Do you all know who our Patron Saint, not of this Parish, that’s Our Lady of course, but of the diocese is?  St. Francis, who’s feast day was Friday. I want to talk to you a little bit about St. Francis because I think it’s important that we know about our traditions and our legacies here in this Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Also, I just love St. Francis, and I know you do too. So let me tell you a little bit about his life.

He was born in 1181 in Assisi, a mountain town in Umbria, Italy, in the central part of what is today Italy. Of course, it didn’t exist as Italy in the 12^th Century. He was born to a very wealthy man who was a cloth merchant, and this is the beginning of commerce as we know it today, of capitalism, and of banking, and it was a great time to be rich because you’d get richer. He worked for his father until he was 20. One account of his early life described him as gallant, high spirited and generous, but he was also as the young people would say a "party animal". He was a bit of a wild man. When he was 20 he entered the army of Assisi, they were fighting the neighbors in Perugia, and he was taken prisoner. It was a border war. He was taken prisoner and became very ill while in prison. Then at the age of 21 was released. As he was recuperating from his illness, he had one of his early conversions. There were many conversions in Francis’ life. He decided that he would give up this world of pleasure and seek the world of grace, and follow Christ with all his heart and with all he had. He began to serve the poor. Shortly after he got well, he went to Rome on pilgrimage. Outside of St. John Lateran’s Cathedral, which was the papal cathedral at the time in Rome, he saw the many beggars of Rome and he felt such compassion to them that he changed his clothes with the clothes of a beggar. That beggar got a good deal. He changed himself just to know what it was like to have nothing, and of course, he encountered and learned the real hardships of poverty. Surprisingly, he also encountered the joy of poverty as he described it. He said, "When you have nothing, you have everything." He realized that he owned the sky and the stars and the mountains and the oceans and the seas, and that everything was his. When he had a lot of property, he couldn’t see anything but his stuff, but when he didn’t have anything, he realized, how blessed he was and how rich he was. He learned a lot of joy from being very poor.

He returned to Assisi and disowned his father. I personally think in his life, from what I know, this was the only cruel thing that Francis ever did. His father, of course, was disappointed with him, because he wasn’t taking the family business, and he had become this radical catholic, but he disowned his father by standing in front of the cathedral in Assisi buck naked and telling the bishop and everyone else that he disowned his father and all of this clothes and all of his wealth. I can imagine that scene. And then he went on again to serve the poor. He was praying again at the Church of San Damiano, a little decrepit church, and underwent another conversion. He heard Christ from the cross say to him. "Francis, rebuild my church." Francis thought he meant the church building, but of course Jesus meant the Catholic Church. At that time the church was in a state of disrepair because of the incompetence and sinfulness of it’s bishops and priests. Nothing changes a whole lot being Catholic. He went about again doing his work and when he was 27 years old he was praying in a little church known as Porziuncola, this church still exists, except it’s in a huge basilica today in Assisi. It was a tiny little church. You could put five of these churches of Port Temecula inside this church with the roof and everything. It was just a tiny little chapel. Then he heard Christ speak to him with the words of Matthew 10 which said just give it all up and follow me. So he got rid of his shoes and his staff an he put on a brown robe with a rope and started to collect followers, men who wanted to live like this, to do good things for the poor, and for Christ. He became famous through this simple life. He wrote a life according to the gospel, a discipline if you will, that his followers agreed to follow. It was approved by Pope Innocent III, and thus the Franciscans were founded, the Order of Friar Minors. If you know a Franciscan you’ll see behind his or her name, O.F.M., Order of Friar Minors, Order of Little Brothers or Sisters. Again, he grew and he traveled throughout Eastern Europe, saying prayers. He even went to Egypt. Then, when he was 31, he was joined by St. Clare in Assisi. Now Clare was a noble woman, like Francis very wealthy and well educated. Unlike Francis, she was beautiful. Francis was just, well, he was ugly. He was about that big, ears stuck out, and there are paintings of him that were made during his life or shortly after his death, and he was nothing to look at, I’ll tell you. Of course he had a beautiful heart, but Clare was tall and blonde and beautiful and she took his rule and gathered around her a community of women to do what Francis’ group was doing. By the way, in Assisi, Francis’ Basilica is on one side of town, and Clare’s on the other. Both were damaged in the earthquake a few years ago. In Clare’s’ cathedral or basilica, there are frescos that have been restored and in one of the frescos, Clare is blessing the bread that the Pope, standing next to her, is about to consecrate into Eucharist. Clare became the confidant and advisor to the popes, so strong was she in her holiness, and so respected as a woman of God. Anyway, back to Francis. When he was 40 he founded the 3^rd Order of St. Francis. Are any of you members of the 3^rd Order? We had one at mass yesterday. It is laypeople who want to live simply also can follow Francis’ rules to some degree. He died when he was 45 at the church of Porziuncola on October 2, 1226.

Now the reason I mention it is not just because his feast day was Friday, and not just because Francis was our patron saint in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe is named after the City of Santa Fe. The city of Santa Fe is not just Santa Fe. Santa Fe means "holy faith", the city of Santa Fe is El Pueblo Real de la Santa Fe de Saint Francisco de Assisi, the royal village of the holy faith of St. Francis of Assisi. But the reason I wanted to talk about him is because he’s such a treasure to us, today, right now, in our lives. We can use Francis to help us to be holy, to help us to be like him. And I have to tie this into the readings of today, so I was wondering what Francis was thinking when he read what we read from Isaiah and from Matthew. He read those same scriptures, exactly. Both those scriptures tell the story that God gave his people everything and instead of being grateful, his people rejected him, rebelled in sin and killed his prophets, killed his son, instead of being grateful. If there was one hallmark of Francis and of Franciscan spirituality, it’s gratitude for what we have. If you read Francis’ writings and know of his life, he was just so grateful. Every morning he awoke, and oh, my goodness Lord, thank you for this day, thank you for everything. Francis was even grateful for what we would consider the bad things in life. He was grateful and thanked God because he was suffering because his suffering brought him closer to the sacred heart of Christ. As a matter of fact, Francis even had a friend in death. He referred to death, something that we fear, as his friend. He called death his sister. As a matter of fact, some of the paintings you’ll see of St. Francis there is this skull on the desk where he is or at the place of prayer. He carried a skull around with him to remind him of his own mortality, and he wrote this about death, "Praise be you my Lord, through sister death, for whom no one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin. Blessed are they she finds doing your will. No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks, and serve him with great humility."

You know I know people who are like Francis. I was opening my mail and I got a letter with a little picture, I know you can’t see that, but this is a little girl and I think she’s about 7. Men never know how old kids are. You ever ask a man, "How old are your kids?" "I don’t know honey, how old are these kids?" I was there when she was born, but I think she’s like seven. Anyways, she has Down’s Syndrome and she’s very beautiful and she is smiling in this picture, she always is laughing. She is a source of great joy to her parents and to the church. She has been suffering since she was born. She has been in and out of hospitals, she has almost died a dozen times and we thought we were going to lose her last month, and again she survived, so her mom Karen Broad had sent me a note. Dear Father John, thank you again for your prayers for Rose. Again we are able to bring her home with us. This is a picture of her with a 2-chamber heart, a passed aorta, one lung, and only about 55% oxygenation in her body. God is good (she writes). God is good. This family was prepared for this child to die if that’s what God wanted, but they wanted her home. Karen would tell you that the suffering of Rose has been a blessing for the whole family because they are closer to each other and to God now than they were before. They give praise and glory to God, this family, for a child who has suffered so much in this life. That’s Franciscan spirituality. That’s what it means to be like Francis and like Jesus Christ.

Well, if you’re a Christian, if I’m a Christian, we’re supposed to be grateful, not like the people we’ve heard about in the scriptures today. You can tell a person oftentimes is grateful by their attitude of life, by their sense of joy. I’ll tell you who’s not grateful, it’s those of you who are world-class grouches. Now, don’t look at him. Look straight ahead now. If necessary act like you are asleep. But you know what I mean, there are some people the glass is always half empty, the world is going to hell, there is no hope, this is going to turn out bad. I am convinced those people are not grateful. And your penance, if that fits you, is to take a walk this weekend in this marvelous place we call home, and look at how blessed we are; we have freedom, we have enough to eat, we have the faith that will give us eternal life. We need to be grateful people and to show that gratitude to God by being loving to each other. A grateful person is inherently at peace, he’s optimistic, and accepts whatever life brings. Let’s pray. I would like to pray these words from Paul’s letter today, but in your imagination if you would, make them the words of Francis, our patron as he speaks to us and instructs us.

Thanks.