St. Francis - Rector's Rambling for October 8, 2023

        This past Wednesday we celebrated the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  As the Episcopal Church’s Book of Lesser Feasts and Fast claims, Francis may be one of the most admired and least imitated of all the saints!

In our modern day, St. Francis is perhaps best known for the blessing of pets.  He has been declared the unofficial patron saint of such a thing because of the stories of his encounters with animals. 

The town of Gubbio was being terrorized by a fierce wolf, and St. Francis is said to have tamed the wolf by walking out to him despite the snarls and threats, and ‘made a deal with him’ that the town people would feed him regularly if he stopped being a threat!  They did just that, and the wolf’s skeleton is on display in the church there to this day. 

He is said to have preached to the birds, which he did on an occasion when the people were not coming to hear him preach.  Lesser known is another time that he also rebuked birds that were being too loud for people to hear a sermon.

And St. Francis is also credited with the first ‘living Nativity’ with real animals in a reenactment of our Lord’s birth.

But less popular among the lukewarm followers is that Francis was a biblical literalist, who when writing his rule of life is said to have randomly opened the bible to Jesus’ admonition to the rich young man to sell all that he had, give it to the poor, and follow Him.  Francis made that a basis of his own rule of life, owning nothing but the patched gardeners tunic for a habit for the rest of his life.   He and his early followers slept on church floor, begged for food if they were unable to earn it doing manual labor, and refused to touch money.  As the order grew, that rule had to be revised so provide more stability without completely losing the charism of St. Francis to be a ‘little brother’ who serves others in Jesus’ name in simplicity of life.

To this day the Franciscan Friars, Poor Clare Nuns, and Third Order Franciscans seek to do the same.