October 4, 2007

Francis

This feast of St. Francis, I've been thinking about and preaching on my favorite line from Francis's letter to brother Leo:
In whatever way it seems better to you to please the Lord God and to follow [in his] footstep and his poverty, do it with the blessing of the Lord God and my obedience.
Franciscans love to puzzle over the odd singular, "footstep." For me, I think of it as the Cross. For when the almighty, eternal, spiritual God passes over and makes an impression on time and space and human life, that impression is the crucified Christ. That is, a burning love that is literally dying to save each and every one of us from the misery we have brought upon ourselves and each other because of our selfishness and sin.

I imagine the Franciscan vocation as a resolution to put our feet into the footstep of the Cross, trying to walk within and according to the burning love of the Crucified.

6 comments:

PlainCatholic said...

Happy Feastday!
Plain Catholic in the Mountains

Anonymous said...

Hey, first of all, Happy Feast Day! Second, i've been sick and not keeping up with the blogging world as I'd like to, but I wanted to congratulate you on your blessed ordination. You are going to be a wonderful priest, and the OFMs, and all the Church, are very lucky to have you. I already really enjoy reading your sermons and your blog has been a tremendous gift. Now your priesthood will be a gift, as well. I will keep you in my prayers. God bless you, Fr. Charles!

Brother Charles said...

Nice to meet you, plaincatholic, and good to hear from you, Michael. Happy feast day to you two.

fr. Matt, OFM Conv. said...

happy feast day...you beat me to the punch! I was going to offer some pious musings on footprints on my blog today, but you beat me to it!

there are a couple things i love about that word. First to follow footprints is harder than footsteps, because to foolow prints we need to change the way we walk... also your latin is better than mine but from what I recall, Francis' use of footprints of Jesus is the same word Bonaventure uses in the Itinararium concerning God's footprints in nature....that was my pious musinds during meditation this am...enjoy...peace and good,
fmjf

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

Happy Feast to you!

I like Fr. Matt's comment on footprints. Makes a lot of sense. Francis left some big sandals to fill, that's for sure.

Anonymous said...

happy feast day, Fr. Charles.:-)