[00:00] Ave, Regina, Mater Misericordiae. Praised be Jesus and Mary. After celebrating the exaltation of the Holy Cross this past Monday,

[00:37] and then the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows on Tuesday, today we celebrate in the Franciscan order another feast that continues the theme of the Cross, the Feast of the Stigmata of our Holy Father, St. Francis. May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let no man trouble me, for I bear the brand marks of Jesus in my body,

[01:11] St. Paul says in today's first reading. I have been crucified with Christ. We all repeat it in today's response to our psalm, again with words from St. Paul. But St. Francis, he really lived these words. He bore the brand marks of Jesus in his body. He was crucified with Christ.

[01:45] His life was stamped with the cross at the time of his conversion in the dilapidated little chapel of San Damiano on the outskirts of Assisi. St. Francis, now before the crucifix, from which our Lord told him three times,

[02:16] "Francis, go and repair my church, which as you see is falling into ruin." The early Franciscan sources explain, from that hour his heart was stricken and wounded with melting love and compassion for the passion of Christ. And for the rest of his life, he carried in it the wounds of the Lord Jesus.

[02:47] Until his death, he was always conformed to the passion of Christ. He constantly meditated on the Lord's passion, the mystery of the redemption, that mystery as well as the mystery of the incarnation were the favorite subjects of St. Francis' meditation.

[03:19] And he meditated a lot on these mysteries. And that's what made him so conformed to Christ in these mysteries. He prayed on them constantly. Two years prior to his death in 1226, so 1224, St. Francis' configuration to Christ crucified reached its perfection.

[03:50] It took place during his customary 40-day retreat on Mount La Verna in honor of St. Michael the Archangel. During this retreat, he saw a vision of Christ crucified. As the vision disappeared, St. Bonaventure informs us, it left not only a greater ardor of love in the inner man, but no less marvelously marked him outwardly

[04:21] with the stigmata of the crucified. The first time in history we know of that this has happened, that someone has received the very marks of Christ in their flesh, the stigmata. It's appropriate that this would have happened to St. Francis, so great a lover of Christ.

[04:52] To Jesus' call to follow Him along the way of the cross, St. Francis responded most generously. And he is rewarded for that generosity by this perfect conformity with Christ crucified, internally and then externally. We want to be like St. Francis in this regard,

[05:23] and really all the saints to some degree reach this conformity to Christ crucified. It's the only way to reach that perfection that Christ calls us to. Are we responding generously like St. Francis did to our Lord's call, "Follow me, take up your cross"?

[05:58] Now, our share in the cross of Christ might not be so dramatic, extreme, or intense as it was for St. Francis, but our crosses are just as real and sanctifying, as they can be. Those small sacrifices, mortifications, penances that we can offer up each day voluntarily,

[06:33] or those sacrifices and penances we need to accept, we embrace them. Involuntarily they come to us, but we learn to hopefully embrace them. A trying sickness or an injury, tiredness, exhaustion, annoyances from all about us,

[07:03] from people especially, situations in life, difficult situations, just how society is in general. There's so many things that we can offer up to the Lord, and by doing that draw closer to Him, and love Him more. Just before he died, St. Francis said to his brothers,

[07:34] "I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what you are to do." And we know what Christ wants us to do. We need only put it into practice. As He tells us in today's gospel, "Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny his very self, take up his cross each day, and follow in my steps."

[08:08] We will follow in our Lord's footsteps, with our crosses, like St. Francis, and all the saints, if we could but say with St. Paul, again, words of St. Paul, "The love of Christ urges us." Praised be Jesus and Mary.

[08:59] Amen.