"St. Francis Preaching to the Birds", Giotto (1297)
I was sitting at the kitchen table yesterday glancing through some recent newspapers and found myself reading obituaries. I got into this habit when I worked for Hospice, and sometimes I still spend some time with the obituaries.
Yesterday, as I read several brief summaries of people’s lives, I thought to myself, “How do I want to be remembered when I’m gone?”
Will I leave anything behind other than a few lines on a piece of impermanent newsprint that will be skimmed and quickly forgotten?
In our church, we remember, on particular days, people who live in such a way that they leave, streaming behind them long after they’ve gone, a visible testimony to something greater than themselves.
We call these people Saints, Saints with a capital S, because these Saints leave visible testimonies to God visibly at work in the world—glimpses into who God is based on who they became in their lives.
Francis was such a man.
In our church, we have four hymn settings in our hymn book that have as their texts the words of St Francis—the most familiar being the beautiful hymn of praise, “All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voices, let us sing—Alleluia, alleluia.” (Hymn 400 in The 1982 Hymnal) And a prayer attributed to St Francis is in The Book of Common Prayer, ( page 833). We’ll be praying that prayer together today later in the service.
Statues of St Francis can be found in gardens all over the world, and it’s true that Francis did see himself as one small part of God’s magnificent creation. Long before the age of environmentalism Francis realized how interconnected all of life is, and how dependent all of life is on the wellbeing of all of the rest of life, how we’re knit and woven together with the natural world, and that we break those bonds at our own peril.
We have brought our pets to church today because through them God so richly blesses us in this lifetime. Their companionship is a true blessing. Their trust and their unconditional love (if you have a dog—cats aren’t always quite as generous with their love) point us toward God’s own love for us, and remind us of the trust we are to have for God.
We know that human relationships with animals can be healing and restoring. I’ve read many articles about the lives of prisoners being transformed when they were given an animal to care for, how people in nursing homes come alive when an animal comes to visit, how animals will try to get help if their people are in danger—we’ve all heard these stories —and so today we “bless” our animals out of thanksgiving for the richness that they add to our lives.
But if Francis were here today, he would probably talk about something besides his love for animals, or even his embrace of Lady Poverty, or his desire to suffer as Christ did, and he certainly wouldn’t talk about his humility or the fact that he received the marks of Christ’s crucifixion on his own hands, feet and side.
Francis would talk about his passionate, seemingly insane, love for God—a love so powerful and filling that it left room for nothing else in this man’s life. I love the irony here—all Francis cared about was God, but that single-minded love then meant that he had that same passionate love and compassion for his brothers, his sisters and all of creation itself.
That’s the way that this single-minded love of God works—that kind of love can’t help but spill out into love and thanksgiving for the gift of life itself, and all that makes up life here on this earth—joys and sorrows, thanksgiving even for death when it comes, because death takes us into the nearer presence of God.
In her book, Following Francis: The Franciscan Way for Everyone, Susan Pitchford points out that the kind of love St Francis had for God is like the cross itself—stretching horizontally up to God in total adoration, and vertically out to the world—because Francis knew that God comes to us all the time, not only through the glories of creation, but also in disguise—as our neighbor, especially the poor,” the sick, the friendless and the needy.” (BCP, 392).
The passion that Francis felt for God determined how Francis lived. His prayed not only in solitude, but also as he went about his work. He met God face to face in the Eucharist. He cultivated a humble sprit by being honest with himself about his very human flaws through self-examination and the seeking of God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of those he offended. He embraced poverty. He sought reconciliation with his fellow human beings and with all of creation.
He took literally the words of Jesus that are in today’s gospel. Jesus tells us that the way to joy and God’s peace that passes all understanding is to “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Francis took these words literally and yoked himself in passionate love with his Lord and Savior, and then followed where he was led.
If Francis wanted to be remembered for anything at all, my guess is that he would want to be remembered for only one thing—his consuming love of God.
That consuming love transformed his life into one of praise, thanksgiving and humble and loving service for his fellow human beings, especially the sick, the forgotten and the unwanted, and for all of God’s creation, and because we love tangible things that we can grasp, these specifics about his life are the things we remember.
But in remembering these things about St Francis, may we see beyond them into the powerful and transforming possibilities of what might happen in our own lives if we dared to let everything else go and gave away everything in our lives, leaving only a passionate and single minded love for God. What would happen if we chose to strip our lives of everything else and wear nothing but God’s love like a yoke?
How do you want to be remembered when you’re gone? What will you leave behind? How has God been made visible in your life?
Amen.
Resources: The Book of Common Prayer and The 1982 Hymnal
Pitchford, Susan. Following Francis: The Franciscan Way for Everyone. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2006.