Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Trinity – 3rd October: The feast of St Francis
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
(Later on this day there is a ‘Pet Blessing’ service)
Francis was born in Assisi in central Italy either in 1181 or the following year. He was baptised Giovanni but given the name Francesco by his father, a cloth merchant who traded in France and had married a French wife. There was an expectation that he would eventually take over his father’s business but Francis had a rebellious youth and a difficult relationship with his father. After suffering the ignominy of imprisonment following capture whilst at war with the local city of Perugia, he returned a changed man. He took to caring for disused churches and for the poor, particularly those suffering from leprosy. Whilst praying in the semi-derelict church of St Damian, he distinctly heard the words: “Go and repair my church, which you see is falling down.” Others joined him and he prepared a simple, gospel-based Rule for them all to live by. As the Order grew, it witnessed to Christ through preaching the gospel of repentance, emphasising the poverty of Christ as an example for his followers. Two years before his death, his life being so closely linked with that of his crucified Saviour, he received the Stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, on his body. At his death, on the evening of 3 October 1226, his Order had spread throughout western Christendom.
The life of St. Francis was the subject of a very dramatic film directed by Franco Zefferelli.
One scene is particularly effective. An aristocratic friend of Francis has gained permission for Francis to be received at the papal court at the Lateran Palace. His purpose is to ask the pope’s permission to start a small community of men to live a simple life, close to nature, and committed to sharing in the poverty of the poorest in Italian rural society.
Francis enters the audience chamber with a well written Latin petition – prepared for Francis by his learned friend.