Similar to the First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent always recounts the story of the Transfiguration.  This was that event in which Jesus took three of His apostles, Peter, James, and John, and “led them up a high mountain by themselves and He was transfigured before them.” (Mt 17:1-2) It is interesting that we have this account in Lent, given that there is a feast day on which this event is celebrated. (August 6).

In a sermon for this feast day, Pope St. Leo the Great gives some explanation of why this event took place, including the following which highlights its fittingness for being included during the Lenten season:

The great reason for this transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of his disciples, and to prevent the humiliation of his voluntary suffering from disturbing the faith of those who had witnessed the surpassing glory that lay concealed. (Sermo 51, 3-4. 8: PL 54, 310-311. 313)

One of the key lines from the account of the Transfiguration are the words that were spoken by the Father with a voice coming from the clouds which proclaimed: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” (Mt 17:5) Not surprisingly, one of the invocations from the Litany of the Sacred Heart draws upon this scene:

Heart of Jesus, in whom the Father is well pleased, have mercy on us

But this is not the only place where this voice from above proclaims this message.  We also hear it in the account of His baptism in the Jordan River.  After coming up out of the water, the Father says: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3:17) This is significant because it shows the unchanging posture of the Father to the Son, no matter the circumstances.  Even as Jesus was hanging on the Cross, we know that the Father continues to be well pleased, a truth that no doubt supported Jesus in His Passion.

On the day of our baptism, we are made adopted sons and daughters of God, and though we do not hear the Father speaking in the same way, we believe that this is His posture toward us, seeing the life of His Son entering into our lives.  The amazing thing to consider is that throughout our lives, because of our identity as these adopted sons and daughters, the Father’s posture of loving us and being well pleased with us never changes.  This is a very helpful truth for us to constantly recall and foster in our hearts, especially when we are experiencing the difficulties of living the Christian life, when it becomes painful to accept the path on which we find ourselves.  In that regard, I would like to conclude our reflection with another line from this sermon from Pope St. Leo the Great:

No one should fear to suffer for the sake of justice; no one should lose confidence in the reward that has been promised. The way to rest is through toil, the way to life is through death. Christ has taken on himself the whole weakness of our lowly human nature. If then we are steadfast in our faith in him and in our love for him, we win the victory that he has won, we receive what he has promised.
When it comes to obeying the commandments or enduring adversity, the words uttered by the Father should always echo in our ears: This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him. (ibid.)

A leper – a man with a disease that ate away at his skin. A contagious disease. A crippling disease… physically, spiritually, emotionally, socially.

Francis. touched. that. man.

He not only touched that man. He showed him love – he embraced him and kissed him. 

What must have passed through Francis’ heart in the moment before he did this?

Can we imagine? 

Bonaventure writes very simply, “This unforeseen encounter struck [Francis] with horror. But he recalled his resolution to be perfect and remembered that he must first conquer himself if he wanted to become a knight of Christ. He slipped off his horse and ran to kiss the man” (The Life of St. Francis, Translated by Ewert Cousins).

He recalled. He remembered. He acted.

Still, memory alone doesn’t lead to self-denying actions like kissing a leper. Added to the memory of these things – his resolution and that spiritual principle – must have been not simply knowledge of the truth but a burning love. There is no sentimentality in this sort of love. This is not the love of nice feelings. This is the love that is captivated by a remarkably intense desire to belong to the beloved. This love impels the lover to give everything away. It is a love of desire. 

In the realm of holy acts, desire is everything.

What did Francis desire? To be a knight of Christ.

Why did he desire that? Because he loved Christ.

What did that desire lead him to do? To make a “resolution to be perfect.” To hold the words of Christ in his memory: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and “if anyone wishes to follow me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

Here, in this moment, on his horse, Francis desired Christ’s life so deeply that he forgot himself, literally. Thoughts of contagion left him. Considerations of social standards left him. He could have said like St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

The choice of love in this moment left a mark on the life of Francis that would never leave – he was willing to do anything for Jesus, his King. The leper disappeared, seemingly literally. Was he the Lord? Or an angel? Bonaventure seems to suggest such.

Regardless, it is clear that Francis was a changed man after this. He yearned deeply for the Lord; he thirsted for Christ, and that thirst was quenched in a vision of the Crucifixion that seared his memory and opened his soul to new realms of self-gift. From then on, he longed for poverty, humility, and charity. He served the poor and the lepers of his community. 

As we enter more deeply into Lent, we can profit from the prayers of St. Francis. We can beg him for a similar grace of a transformation of our heart and soul into a likeness to the crucified Lord. 

Does self-denial grate against our nature? Yes. Yes it does, but it is the path to holiness.

Come Holy Spirit, draw our hearts into the Sacred Heart of our Lord. Set us on fire with the fire of charity that burned in Christ’s heart for others and then in St. Francis’ heart. Lead us out of ourselves to serve you with generous hearts. Amen!

On this First Sunday of Lent, we hear the account of the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes this scene in the following words:

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness. (CCC 397)

Disobedience is at the heart of all sin, therefore when Christ came into the world as one of us, He brings about our reconciliation through obedience, as St. Paul recounts:

Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5–8)

Where Adam and Eve were unsuccessful in remaining obedient to God after succumbing to the temptation of the devil, we see in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent Jesus remaining obedient and thus resisting the temptations of Satan.  This incident at the very beginning of His public ministry would define His whole life – obedience to the Father in all things, even to the point of dying on the Cross.  I have therefore chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for this week:

Heart of Jesus, obedient to death, have mercy on us

When Jesus taught us how to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, one of the petitions He asks us to pray is: “thy will be done.”  This is a prayer in which we are asking to exercise the virtue of obedience.  We have to fight the constant temptation within ourselves that says: “my will be done.” Again, that is basically what sin boils down to.  We know what we are supposed to do, but we prefer what we want to do, thus obeying our will over the will of God.  That is, of course, in those circumstance when what we want is opposed to God’s will, for what we want to do can certainly be what God wants for us, but we should be obeying first becauseit is His will, not because it is ours and that it just so happens to also conform with His will.

Obedience can be difficult, and choosing to act against our selfish will can be a painful experience.  In those moments, we often turn in on ourselves, becoming preoccupied with the anticipated discomfort.  The better reaction is to turn our gaze toward Christ and learn from His example.  I find the following words from the Letter to the Hebrews helpful to recall when obedience can be challenging:

Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood (Heb 12:3–4)

These words, strong though they may seem, are not meant to discourage us, but rather to encourage us to find in the Heart of Jesus the strength to resist temptation and remain obedient to the Father, just as He was, even to the point of dying on the Cross.

When St. Francis was a young man, he loved God and wanted to serve him. He naturally desired to help the poor, and it was well known that he was generous with his money and time toward them – and all this even before he was called to leave everything and follow Jesus. At this time in his life, God began to reveal to him bit by bit something about the way that he would eventually call Francis to follow him.

St. Bonaventure recounts the story of a dream that Francis had, a dream which offers us even today a great deal of food for thought. After performing a great act of charity toward a poor man, Francis goes to sleep the next night and sees a vision in this dream. “God in his goodness,” St. Bonaventure writes, “showed [Francis] a large and splendid palace full of military weapons emblazoned with the insignia of Christ’s cross. … when Francis asked to whom these belonged, he received an answer from heaven that all these things were for him and his knights. When he awoke in the morning, he judged the strange vision to be an indication that he would have great prosperity…” (The Life of St. Francis, Translated by Ewert Cousins).

To those of us who know the rest of the story, this judgment sounds strange, but Francis did not know at this time about God’s call to poverty. He thought he would become a great knight for his city and country and lead others. What we know now is that God meant that Francis would be a knight in a more heavenly army and lead many others to serve God with the weapons of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a very radical way.

As Francis goes along after this dream, “still ignorant of God’s plan, he decided to join a certain count of Apulia, hoping in his service to obtain the glory of knighthood.” In Francis’ mind, this would be the greatest honor – to serve God by faithfully serving a good man. Still, this was not to be. While he was on his way to serve that man, the Lord broke through to Francis and began to reveal to him more deeply his vocational call.

This time, the message from the Lord was much clearer. St. Bonaventure records the Lord say, “‘Francis, who can do more for you, a lord or a servant, a rich man or a poor man?’ When Francis replied that a lord and a rich man could do more, he was at once asked: ‘Why, then, are you abandoning the Lord for a servant and the rich God for a poor man?’” In these beautiful words, we begin to see how Jesus was transforming the imagination of his beloved son, Francis. Francis thought he was going to serve a rich man, but God is richer. He thought he was going to serve a “lord,” but compared to The Lord of heaven, that man was only a servant. 

God becomes, for Francis, the Master of all masters, the Lord of all lords, the King of all kings, to be served above all others. The Lord then calls Francis to return to Assisi rather than go on to Apulia, and “he returned in haste to Assisi, joyous and free of care….” We see the effect of this word from the Lord. It brings him lightness, peace, and joy – some clear signs that it is from the Lord. 

St. Francis learned early on in his life that Jesus, his high priest and king, would love him and honor him far more greatly than any human person on earth. He learned early on that no human and earthly honors could compare with divine and heavenly honors. May our minds and imaginations might be formed similarly. May we serve with joy and gladness the greatest Master, the one who loves us, the crucified King, risen from the dead. St. Francis, pray for us! Amen.

In just a few days, we will enter the holy season of Lent.  Many of us approach Lent with an eager spirit, seen especially by the huge turnout we get at our masses for Ash Wednesday.  One would think it is a Holy Day of Obligation (which it is not).  I do not think that is the reason why most people come, though.  We have an awareness deep down that we need Lent.  We approach Lent with a recognition that there are things in our lives where we do not have peace.  It might be our relationship with another person, our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with different attachments or bad habits, and at the root of it all, our relationship with the Lord.  Therefore, I think we can see Lent as a time where, through the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we have an opportunity to experience reconciliation in those various relationships and so recover the peace that our hearts desire.  With that in mind, I have chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart for our focus this week, and in some ways, for the upcoming season of Lent:

Heart of Jesus, our peace and our reconciliation, have mercy on us

In the Gospel for this Sunday, we continue to hear from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus offers a more thorough teaching on some of the Ten Commandments.  A casual reading of the Decalogue (another name for the Ten Commandments) seems to suggest a list made mainly up of things we should not do.  However, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, they “point out the conditions of a life freed from the slavery of sin. The Decalogue is a path of life.” (CCC 2057) They are a path of life because they are all ordered toward something very positive: love, for all of the commandments are summed up as ways in which we love God and our neighbor.  When we fail to live that law of love, we experience division which deprives us of peace.  Living according to the commandments reverses that.  

Perhaps as we prepare for Lent and what practices we want to undertake, spend some time over the next few days thinking about the relationships I mentioned above.  Where are we not experiencing peace?  Ask the Lord to use whatever your Lenten practices are to be at the service of bringing reconciliation through the Heart of Jesus to those relationships and thus restore peace in your life.  

Our Lenten journey is leading us to Easter Sunday, but it must go through Good Friday.  On that day, Jesus died on the Cross which makes our reconciliation with God possible, articulated well by St. Paul:

God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation. (Rom 5:8–11)

The life of St. Francis of Assisi… how might one describe it? It is at the same time a life of gravity and a life of lightness. It is a life of a powerful and influential man but a man powerful only in his extreme weakness. It is a life lived at a particular point in time, but a life affecting all time afterward. It is a life of joy but also of suffering. Francis gave his life to the Lord and Jesus gave it back to him as an adventure to the cross. 

In many ways St. Francis is one of the greatest saints who ever lived, to the point of being called an alter Christus – another Christ. He desired in the depth of his being to live the Gospel call of Jesus Christ – the call to poverty, chastity, and obedience. He served the poor, spoke with the rich and powerful, and brought about great reform in the Church through his holiness.

After his death, the order he founded was looking for someone to write his biography and the choice fell to St. Bonaventure. St. Bonaventure took up this task and went on to do research into the life of St. Francis, visiting the places he had been throughout his life. He then wrote a biography that remains a trustworthy source for us today on the life of St. Francis. 

This biography is not arranged in perfectly chronological order like most biographies are arranged today. Instead, St. Bonaventure wrote about St. Francis’ life using a set of different themes which are somewhat arranged in the order of activities in the life of Francis. In this way, St. Bonaventure opens up the heart of St. Francis and demonstrates the ways in which St. Francis takes on the life of Christ. 

As we move forward into this year of St. Francis, I am going to reflect upon one chapter at a time in these bulletin articles. It may take only 15 weeks (the number of chapter), but it may also take more, in case a chapter or two needs more articles to fully enjoy it.

As a prologue to the article series, I reflect briefly on the introduction to the Biography:

I want to lift up an image that St. Bonaventure uses very indirectly to describe the life of St. Francis. 

“This, then,” St. Bonaventure writes, “is my principal reason for undertaking this task, that I may gather together the accounts of his virtues, his actions and his words – like so many fragments, partly forgotten and partly scattered – although I cannot accomplish this fully, so that they may not be lost (John 6:12) when those who lived with this servant of God die.”

In this sentence, St. Bonaventure sets up a comparison between the memories of the life of the man Francis and the leftover fragments of bread and fish in the Gospel account of the multiplication of loaves. I find this fascinating and beautiful! The idea is this – St. Francis put his little self in the hands of God. God brought about a great multiplication of virtue and experiences in the life of Francis that blessed the Church and was truly nutritious food for the Church. After the death of the holy man, it is the job then of St. Bonaventure to collect those fragments left over so that none of it is lost. 

I think this is an amazing way to consider a holy life. Would that all of our lives could end with good and holy “fragments left over” in the minds of all our loved ones and in so many others in the world we don’t even know. May the Lord bless and increase our efforts at sanctity. May he help us surrender what little we have into his hands so that he can bring about a great harvest in the world!