Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we celebrate the feast of the Stigmata of our Holy Father, St. Francis. The Stigmata was the visible sign of St. Francis' invisible transformation. St. Paul says in Romans 12:2 that we are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. The Greek word that's used there for transformed is the word 'metamorpho,' so we get our English word 'metamorphosis' from it. We think of how an unattractive earth-crawling larvae becomes a glorious winged butterfly; it's through the process of metamorphosis. So too, a worldly sinner can become another worldly saint through a spiritual transformation, a spiritual version of that, through God's grace which transforms us.
As a side note, a few days ago we celebrated the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as well as just a couple of days ago the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows too. So right before the Stigmata of St. Francis, we celebrate those other two feasts of redemptive suffering. Recently, I've been telling people that if there are crosses or difficulties that we are encountering during the day, we shouldn't get worried or bent out of shape. Why? Because where there's a cross, there's Jesus, right? Where there's a cross, there's Jesus; where there's Jesus, there's Our Lady as well. Sometimes we think that our Lord forgets about us or isn't thinking about us, which of course isn't true. We count our blessings, but we should also maybe count our crosses as well, because if we have crosses, it's a sure sign that Jesus has not forgotten about us. Where there's a cross, there He is, there's Jesus, and Our Lady's there too. Crosses are blessings, believe it or not.
But back to St. Francis. St. Francis' transformation was the work of God's grace and his soul combined with the cooperation of Francis himself. It's never God alone or me alone; it's actually both of us together. God who created you without yourself will not save you without yourself, as St. Augustine famously said. The work of sanctification is first and foremost God's work, it's true, as the apostle says to the Church of Philippi when he says, 'I'm confident of this, that the one, meaning God, the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus,' Philippians 1:6. So holiness is primarily God's work in us. He begins the work, He promises to complete it, but He doesn't do it without us. He doesn't do it without our cooperation.
Are there other examples of human and divine cooperation? Of course there are. The Incarnation itself is the collaboration of God and man, though it's first and foremost the work of God. Sacred Scripture is the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the sacred authors. So it's not just one to the exclusion of the other, though the primary author is the Holy Spirit, Sacred Scripture. So too, the work of redemption is the work of Christ and the work of Our Lady. God made her cooperation indispensable. Without her, there's no redemption, but there's no Incarnation either. She is the Co-Redemptrix, the new Eve alongside the new Adam, so it's not just Jesus alone. It's Jesus and Mary, though the work of redemption is principally His. Also, the work of our redemption is our work as well, too, as the apostle hints, Colossians 1:24, when he says, 'I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body, the Church.' That means, as we often say, that our Lord has set aside a portion of His passion, a portion of His suffering for us so that we can cooperate and assist in His redeeming work. That's what the word 'Portiuncula' means, right? It means the little portion. And this is the pattern with all of God's activities in human history. He calls us to be His collaborators. Some answer the call, some don't. Many don't. St. Francis did.
The seal of approval of the authenticity of Francis' conformity to Christ was that gift of the Stigmata, the gift of the wounds of His suffering Savior, so that he, too, could complete in his flesh what was lacking in Christ's afflictions, so that he, too, could offer to Jesus his Portiuncula, his little portion, his little sliver of the cross. The Stigmata was a sign for all the world to see what heaven and even the enemies of heaven already knew, that this small man from the town of Assisi had truly become an alter Christus, another Christ. 'When fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher,' Jesus had said in the Gospel of Luke, Luke 6:40, and that's what happened to St. Francis. He became like His Master, both in life and in death, dying with the same wounds through which we receive life. It's believed that St. Francis was the first person in Church history to actually receive this very special gift and honor from the Lord, the honor of the Stigmata.
For our part, how can we become like our Teacher, like our Savior? How can we apply the example of St. Francis to ourselves? Well, the Lord gave us the recipe for that in today's Gospel. He says in Luke 9:23, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.' So deny yourself, meaning saying no to your selfishness and self-centered thinking and choices. Take up your cross daily, which means say yes to and accept the crosses and difficulties of today. And 'follow Me' means imitate My goodness, imitate Me in My love, in My faithfulness, in My forgiving of My enemies, My praying to the Father for others, My merciful heart towards others. Imitate Me in doing good with your time on earth, which is exactly how St. Francis ends the rule of life for his friars. He ends it by quoting Galatians 6:10, where St. Paul says, 'Brothers, while we have time, let us do good.'  And lastly for today, it was also St. Francis' deep humility which caused the graces of God to shower down upon him. During and after his conversion, his only ambition was to love and to serve the Lord. Francis saw himself as inferior to others, and he believed that God chose him simply because the Lord couldn't find a more miserable person on the face of the earth. It's actually what he believed. We might say that about ourselves in jest or in a fleeting impulse of humility, but our Holy Father Francis truly believed it about himself. In this as well, he also fulfilled the words spoken of our Lord. When St. Paul says in Philippians 2:7-8, that Christ emptied Himself, that He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Humility and obedience always go together, just like pride and disobedience always follow each other like night and day. A true saint is humble and is obedient to God, obedient to the Church, and they share in Jesus' sufferings and in His crucifixion in various ways, but they will also one day share in His glory as St. Francis does as we speak.
So let's ask our Lady, Queen of the Seraphic Order, for the grace to follow in St. Francis' footsteps according to our calling and our state in life in particular. Let's ask her for the grace to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He works on making us become more like our Teacher, more like our Master, more like Jesus Himself.  Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.