Isaiah 5: 1-7
Mt 21: 33-43
Singing a New Song
Francis of Assisi
Introduction
(A love story)
The first reading is a love story about a farmer who built himself a dearly beloved vineyard, lavishing upon it all the TLC he could muster, clearing away all the stones, spading it up thoroughly, searching for the very best vines possible, and then finishing it off with a fine watchtower to guard his beloved vineyard, and a wine press for the harvesters to squeeze out the nectar of human celebration (Is 5:1-7).
What is the vineyard in
this love story? Responsorial Psalm 80 tells us, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the
house of Israel”-- the People of the Old Testament. The vineyard of the Lord of hosts today is the People of the New
Testament. The first reading is a love
story between God and God’s people.
But the love story goes sour. The Lord of hosts becomes disappointed with his vineyard. After all his effort, he goes out one day to look for a harvest of sweet grapes, only to find wild sour grapes. He complains saying, “What more could I have done for you, my vineyard, that I have not already done! And this is all you offer me?”
In anger he says, “I will let the trespasser trample you under foot. I will no longer prune you or cultivate around you. I will give you over to thorns and thistles to choke you off.” And so the vineyard fell into ruin. And the responsorial psalm cries out, “Oh Lord of hosts, look down from heaven and protect what your right hand has planted…. Oh Lord of hosts, restore us, your vineyard” (Ps 80).
The need for restoration
Church history is about the love affair between God
and God’s vineyard, and about the love affair going sour from time to time, and
about the vineyard always in need of restoration.
When Pope John XXIII was elected late in 1958, by
January of 1959 he announced his intention to call a council because the
vineyard of the Lord was in need of restoration. Before that in the 16th
century, the church awakened by the Protestant Reformation, summoned the
Council of Trent to restore the vineyard of the Lord that had fallen into ruin
and was grown over by thorns and thistles. And before that in the 13th
century, when the church had reached incredible heights of splendor in
philosophy, theology, art and architecture, the vineyard of the Lord even then
was in need of restoration, precisely because splendor corrupts. That
restoration of the Middle Ages began in a very obscure little mountainside
village in Italy with the birth of a remarkable man in 1182. In that year
Francisco Bernadone was born—the man who was to become the world’s “Francis of
Assisi.”
Francis of Assisi 1182-1224
He was such a remarkable
man that the freethinker, Ernest Renan,
called him "the only perfect Christian since Christ." The English
writer, Oscar Wilde also needed an
exaggeration to characterize him. He wrote:
"There were Christians before Christ, but there haven't been any
since (he was an angry man). I make one exception: in 1182 was born St. Francis
of Assisi." The exaggerations go
on and on: in 1182 was born “the first great pacifist” (“Lord, make me an
instrument of your peace…”), “the first
great Californian” (the old Franciscan missions of the West), even “the first
great hippie.” Mario Cuomo, former
Governor of New York State, in his keynote address to the National Democratic
Convention in 1984 in the city named after the saint, San Francisco,
called Francis “the world’s first true Democrat.”
The man born in Assisi
became so historic that the US government
printed a stamp in 1982 commemorating the 800th anniversary of the
birth of Francis. And the city of his birth became so historic that three times
Pope John Paul II summoned all the world’s religions to come to Assisi and
there summit with him for the peace of the world. The last time they assembled
was on January 24, 2002 in response to September 11th. Francis died on the 3rd
of October 1224, in the 42nd year of his life. His feast day is October the 4th.
The call to restore the vineyard
One day in the 23rd
year of his life, in 1205, he was praying before a crucifix in a rickety little
old church of San Damiano in Assisi.
The crucifix is an icon of Christ in glory. Many years before Francis’ birth, the icon was painted on canvas
and then applied to a walnut wooden cross. It is the work of an unknown artist
of the Umbrian School. Because this
crucifix played such an important role in the conversion of St. Francis, it is
very precious to the whole Franciscan family. It was carefully preserved by St.
Clare and her sisters. And when the
Poor Clares outgrew the small church of San Damiano and moved to the new
Basilica of St. Clare, they brought the crucifix with them, where you can see
the identically same crucifix today. It is considered to be the most renowned
crucifix in the world.
Praying before this
crucifix one day, Francis asked, “Lord, what is it that you want me to
do?” He thought he heard a voice coming
from the crucifix saying, “Restore my
church.” Francis thought the voice was speaking about the dilapidated San
Damiano. So this little literal man
proceeded to restore the rickety little church with mortar and brick. In fact,
as destiny was to prove, the voice was calling him to restore the vineyard of
the Lord of hosts—the Universal Church of Peter.
Before the San Damiano crucifix, Francis, like
Abraham, became the father of a great nation--the Franciscan family--the father
of countless brothers and sisters who would go forth down through the centuries
to restore the vineyard of the Lord and the Universal Church with far more
enduring power, inspiration and relevance than any angry reformer or church
council. [1]
Many of those sons and daughter came to be enrolled
in the church’s official list of saints, the latest one of these being Padre
Pio, the Capuchin friar who was stigmatized, as was Francis himself, with the
wounds of Christ on his body, and who died on Sept. 23rd 1968, and
with incredible speed was canonized by John Paul II on June 16, 2002. And now as we speak another Franciscan son
is “waiting in the wings” for canonization.
He walked the streets of New York City exactly as St. Francis of Assisi
would have walked them. His name is Fr.
Mychal Judge, that legendary chaplain for the NYC firefighters, who become the
first glorious martyr of 9/11. If the
official church will not canonize him, there is a wellspring from the
grassroots that indeed will.
Singing
a new song
Before the San Damiano crucifix was born the first
stirrings of the great Franciscan movement which in every age restores the
vineyard of the Lord and the Universal Church of Peter, not by nailing an angry
thesis to a church door or by issuing conciliar decrees but by singing a new
song in the midst of the church. Luther’s reformation was very strident at
times and sometimes even violent.
Francis’ reformation was always mellifluous and melodious like a song. Francis restored the vineyard of the
Lord by singing a new song.
A new song about beggars
He sang a new song about beggars. No true
biographer of the saint would ever neglect to tell the story about Francis, who
one day is working in his father’s shop, which traffics in costly velvets and
fine embroideries. A prominent merchant of the town enters, and at the very
same time there enters a beggar seeking alms, perhaps in a tactless manner.
Francis does what we all do in such a case. When confronted in one and the same
moment by a rich man and a poor beggar, we all take care of the
"nice" guy first.
But when the business deal is finished, Francis
suddenly realizes that the beggar has quietly slipped away as unworthy of
attention. Of that moment Chesterton
writes that Francis leapt from his booth, left all the bales of precious
velvets and embroideries unprotected, and went racing across the marketplace
“like an arrow straight from the bow."
After running through the narrow and winding streets of Assisi, he
finally finds the beggar and heaps a healthy sum of his father’s money upon the
astonished man.
In the old song
and dance you pretend the beggar isn’t there, or you give him a buck to get rid
of him, or you dismiss the poor thing off to some agency, which in turn
dismisses him off to another agency. In
the new song you speed towards the beggar, "like an arrow straight from
the bow."
A
new song also about lepers.
Francis sang a new song
about lepers. Again, no true biographer would ever neglect to tell the story
about Francis mounted upon his "high horse." One day this elegant
"yuppie" rides out of Assisi on his stallion, comes suddenly upon a
leper, is seized with panic, and wants to speed off. But in a powerful moment of revelation, he is thrown from his
“high horse,” like Paul of Tarsus. And
before he knows it, he finds himself bending down low to embrace and kiss a leper. Francis mentions that moment in his Last Will and Testament, and
he dates it as the very moment of his conversion.
This was the moment when
Francisco Bernadone became the world’s
“Francis of Assisi.”
In the old song and dance
you put a bell into the hands of a poor leper or AIDS victim, and you make him
shout, “Unclean! Unclean!” And the poor
guy then ends up now not only with his leprosy or AIDS on his body but now also
on his soul. In the new song you embrace the leper and the AIDS victim, and
that embrace cures both body and soul.
A new song about creation
Francis sang a new song
about all creation. Here too no true biographer of the saint would ever neglect
to tell one of those countless little stories or legends (“fioretti,” if you
will) that sprung up concerning this remarkable man, stories about him
preaching to the birds or calming the ferocious wolf of Gubbio. Longfellow, in his poem The Sermon of
Francis writes:
Around Assisi's convent gate
The
birds, God's poor who cannot wait,
From
moor and mere and darksome wood
Came
flocking for the dole of food.
"O
brother birds," saint Francis said,
"Ye
come to me and ask for bread,
But
not with bread alone today
Shall
ye be fed and sent away."
(And
then Francis preaches to the birds.)
He rejects the old song and dance. He rejects the old cosmology (the
old view of creation), quoted on the very first pages of the bible, and
prevalent down through the ages and right up to this very day--the cosmology
that permits us, even commands us "to subdue and dominate and rule over the whole earth, the
fishes of the sea and the birds of the air" (Gn 1: 26-28). Francis doesn’t
subdue the birds of the air; he chats with them. Francis doesn’t subdue the ferocious wolf of Gubbio; he talks
things over with it and calms it down. Francis doesn’t turn creation into a
hierarchy: up there are we “almighty human beings” and down there is the rest
of lowly creation: animals and plants, rivers and seas, skies and trees--all of
them footstools for us “lords of the earth.”
Francis does not turn
creation into a hierarchy; he turns it into a fraternity and sorority of
brothers and sisters. Francis sings a new song. He literally sings a new
song. He writes “The Canticle of
Brother Sun,” a song and hymn to
all creation. It is truly an authentic
piece of Francis’ writing, and it is as renown as the crucifix of San Damiano.
In his song Francis calls everything
"brother" or "sister”: “Brother Sun and Sister Moon,
Brother Fire and Sister Water, Brother Wind and Sister Earth.” And so it was not surprising that on Easter
Sunday, April 6th 1980 Pope John Paul II “upgraded” Francis of
Assisi from a flimsy Patron Saint of Bird-baths to a towering Patron Saint of
Ecology.
Conclusion
A wish
and prayer
A thesis nailed against a cathedral door washes away with the rains of
autumn, and is blown away with the
blasts of winter. And the decrees
emanating from a church council eventually give way to new decrees demanded by
a new age. But a beautiful song you can sing forever. And that’s why Francis is a “man for all
seasons.”
In the Francis Book
compiled for the 800th anniversary of the birth of the Saint, there is a poem
by Vachel Lindsay. Its first line is
its title: “Would I Might Wake St. Francis in You All.” That’s my wish and my prayer not only
for you but for myself as well: Would I might wake St. Francis in us all,
sending us forth singing his beautiful song and restoring the vineyard of the
Lord of hosts.