Today it is the pleasure of us in this friary and of all Franciscan Institutes to celebrate
with great solemnity the solemnity of our Holy Father Saint Francis. Saint Francis of Assisi
is one of the most outstanding figures in the history of the Church and indeed that would
even include the apostolic times for he came to show us a way and that way is the way that we
we should follow until the end of time and indeed it is quite striking that Holy Mother Church
herself in attributing to Saint Francis in the first reading one who would renovate the Church
of God and so it is that the life of Saint Francis cannot be understood merely by the facts of his
life and indeed not by the most extraordinary visions he had for indeed it is a vision that
Saint Francis did not have that points out the extraordinary nature of this man's life
for he showed himself to
the
a humble soul for when God had inspired him to write the rule and when the first rule was was was
lost and Saint Francis retired to Fonte Colombo in order to write down the second rule the brothers
would come in order to see if they could get Saint Francis to mitigate it as they stood at the base
of the mountain a voice was heard and that voice was none other than the Lord himself and it was
the Lord who would confirm that this rule was true.
And when Saint Francis said the Sir, I invite you to so that there is always a proof of our needle in the
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in whom hates the sin was believed the Lord said it as I do but what would be satisfied for S. Francis would reply to the brothers do you want me to repeat what he had said. And so S. Francis with the very voice of the Lord himself confirming the rule would not be satisfied for he would submit that to Holy Mother Church and indeed it was there that the Pope would have a vision in which he will see a poor beggar dressed in rags wearing察 ук� monter
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of grace which was satisfactory for him to say when the Holy Mother dashwatered and when大Ps were prepared her throughout the aplomb and after having appetite masters and debatis of her hand to유
holding up the very edifice of the church and so we truly are confronted with an extraordinary life
a life that the pope himself would confirm when he would approve the rule of saint francis
that is he would confirm that vision he had received from god that this way was the way of
christ and hence the way of the church and it is particularly why saint francis was given the grace
to found three orders for men for women and for the laity for his way of poverty was a way that
all of us must follow and indeed we can try to use the facts of his life to somehow understand
but saint bonaventure will point out to us that these will never suffice in order to understand
the mystery of saint francis for he tells us that saint francis possessed not the knowledge
acquired by study nevertheless being illuminated
by the mystery of saint francis the mystery of saint francis the mystery of saint francis
the mystery of saint francis the mystery of saint francis the mystery of saint francis the mystery of saint francis
by the rays of the divine light he penetrated with marvelous clearness the
hidden mysteries of Holy Scripture for where the learning of the doctor stands
without without the affection of of the of the lovely soul finds entrance and so
he points out that it was not through the study of books that st. Francis
learned to love but it was because his very nature was a nature geared towards
love and so all the knowledge we acquire through books is knowledge acquired
from without but st. Francis would acquire the divine knowledge from
within because he would truly give himself in order that he may come to
know and love Christ crucified and this is the key to understand the life in the
mystery of st. Francis of Assisi for his biographers tell us that when the
hearts of men were growing cold primarily through the spread of
the vice of avarice and the vice of love the mother of God asked her son for
religious Institute that she could truly call her own and this is precisely why
that Institute would touch every aspect of the life of the mystical body for
that Institute would give to the church holy priest holy brothers and holy
sisters and indeed it would give to the church holy popes for many of the vicars
of Christ and the priests of the church and the priests of the church and the
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members of the third order of Francis or members of the first order and so we
see here a most extraordinary life and a most extraordinary man and so st.
Francis was chosen by the mother of God to lead this religious institute that
she would call her own in order that the that the hearts of men growing cold from
avarice and lusts would again be enkindled with the fire of the divine
love.
and St. Francis was chosen by the Mother of God
because he saw very clearly how the devil seeks to harden the hearts
with the deception of false pleasures
and that God softens the heart with the love of Christ crucified
and this would be the life of St. Francis.
The stigmata is not the key to St. Francis' life.
It is merely the seal of his life
for his life cannot be understood by merely one event
but only insofar as that event occurred towards the end of his life
as the crucifixion of our Lord occurred towards the end of his earthly life
and so it was a consummation of a life totally based on love,
a life totally based on giving.
St. Francis saw that this love is only acquired
through simplicity, through humility and through charity
and these filled the heart of the surroundings.
So we say that St. Francis is the seraphic father
and indeed in a kind of jovial joke between the Dominicans and the Franciscans
the Franciscans will always reply to the Dominicans
that St. Thomas is the angelic doctor, St. Bonaventure the seraphic doctor
but more importantly what is said in that statement
is that St. Francis is the seraphic father
and so St. Bonaventure is merely a child
for his father for the seraph of the highest of the angelic orders and it is
said that st. Francis acquired the love of the seraphs and indeed st. Bonaventure
would confirm this with a commentary which the church tells us cannot be
denied that in the apocalypse of st. John st. Francis is the angel marked
with the towel who leads who oversees the created order the very mission given
to Lucifer himself and so it is st. Francis who directs the created order by
the grace of God in order that we may use it in according with the will of God
and so his ardent love was a love that was based on poverty but st. Francis's
poverty was not merely poverty for poverty sake but it was a specific
poverty because it was the poverty of the Blessed Virgin Mary whom after God
st. Francis
shower
with untold praises in this life and now he does in eternal life it would he
would he would call this poverty the queen of virtues because in the perfect
renunciation of self he saw that the Blessed Virgin Mary was detached from
the things of this world and attached to that which is most important for the
rational creature the God from whom we came which st. Francis summarized in his
expression my God
my God created and created me the world
and this was the only way by God and my all and this was the surest way
for the soul to acquire possession of the supreme good and the eternal riches
of the father's heavenly kingdom and so it was that his statement my God in my
all is based on his reflection of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary who from
the first moment of her conception and now for all eternity had one love and in
For if the mother of God did not have a deep and a profound, a faithful love of God,
she could not have become the mother of all humanity in the spiritual order,
for she would have withheld something when the angel Gabriel came.
And so we see in the Annunciation a confirmation that the mother of God truly loved God above all things
from the first moment of her conception and does now for all eternity.
And it is because of this that St. Francis saw we have hope
because the love we seek to acquire is the love of a mother
and the love of a mother is always life-giving.
And so St. Francis would have three loves in this world
and they were the same loves that Christ would manifest to the world.
He had a love of life which our Lord confirms when he says,
I have not come to condemn the sinner but to give him life.
And so also,
he saw in the Blessed Virgin Mary a love of life.
For when she said yes to the angel,
she knew she was saying yes to the slaughter of the Lamb of God.
And so St. Francis' second love was the second love of Christ and Mary.
He had a love of giving which is most especially summed up by our Lord on Calvary
when he declares it is consummated and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.
And so,
St. Francis too would constantly give himself to souls in imitation of Christ and Mary.
Finally,
he had a love of chivalry which we see our Lord manifesting
most especially with a woman caught in adultery.
He who was without sin among you let him cast a stone at her
because St. Francis saw that in defending woman you defend motherhood
and it is necessary for all men
to defend motherhood for without motherhood there is no hope and this saint francis based on the
motherhood of the blessed virgin mary and so in regard to the first he truly had a warm heart
without any evidence that the movements of his affections were based on the senses although
he was endowed with a high-strung temperament he kept his instincts all in what it all controlled
he was well controlled and so he truly showed that he had a love for life and he would enter
into that love in a joyful in a jovial way but never in an uncontrolled way and so
he would show us how culture is to manifest its love and indeed it is saint francis who begins
to use flowers in order to beautify the altar it is saint francis who begins to sing in groups
to express the love in his heart it is saint francis who begins to show us how to use all
things for the glory of god for he saw that the time of purgation required had passed and now we
must manifest by way of culture that love that we have acquired so that all creation as saint
paul tells us truly rises up and praises its creator and that must be done through the hands
of the members of christ's mystical church
and so saint francis would quite literally use his hands in order to praise god by repairing
churches by picking flowers in order to decorate the altar by constructing the first nativity set
in the history of the church by using all things well his giving
is best seen in the overcoming of his natural repulsion he had for leprosy notice saint francis
best read very clearly and clarify we must often quote saint francis for different reasons
but astoundingly the only answer we got on the time of purgation was to the leprosy not to the leper
and that is a very important distinction that we must all make because saint francis knew that in
order to exercise charity we must love god above all things and to love our neighbour as ourselves
and so he overcame his natural repulsion of the leprosy because he saw it through the disease in
order to love us and would acquire that love not by way of force but by way of giving he would give
himself on calvary and there with his arms pinioned and his feet pinioned and his sacred heart pierced
he would simply make the offering he would not force it and so saint francis would offer himself
to the leper and would give him a loving embrace and this occurred in the middle of a field in
which the wood line was almost on the horizon and so when saint francis embraced the leper he turned
again to give him a final look of love and he was not present for the leper most likely was the lord
himself who gave saint francis that opportunity and once he overcame that natural repulsion that
we all have to diseases he entered in to that mystery of christ crucified in a most extraordinary
way
and there was nothing he would hold back for love of god and love of neighbor finally to this
exercise of chivalry and the defense of women we can see this most especially in the life of saint
francis this virtue of ch of chivalry because there were two intimate relations that saint
francis had with women one was that in his relationship with the virgin claire the other was
with the widow Jacoba to the Virgin he would lead her along the path of
reparation and adoration and to the widow along the path of prayer and
action and so st. Francis shows himself to be a precursor of what is known in
the church as the second Vatican Council a call to both religious and to laity to
evangelize the world and so if we turn to st. Francis then we can understand the
second Vatican Council as the Church which is wishes us to understand it for
it is a call for to reparation it is a call to adoration it is a call to prayer
and it is a call to action and this is seen most especially in st. Francis's
relationship to st. Clara and blessed Jacoba and so St. Francis would
try to teach the whole church what he included in the preamble of his rule
st. Francis
declared that Brother Francis, and whoever may be at the head of this order, promises obedience and
reverence to Pope Innocent and to his successors, and it is in this statement that he shows himself
to be a truly Catholic and apostolic man. Many of the modern translations do not have this precise
wording, for when St. Francis says that he promises obedience and whoever is the head
of this order, he is reiterating a most profound truth, that the father is the head of the family
and the father speaks for the child. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
It is God the father who confirms the life of Christ, and so it is St. Francis
confessing.
He confirms the life of the mystical body, that is, how we respond to that love of God the father
who sent forth his son in order that his son may be slaughtered for our sin, and so St. Francis
includes this in the preamble so that he shows us very clearly that his life was not a life of
sentimental piety, but it was a life based on profound doctrinal understanding of the nature of
the mystical body of Christ.
And in his preamble, he reiterates to every member of the mystical body that there are three souls
so intimately united that an assault on one is an assault on all. Those souls are Christ in his
humanity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the man he has chosen to be the successor of St. Peter.
You attack any one of them, and you attack the whole of the mystical body of Christ,
for they are moral.
They are morally united in a way that we cannot imagine, but in a way that St. Francis truly understood.
And so we see that in our modern society, grown cold, the hearts grown cold by avarice and lust,
they have grown cold because they have not listened to the vicar of Christ.
And in not listening to the vicar of Christ with the Protestant revolution, they have lost sight of the mother.
And in losing sight of the Mother, Christians, for the most part, have become practical pagans.
And this doctrine is only preserved if we understand what St. Francis meant when He said,
I promise obedience first, and reverence to Pope Innocent and his lawfully elected successor.
And so, the love of the Pope is the love of Christ and Mary, for it is through the Church
In Jesus' voice and His flesh and blood, that God бл план for safe redemption, and only that no soul ch Phar weaponized in neighborship going from close to bed to His own safety.
that will cause beauty, metastasis, and our lives happy and joyful.äl
that we receive knowledge of our Lord and his most holy mother.
And that church has one vicar and one vicar only.
It is the authority of God the Father that he represents.
And so we too must turn to him for our guidance in this world.
This world so caught up in the practice of those vices that blind the heart and destroy the substance of man.
And so he understood full well that as a father he spoke for his family
and he would ask his family, that is the mystical body of Christ,
he would ask them to love Christ, to love Mary, and to love the Pope.
And without these three loves there can be no hope.
Love of Christ is the love of life.
The love of Mary is the love of giving.
The love of the Pope is that love.
The third love of St. Francis, that is the love of chivalry.
For it is the Pope who defends women, who defends children.
And St. Francis would declare to all his children,
they should not be seen often in the high places of society,
but they should be seen always with the poor in some way.
That is, women and children who always are the ones to suffer in a society in which men rule,
not by way of charity, but by way of that which they have over women, their power.
And so they force themselves and they force society to embrace love of greed and love of lust.
And indeed, we see very clearly this manifested to us in that which comes out of what is known as Hollywood.
And indeed, if we were to spend time to analyze what is going on,
we see very clearly that this is not the case.
We see very clearly that in the most popular of films is hidden a very demonic message.
Those things that have become so popular,
things that seem on the surface to be innocent, like the Transformers,
but in the end, it is the fallen ones who are transforming society.
By what?
By painting God as a tyrant who oppresses us with his so-called rules.
But the commandments are not rules.
They are principles of love.
And so, modern society is telling us,
man frees himself through the pursuit of worldly pleasures and the pursuit of worldly love.
St. Francis tells us that is not freedom, that is slavery of the worst order.
Our society is on the brink, if it has not already fallen over to the brink,
to literally believe that Christians are the scourge,
that Christians are the problem with the world because they keep us from the freedom.
That freedom that Satan has deceived us into believing is true freedom.
He has deceived us and that deception is profound.
St. Francis saw it and so his life was a prophetic life.
For the message of St. Francis is more important now than it has ever been in the history of the world.
And so, let us truly enter into that mystery because St. Francis taught by word and example
the knowledge and the love of Christ crucified.
Indeed, foolishness to the world, but always has been and always will be
for those who believe the love and the power of God and the wisdom of God.
As St. Francis said,
Brothers, while we have time,
let us believe.
Let us believe.
Let us do good.
Let us do good.