Francis of Assisi was not a garden gnome

On October 4, we give thanks for one of the best known and least known of all saints. Least known, that is, because Francis of Assisi was not a garden gnome, or a doe-eyed hippy skipping with animals and hugging trees. Garden gnomes do not bear the Stigmata of Christ's wounds. A vegetarian? He berated a friar for wanting to abstain from meat on a feast day and said that on Christmas he would “smear the wall with meat.” An iconoclast? He was meticulous in the ceremonials of the Mass, insisting that every sacred vessel and vestment be the best, and his Rule dismissed any friar who parted from the Pope on the slightest article of Faith. A pacifist? He joined the Fifth Crusade, simmering ever since eleven thousand Muslims had invaded Rome and desecrated the tombs of Peter and Paul in the year 846. Francis went to North Africa in 1219 to convert the Muslims and confronted Sultan al Malik al-Kamil, who had just slaughtered five thousand Christians at Damietta. Francis fearlessly told the Sultan: “It is just that Christians invade the land you inhabit, for you blaspheme the name of Christ and alienate everyone you can from His worship.” While counselors called for the beheading of Francis according to Muslim law, the Sultan was so taken with the humility of Francis that he only had him beaten, chained and imprisoned, and then he released him.

We are engaged in similar challenges today. Of course, we are aware of the crisis in the Middle East, but the strife is worldwide. Consider Nigeria, whose Catholic population in the last century has soared to nearly twenty million. Last week, under Muslim pressure, the government stopped the Eternal Word Television Network from broadcasting. I have worked with this worldwide Catholic network for twenty-five years and have many Nigerian friends. Two days after the Nigerian bishops objected to this censorship, a Catholic church was destroyed by Muslims, who killed and wounded many worshipers. This seems to be under the radar of our own government and the mainstream media.

May Saint Francis be our model in how to deal with the threats of our own day: not enfeebled by sentimentality and relativism, but armed with a Franciscan zeal for the conversion of souls. We may not have Francis’ charm, but we have in our hearts and churches the same God. By the way, the popular “Prayer of Saint Francis,” which begins, “Make me a channel of your peace,” was actually the work of an anonymous author who published it in France in 1912. Its vague theology and lack of mention of Christ, express a semi-Pelagian heresy unworthy of the Saint of Assisi. Let the last words of the real Saint of Assisi be our guide: “I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what you are to do. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”

Our website is www.OurSaviourNYC.org.

Excellent post, Mike.

Saint Francis of Assisi is my wife's special Saint to pray to.
The following sentence from Father Rutler's column by Saint Francis are certainly words to meditate and act upon:

Let the last words of the real Saint of Assisi be our guide: “I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what you are to do. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”

I did bookmark this site. This is a beautiful Church along with the historical information that goes with it. There is much information available for referral especial in Father's archive columns. I chose just one as an example.


FROM THE PASTOR

by Fr. George W. Rutler Archives

2010-03-14 - God has a benevolent plan for each soul . . .

Helen Hayes, a devout Catholic and the daughter of a long Irish family line, died in 1993 on the Feast of St. Patrick. Her acting career spanned nearly seventy years, and she was still a teenager when she performed in the play Dear Brutus, whose author, Sir J. M. Barrie, also wrote Peter Pan. The play is about people who enter a magic garden to see what they might have become had they chosen different paths in life. The title is from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar where Cassius plots: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

To blame the stars for what happens to us was the essence of Greek tragedy, where the hero is a victim of forces beyond his control. That word “tragedy” only entered English usage around the year 1500. Christians believe in providence rather than fate: God has a benevolent plan for each soul, which we are free to accept or reject. Classical tragedy, on the other hand, has little if anything to do with moral choices, and the pagan gods were moved more by whim than by justice.



Without Christ, culture lapses into the old paganism, blaming “bad luck” or “karma.” The one true God does not throw tantrums like the gods of the pagan pantheon. Because the Jews believed in a just God, they asked Jesus if some people slain by Pontius Pilate were being punished for sin. Then Jesus mentions a natural disaster that killed eighteen people.

Addressing this recently, Pope Benedict XVI said: “Jesus invites us to interpret these facts differently, connecting them with conversion: misfortunes, sorrowful events, should not arouse curiosity in us or a seeking of people presumed to be guilty, but they must be occasions for reflecting, for overcoming the illusion of pretending to live without God, and for reinforcing, with the Lord’s help, the commitment to change our life.” I am not to blame if I get hit by a brick, but I am accountable for how I respond to the brick and whoever threw it.

There are two sides to fatalism: pessimism, which expects the worst, and optimism, which presumes the best. “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall” (1Cor. 10:12). In contrast to both, is the virtue of hope, which trusts that God will not fail us if we do not fail Him. The crucifixion of the world’s one innocent man was the worst crime in history, but it was not a meaningless tragedy, because it brought good out of evil. Those who are “crucified with Christ” through daily trials are not tragic heroes, but saints. St. Basil says: “Here is man’s greatness, here is man’s glory and majesty: to know in truth what is great, to hold fast to it, and to seek glory from the Lord of glory.”

JMJ,

George