The Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 5, 2025
By the time you read this column, the feast of Saint Francis will have just passed, though I write these words in anticipation of his feast.
Saint Francis was a rich and dreamy boy who roamed the streets of Assisi with his pockets full of his father’s money and his head filled with romantic reveries. He wanted to be a knight and to win fame for his family and to have adventures for himself. He wanted to be a troubadour who wandered through Italy singing romantic songs of love and adventure.
He eventually had his chance to go to war against the neighboring city of Perugia and he lasted one day until he was captured and put into prison. He spent a year in a dark and fetid jail until he was rescued by his townspeople’s ransom. By the time he left the jail, he was feverish and near death. When he finally recovered, pale and thin, he had lost the bounce in his steps and began to ponder more seriously the meaning of his own life.
Perhaps for the first time in his life, he really prayed. He haunted caves and empty churches, asking God for light. It always takes God a while to answer such prayers. There were two especially poignant moments when God spoke to Francis.
The first was when Francis met a leper in the valley below Assisi. Lepers repulsed and frightened him, and his first instinct was to gallop away on his horse. But in a flash of grace, he saw Jesus in that leper. “Whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me; whatever you do not do for the least of my brothers, you do not do for me”. Francis actually kissed the leper’s rotting flesh and felt a rush of joy.
The second was when Francis was praying in a decrepit chapel in the woods, San Damiano, and heard Jesus speak from the cross, “Francis, rebuild my church which is falling into ruin”. Francis immediately began a short career as a church repairer, but soon enough understood that the call was to rebuild the Catholic Church which was falling apart because of sin, greed and scandal.
Francis determined to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ literally. He became poor and rejected any wealth and he chose the company of the poor. In poverty and among the poor, Jesus is more easily found.
Francis began a movement that changed the world and that still has an impact. Saint John’s is staffed by Capuchin friars, disciples of Saint Francis. We also have a vibrant Secular Franciscan fraternity, lay people who live in the spirit of Saint Francis.
Young men, consider joining the Capuchin Franciscan Order. Everyone else, consider the Secular Franciscan Order. The church needs Saint Francis as much in the 21st century as it did in the 13th century.
