Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi
This coming Tuesday, October 4th, we celebrate the feast day
of our Parish’s patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi.
We know him today as the patron
saint of the poor and disenfranchised, of peace, and of the environment.
St. Francis was born 830 years
ago as Giovanni Francesco di Bernadone into a life that was very different from
how we now view him. He was born into
the family of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi,
in what is now Italy. Francis spent his early life as a typical
wealthy young man of the time, and later fought as a soldier in the service of Assisi. This was also the time of the Crusades
against Muslim armies in and near the Holy Land.
During his lifetime St.
Francis became aware of the wide divide between the poor and the very rich;
between the have-nots and the haves. He
saw the immorality of the seemingly never-ending wars of the time that devastated
the lives of so many. St. Francis also
saw the need to protect and enjoy nature as stewards of God’s Creation.
He reached out to those whose
beliefs were different when he made the dangerous journey to meet the Islamic
leader Sultan Malik Al-Kamil in Egypt
on a mission of peace. (You can read
about this meeting in the book, The Saint
and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s
Mission of
Peace by Paul Moses.)
To follow in St. Francis’s footsteps, we do not have to give away all our worldly goods or
risk a hazardous journey to try to stop a war.
As parishioners here at St. Francis of Assisi Parish, we can help
address issues of poverty, hunger, conflict, and threats to our biosphere on
which our lives depend.
Activities within our Parish
that work to alleviate & address issues of poverty can be found on the
new Parish website under the three tabs called, “Service” & “Outreach” & “Support”.
We can also help by offering
our prayers for those who are in need. There
are so many ways in which we can help.
We are limited only by our imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment