Feast of St. Francis

The feast of St. Francis has finally arrived.  Despite the dismal weather that appears outside our window, there is bright sunshine and joy everywhere inside.  Last evening's Transitus led us to that deep satisfaction of knowing and following such a lovestruck troubadour who wanted simply to follow in the footsteps of his Lord.  We also know how blest we are as Sisters of St. Francis to have such good brothers and sisters who desire to share this celebration with us.  It was a joy to have everyone join us and we're looking for many more this evening at 7 PM as we celebrate Eucharist together.

The Franciscan Friars of Sacred Heart Province (http://www.thefriars.org/) have the following quote on their home page:  “We welcome you to the Franciscan vision of the world, a world where love is more powerful than hate, forgiveness more powerful than revenge, hope more powerful than despair, community more powerful than isolation and God is more powerful than all that mitigate against goodness and hope.”  Today I thought that was a profound greeting to share with you.  I also share a poem I wrote a number of years ago that speaks to the simplicity that drew me to Francis:

St. Francis of Assisi

By Julia Keegan

he was a simple man

disentangled from the frames

of a stilted world,

alive to the vital values

that open the hearts of our crippled life…

his cause was openness as person,

what tenderly trespassed

the isolated center of christian hope

and opened the box office

to a real God

who lives and speaks and loves…

he created a radicalism

by living an ordinary life

as the person God created him to be…

he abhorred the extravagant blueprint

of structured living

so he rebelled without revolution

by merely becoming

an extravagantly simple man.

Today at the center we had "Women’s Awareness Salon:  Seeing the Sacred in the Ordinary".  Thirteen women listened to Sr. Christa Marie Thompson share about the relationship between Clare of Assisi and Agnes of Prague.  She shared a little about each of them but focused predominantly on the 20 years they knew each other and how they formed such a deeply spiritual and nurturing friendship that Clare could greet Agnes by saying she was "half of her soul".   Such closeness, despite the fact that they lived about 750 miles apart and never once met face to face.  We were reminded that there was no telephone, no amtrak train, no airplane, no post office, and the only communication was by the friars taking their letters back and forth.  

The discussion that followed was about women and friendship as each shared the beauty of others who have supported and truly understood them throughout the years.  Renee shared that there is an African Zulu greeting which translated means "I see you" and the response from the other person is "I am here."  It is a tender response implying with gratitude that the person's "seeing them" made them present in a different way -- perhaps saying, "once you saw me, something new within me came into existence".   That something new is what we recognized in our sharing about our friendships.  Isn't this  the type of relationship which Francis calls us to?  Francis taught us that we (each of us and all of creation) are  brothers and sisters to one another -- we "see" one another and in doing this we bring each other here in a new way, in a simply extravagant way.