The church, TS Eliot wrote, must constantly be rebuilding and pulling down. These haunting words fit very well with the life of Giovanni Bernadone otherwise known as Francis of Assisi. I say this because in many ways his life was about rebuilding church. There is something of his successes and failures which I find tremendously inspiring. And I think for us to get anywhere in being missionary today we need to take on board the lessons of Francis.
As a youth he could settled with a fairly ordinary merchant class existence in the twelfth century Umbria. His father was a proud cloth merchant and Francis would no doubt inherit part of a successful business. Strangely his days as a womanising wild youth did not irritate his father as much as his religious conversion. The spiritual awakening occur ed around his early twenties and the story goes that while selling cloth a beggar came to him for amls. At the end of the encounter he ran after the man and gave him the contents of his pocket. His mates mocked him. Dad was not well pleased. Over the next few years military adventures turned sour followed by a period of illness where he began to disentangle himself from his pretentious lifestyle. He frequented meeting lepers and on one famous occasion kissed one.
The most amazing story for me about Francis is where he hears the voice of Jesus from the crucifix at the ruined church of San Damiano. "Go Francis and rebuild my house which you see is in disrepair." Francis immediately gets to the task and sells horses and cloth to help the local priest to get masonry, etc. It must have taken a while for him to appreciate that the Lord was not speaking of that church but the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of Jesus.
Today, you can go to Saint Damiano and see that cross, it is an extraordinary painted icon that has become instantly recognisable all around the world. I have always felt tremendously inspired that. I believe, passionately that Jesus calls each us to be part of the rebuilding of the Church. It was this very story which led to think maybe God was calling me to work in building up the church. At the age of 18 a priest gave me the card with the picture and the words. I think you can delete the word 'Francis' and put in your own. And I suspect this is why many go to that tiny church, especially many young people, and sit in the pews and dwell upon what God is calling them to do.
Francis did not have an easy life even after his conversion. He was not a natural organiser and by the time he reached his forties the brotherhood he formed, the friars minor, was not really what he had envisaged. It all got tangled up in ecclesiastical politics and lost much of its initial idealism. It became a business just as his father's carpet and cloth trade was a business. Francis was despondent.
Yet in the final weeks of his life he received the stigmata, the miraculous appearing of wounds of the cross upon his flesh. He is the first person we know who had this. This is why many say he was the nearest thing we had to Jesus in the second Millennium. He soon after died of eye cancer.
Francis' life continues to have a profound effect on the Christian experience. His challenge to a radical life cannot simply be swept under the carpet - if you pardon the pun. I feel that for me he is one of the jigsaw pieces that make up my own personal vocation story. And the question I feel he poses to us - how are we going to build church and what in that process do we need to pull down?
As a youth he could settled with a fairly ordinary merchant class existence in the twelfth century Umbria. His father was a proud cloth merchant and Francis would no doubt inherit part of a successful business. Strangely his days as a womanising wild youth did not irritate his father as much as his religious conversion. The spiritual awakening occur ed around his early twenties and the story goes that while selling cloth a beggar came to him for amls. At the end of the encounter he ran after the man and gave him the contents of his pocket. His mates mocked him. Dad was not well pleased. Over the next few years military adventures turned sour followed by a period of illness where he began to disentangle himself from his pretentious lifestyle. He frequented meeting lepers and on one famous occasion kissed one.
The most amazing story for me about Francis is where he hears the voice of Jesus from the crucifix at the ruined church of San Damiano. "Go Francis and rebuild my house which you see is in disrepair." Francis immediately gets to the task and sells horses and cloth to help the local priest to get masonry, etc. It must have taken a while for him to appreciate that the Lord was not speaking of that church but the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of Jesus.
Today, you can go to Saint Damiano and see that cross, it is an extraordinary painted icon that has become instantly recognisable all around the world. I have always felt tremendously inspired that. I believe, passionately that Jesus calls each us to be part of the rebuilding of the Church. It was this very story which led to think maybe God was calling me to work in building up the church. At the age of 18 a priest gave me the card with the picture and the words. I think you can delete the word 'Francis' and put in your own. And I suspect this is why many go to that tiny church, especially many young people, and sit in the pews and dwell upon what God is calling them to do.
Francis did not have an easy life even after his conversion. He was not a natural organiser and by the time he reached his forties the brotherhood he formed, the friars minor, was not really what he had envisaged. It all got tangled up in ecclesiastical politics and lost much of its initial idealism. It became a business just as his father's carpet and cloth trade was a business. Francis was despondent.
Yet in the final weeks of his life he received the stigmata, the miraculous appearing of wounds of the cross upon his flesh. He is the first person we know who had this. This is why many say he was the nearest thing we had to Jesus in the second Millennium. He soon after died of eye cancer.
Francis' life continues to have a profound effect on the Christian experience. His challenge to a radical life cannot simply be swept under the carpet - if you pardon the pun. I feel that for me he is one of the jigsaw pieces that make up my own personal vocation story. And the question I feel he poses to us - how are we going to build church and what in that process do we need to pull down?
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