Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Stigmata of St. Francis, when St. Francis, on the feast
of the Exaltation of the Cross, which we celebrated last Saturday, was up on the mountain of Alverna,
in Italy, during the Lent of preparing for the Feast of St. Michael.
He was there praying and fasting for 40 days, and on this Feast of the Exaltation of the
Cross, he saw Jesus coming down from the heavens in the form of a seraph angel, all on fire,
with six wings, two wings above his head, two veiling his body and two in flight, and
in the midst of the wings he saw Jesus crucified there, coming down to him.
And so he had the feelings of sorrow as well as mingled with joy in seeing this vision
of Jesus, that Jesus would come down to him, and that he would see our Lord.
And this made our Lord, made St. Francis, all inflamed with love and compassion for
Jesus, and when the image disappeared, the form of the crucifixion was impressed upon
the body of St. Francis, with a wound in his side which bled frequently, and with the impression
of the stigmata, which didn't take the form of wounds, but in the form of nails, and it
was as though he had his hands and his feet, the round, the dark, blackish looking head
of the nails, and then the nails coming out, the form of the nails coming out through his
hands and his feet, all bent, like nails that were bent.
And so he had to live with this for the last two years of his life, when he saw this vision,
suffering this, because he wanted to suffer, he wanted to share in the sufferings of Jesus,
but also the scholars say that he wanted to live with this vision, because he wanted to
say that our Lord impressed the stigmata to show to the world and to St. Francis that
he lived this near perfection of the imitation of the life of Jesus and the spirit of Jesus,
the life of Jesus and his love for men, his love for sinners, and desire to save sinners,
this imitation of the life of prayer and contemplation of Jesus and also his preaching.
And the acceptance of the Cross, which Jesus did throughout his whole life. St. Francis
imitated this in the life of Jesus. We see St. Francis was always devoted to the passion
since his conversion and meditation on the sufferings of Jesus, which inflamed his heart,
which made him love Jesus so much that he would weep for the sufferings of Jesus and
weep for sinners.
This compassion for our Lord.
Amen.
Amen.
and compassion for sinners that St. Francis had,
and many of the saints had, in meditating upon the Passion.
So this should certainly remind us to continue to meditate on the Passion of Jesus,
and make this part of our spiritual life, part of our meditation and contemplation,
as all the saints did.
And this is especially the way where we would grow in love for our Lord.
And in this meditation of the sufferings, of the crucifixion of our Lord,
we meditate on sin, too, the sorrow for sin that we should have,
sorrow for our own sins, being enemies of sin,
and doing what we can in a deliberate, concentrated way
to root out sin from our own life first, and plan for that,
root out every occasion of sin,
think about our life and how we have any occasion,
that would cause us to sin,
and to stop that, to live a life of fighting sin,
stopping sin in our own life, and trying to stop sin in the world.
This is what St. Joseph Capasso would say to priests in his reflections to priests,
that priests are meant to diminish sin in the world,
to stop sin from happening in the world.
But this is the duty of all of us,
to diminish sin especially first,
in our own life,
and then try to diminish it in the world through our good example,
through the power of prayer.
Prayer can stop sin from happening,
can halt people in the midst of their desire to sin,
and gain for them the grace to stop sinning, not to sin,
and to do good instead.
This is the power of prayer that we need to exercise,
for that purpose of preventing sin from happening.
Why?
Because we don't want,
we don't want our Lord to be, to be offended.
This love for God will help us to be enemies of sin,
and to be crusaders of, crusaders to fight against sin.
And also in this meditation,
we want to try to console the heart of Jesus,
who is suffering, who is offended so much by sin,
to make that part of our meditations,
and part of our spiritual life,
to console the heart of Jesus.
This is what Blessed Francisco did,
one of the three Fatima children,
when he was asked what he does in his prayers.
He said, I wish to console the heart of Jesus,
who is so sad from the sins of, sins of men.
To console the heart of Jesus, we can do that as well.
As we look at the crucifix,
as we look at the image of the sacred heart of Jesus,
when St., when our Lord said to St. Mary,
Margaret Mary Alcock, that is,
behold the heart that has loved men so much,
and that is wounded by the ingratitude,
and sins of men.
We need to compassionate the heart of Jesus,
and we do that during our times of adoration,
looking at the sacred heart,
which is in the Holy Eucharist,
in the exposed Blessed Sacrament on the altar,
to meditate on that sacred heart,
and try to console our Lord by our time,
by our presence, by our prayers,
by our acts of love for our Lord,
by our affections to Jesus,
to console the heart of Jesus,
to spend time, to be thoughtful in our prayers.
And this is, this is how we offend our Lord
when we're not thoughtful,
not thoughtful in our day-to-day activities,
not thoughtful of God,
who sees and witnesses everything we do,
witnesses our sins and good works.
If we are thoughtful and mindful of our Lord,
and that He can be offended,
then we will do something about it.
We will strive not to sin.
We will strive instead to do His will,
to do the will of God,
and to have that fear,
that gift of the Holy Spirit,
a fear of the Lord, fear of sinning,
fear of displeasing and offending our Lord.
And this should make us sensitive,
make our hearts sensitive to the heart of our Lord.
So I think on this Feast of St. Francis,
we should imitate St. Francis,
who imitated our Lord in his life,
imitate St. Francis in his thoughtfulness of our Lord,
how he would spend all that time meditating
on the passion and sufferings of Jesus
and grew in love for Him in that way.
Thoughtfulness, this thoughtfulness of our Lord,
not to offend Him,
but to seek to please Him all the days of our life.
St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi