Homily for Friday, 4 October 2013– Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi

Friday of the 26th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Baruch 1:15-22; Psalm 79:1b-2, 3-5, 8, 9; Luke 10:13-16

How many of us have had in our minds an image of a peaceful, gentle, and even cute St. Francis of Assisi: the friend of animals and lover of all God’s creation?

There is nothing wrong with these images, however reinforced they may be by our culture of the last few decades. For example, some of you may remember the ostentatious 1972 Franco Zeffirelli film about St. Francis, Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Even at Mass, we sing hymns like the Prayer of St. Francis and the Canticle of the Sun. While these hymns are based on Francis’ own writings, they also reinforce popular images of the peace and creation-loving St. Francis.

These images are right and true, but Francis of Assisi is a saint for more than just his love of peace and of the created environment. St. Francis lived as a lover of God and a lover, builder, and reformer of the Church. Even the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon includes a scene of Francis giving away his expensive clothes in the square of Assisi, literally off his own body, to the shock of the townspeople!

Francis is a saint of love; a saint of poverty; a saint of peace; and a saint of repentance and reform. In these ways, from what we hear in today’s Gospel reading, Francis is a saint after the heart of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, too, stands for love, for poverty, for peace and, where necessary, for repentance and reform among individuals and even religious institutions that have neglected the Gospel.

We might ask why, in today’s Gospel, Jesus scolds two tiny Galilean fishing villages, Chorazin and Bethsaida, instead of, maybe, a larger centre of evil and sin. According to one of my Basilian brothers who has visited the Holy Land, the Government of Israel has a sign welcoming visitors to one of these villages’ ruins. The sign reads: “This is the village that Jesus cursed.”

It is difficult to know why Chorazin and Bethsaida, and then Capernaum in today’s Gospel, gained such infamy as “the village[s] that Jesus cursed.” However, we can understand from our Gospel reading today that Jesus’ mission, and that of every Christian disciple in Jesus’ time and now, includes inviting each one of us, and the Church as a whole, to a constant process of repentance and reform. By repentance and reform, we grow in holiness.

Vatican II, nearly fifty years ago, recognized that we are at the same time the “Church always holy” and the “Church always in need of reform.” No disciple of Christ is exempt from Jesus’ appeal to reform and repentance: Not in Chorazin and Bethsaida; not in Assisi; not in Rome; not right here at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish at St. Margaret Mary in Irondequoit.

We are free to accept and free to reject Jesus’ invitation to reform and repentance, knowing that by our choice we accept or reject Christ, and we accept or reject the one who sent Christ.

Let us pray, especially through the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi on this day, for continued strengthening of a spirit of repentance that reforms hearts and that builds and binds us as Church, as disciples of Christ who accept and live out the Gospel message in its integrity.