Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
Acts 4:32-35, 5:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
Oct. 4, 2026
One of the marks of the privilege I bear
is choosing how little I will eat. So,
when I find myself in my office at lunchtime, I usually have just a protein bar
and a couple of handfuls of nuts. Now, I
understand this is not the healthiest lunch I could choose. Ideally, I’d have some fruit and veggies with
my protein, but typically I just eat what’s there in my desk drawer. (Now, if you’re keeping score, I always get a
salad when I meet someone for lunch and often have a salad for dinner.) At least the protein bar and nuts are better
for me than what I’d really like, which is a cheeseburger and fries. As a person of privilege in this society, I
can be picky about what I eat. And I can
have as much or as little as I like.
Privilege is on my mind today as we
celebrate the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who died 800 years ago yesterday.
We think of Francis as the patron saint
of animals and, really, of the whole earth; and his care for creation is why we
bless pets near the feast of St. Francis. But the significance of St. Francis speaks
deeply to our human relationships, too, because of what Francis’ ministry truly
lived out: Love, with a capital L, the very Love that is God.
The fact that his story took this
trajectory is the last thing anyone in Assisi would have imagined, including
Francis himself.1 He was a
product of the privilege of his day and age. His father was a wealthy cloth merchant who’d
imported a beautiful wife from France, too. Their son, Francis, grew up with the best that
12th-century Italy had to offer, and he was on a course toward
becoming one of the bold and the beautiful himself. As a young man, his passion was partying with
his friends. He imagined himself as a
knight, and he went off to war against another Italian city-state, Perugia, to
prove what he was made of. Unfortunately,
he was quickly captured and spent most of that conflict in a Perugian prison,
waiting for his father to ransom him. The
fact that Francis was there for a year or so might say a lot about what his
father thought of him.
Eventually, with the ransom paid, Francis
came home, no longer dreaming of military glory. Broken in body and spirit, he was ready for
his conversion moment. It came as he
rode his horse outside Assisi and encountered a person with leprosy, an
excruciating and highly contagious skin-wasting disease. True to form, Francis passed wide of the leper
until he heard God giving him a different command. So, Francis went back, got off his horse, and
embraced the leper, honoring him with Love that Francis himself hadn’t really
known before. He turned away from the
bold and the beautiful and turned toward the sick and the forgotten instead.
This reorientation turned his heart toward
God, too. Praying in the local chapel, he
heard God telling him, “Francis, rebuild my church.” He took the Lord literally. Selling off some of his father’s fine cloth
without permission, he set out rebuilding the old chapel. Francis’ father had had enough and took him
before the local bishop, demanding that the bishop force Francis to pay him
back. Francis declined and put his life
in the hands of a higher authority. He took
off his own fine clothes, threw them at his father’s feet, donned a rough brown
robe, and left – without a plan, other than following where God would lead him
and trusting God to provide what he’d need.
Now, we hear this story and see Francis like
one of the guys who wander down Wornall Road, mumbling to themselves. Instead, Francis spoke compellingly with
everyone he met as he went from village to village, telling the story of a God
who loved them enough to come, and share their suffering, and offer them life under
God’s reign and rule instead. Shockingly,
people took him up on it. They found his
message so compelling that they, too, left their unfulfilling lives and
followed Francis.
Eventually, enough people had come along
that Francis found he had to organize them, and the Franciscan monastic order
was born. Rejecting the wealth and power
that the Church had built up as it had wandered away from Jesus’ path, Francis
and his followers renounced private property, following the model we heard in
the reading from Acts today. And even as
his order grew, Francis refused ordination as a priest in order to stand
against the clerical privilege that office would bring.
Instead, in word and action, he spent his
life embodying the upside-down reign and rule of God, the way of life Jesus had
lived and proclaimed. Starting with the
leper he embraced and continuing from village to village, Francis insisted that
loving, self-giving relationship isn’t just a nice idea but actually the heart
of God and the paradigm we’re called to follow. For Francis, that was true about the good
earth God has given us – that we’re in relationship with “brother sun,” and
“sister moon,” and every living creature with whom we share the gift of life. And, for Francis, that was also true about
every person – especially “the least,” whom we easily forget but in whose steps
Jesus walks the earth every day (Matthew 25:40).
So, 800 years later, what in the name of
God are you and I supposed to do with the story of Francis of Assisi?
We might start by remembering whose
creation this is, after all. Francis
looked at the life his father led, and the stark difference between that world
and the world of the leper down the road, and Francis asked, “Is this what
Jesus had in mind?” – a life founded on the principle that I have a right to everything
I can get? Jesus had told a different
story with the parable we heard in today’s Gospel reading, this story of the
person of great wealth whose long-term plan is to store up for himself as much
as he can. When our stories end, we hear
God asking, “The things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20). And, in fact, whose are they now, really?
Along with remembering that we’re actually
not the owners of what God gives us to tend, I think Francis would ask
us to remember just who that is walking down Wornall Road, mumbling to himself.
It’s not just some crazy guy. It’s Jesus.
And that’s when the soul-searching really
begins. For each of us in the contexts
of our lives, and for all of us in this parish of St. Andrew’s, this geographic
area we serve – how do we embrace the leper in our midst?
I don’t know a quick-and-easy answer. What I know instead is the struggle of
discerning what faithfulness looks like.
As a parish, we faced this struggle
directly a few months ago. Over at HJ’s,
six days a week, we served free coffee to anyone who came by – really good
coffee, too, specialty drinks prepared by baristas. For a long time, we were running a little
inbreaking of the kingdom of God there at HJ’s Café, with parishioners, and young
families, and neighbors from the Blue Goose, and homeless folks all enjoying
their morning Joe. It was great … until
it wasn’t. Over time, word spread among
the folks on the street; so, as more of them came, we had to get more specific
about rules of behavior at the Café and more direct in enforcing them. That worked … until it didn’t. Eventually, folks from the street were using
drugs in the restrooms, spurring 911 calls; and violence began breaking out. That wasn’t safe for the parishioners, and
young families, and neighbors from the Blue Goose. So, we’ve limited Café service to times when
other things are happening at HJ’s, like the Friday-morning jam session and the
Saturday Farmer’s Market. It’s worked. We still get a few street folks coming by, but
not the acting out.
I find that story a little heartbreaking. And … it was the right thing to do. We still have a staff member who coordinates our
outreach ministries and offers assistance to folks who come by looking for help.
But we’re neither a shelter nor a
social-service agency, and we can’t pretend to be.
Still, when I drive up Wornall Road every
morning from I-435, I see the lepers along the way. Too often, as I exit the highway and pull up
to the stoplight to turn onto Wornall, I would choose the lane farthest away from
the guy standing there, asking for money. Now, St. Francis would get off his horse and
embrace this guy at the stoplight. He’d
probably give him what he had in his pouch, too. So, what should I do?
I’ve taken to keeping a box of protein
bars in my car. Turns out, a couple of
them make a good lunch. And offering
them makes me more likely to choose the lane next to the guy at the
stoplight and even roll down my window to say hello.
Now, I have no illusions that I’m solving anything by doing this. Neither did Francis. But he got off his horse anyway.
1.
Francis’
story is taken from “About St. Francis.” The Catholic Center at the University
of Georgia. Available at: https://ugacatholic.org/about-st-francis-of-assisi/.
Accessed Feb. 2, 2026.
