, as you can see, is in ruins”. (We saw a replica of that crucifix when we were in San Damiano, and the original the following morning where it now hangs in the Basilica of Santa Chiara, near the tomb of St Clare).
Francis took these words literally. He rebuilt the Church of San Damiano and two others nearby in the contado. His father was furious. Not only was Francis failing to work in his business, but he was spending the family’s wealth on these Churches.
It all came to a head when he met with his son and with the Bishop in a dramatic confrontation, traditionally located outside the Cathedral of San Rufino (we climbed up there after we had left Santa Chiara). Francis renounced his father, even taking off all his clothes and handing them back to his father, before announcing that wanted no more material things and would spend his life in God’s service.
Francis finally realised that God’s call to him to “rebuild my Church” was nothing to do with the physical rebuilding of San Damiano, but rather to refresh and restore the wider Church with a new vision. He founded a new religious order with a strong emphasis on the vow of poverty, and the work of the Franciscans continues to this day. It had taken a few years for Francis finally to discern what God had for him.
Amen
