My yoke is easy and my burden is light
The Feast of St. Francis
Galatians 6:14-18 • Matthew 20:1-16
Today we remember and celebrate the life, teachings and example of one of our most beloved saints: Francis of Assisi. Francis was born into a wealthy cloth merchant’s family at the end of the twelfth century. As a youth, he was as fond of carousing and generally enjoying life as any of his peers. In his late teens, he had a life changing experience when he was held in captivity in Perugia for a year after a brief and unsuccessful military experience. He returned, a changed man, and one who was known to withdraw to quiet places to pray. It was on one of those occasions, that, as he knelt in the ruined chapel of San Damiano, he heard God’s voice telling him to rebuild his church. And he immediately set about doing just that, initially rather more literally than God perhaps intended, focusing his attention on the restoration of that particular chapel. One thing led to another, and before long, Francis had abandoned his wealth and his family, to live as he believed Jesus and his followers had lived: giving the world an example of loving poverty and leaving everything to God. While he was initially mocked, his renunciation of wordly wealth attracted many young men. Their Rule of Life as Fratres Minores was somewhat reluctantly approved by Pope Innocent III, and within a few years, there were some 5,000 members.
Francis has to be one of our most beloved saints, known for his extraordinary generosity to all in need, and marrying our love for our gardens with our love for animals. He’s often found in our flower beds: we indeed have one here in in the Holy Innocents garden. And we know so many of the stories, documented by one of his brothers traveling with him. Stories of Francis talking with swallows and waterbirds, fish, falcons and pheasants, crickets, wolves, bees and rabbits.
It is said that while Francis is, and has been for centuries, such a favorite, he is also the least followed. His saintliness was recognized during his lifetime, and he was swiftly canonized after his death. However, his Rule was just too demanding. Give up everything? You must be mad! It is, however, just what Francis did.
Francis knew God in the world around him and knew that it was by being in intimate relationship with every part of creation, that he could also be in intimate relationship with God. In his famous Canticle of the Sun, he calls out to the wonder and radiance of the sun, the moon and stars, the wind, the waters, the earth, and death itself, recognizing his kinship with the whole created world.
In the first of the two creation stories in the book of Genesis, humans were supposedly created to have dominion over the animals and plants of the world. That made no sense to Francis. The mandate to subdue the earth couldn’t have been farther from his agenda. Instead, Francis was at one with the second Creation Story in chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Genesis where humans are made out of the soil, the hummus of the earth, as is everything else. He knew himself to be just one part of the great family of creation.
How tragic that we humans have so aligned ourselves with that first creation story and have degraded and pillaged our planet for millenia. We learnt how to grow grains some nine thousand years ago and have done so with increasing intensity with little regard for the damage we have done to the soil. For generations we have taken, and taken, and taken with little awareness that we were taking faster than could be restored. We have failed to take care of our earth’s precious resources, and our water, our land, and our air are imperiled.
There were many that tried to teach us, but they were considered backward and unprogressive. Increasingly in our lifetimes, there have been voices urging us to reconsider our ways and save our precious planet. Many of us, now, recognize that our world is in dire peril. We experience extreme weather events, cataclysmic fires, rising sea levels. And yet, the greed for short term gain still drives too many holding on to positions of power.
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Swedish teenage activist and prophet Greta Thunberg is absolutely right to scold us for our greed and our fairy tales, but I don’t think today is the day for me to rub our noses in it. While we must not, not, not ever lose sight of the need to speak up for our protection and restoration of our environment, we also are trying to handle a lot right now. I don’t need to go through the list of cumulating disasters that we are currently beset with. Each one of us is struggling to maintain some kind of equanimity, whatever our situation.
Perhaps today is the day to let Francis teach us. Perhaps we can find ways to connect ourselves, to be in relationship with the beauty and the holiness of our environment. To know ourselves as one with the lovely rose, the hummingbird, the haunting orange sun, the shimmering misty moon. Our sin is feeling separated from the natural world. Francis knew only his connection to that world, and that was what he lived.
His life was not easy, and he died at the age of 44 in great physical discomfort. However he lived a life of radiant spirituality and, by example and his teaching, has been profoundly influential to millions. Who says life should be easy? We might like it to be, but that isn’t the way it usually is. Francis was inspired and comforted by the words of Jesus, and so might we:
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’