Dear Friends
As we build the Beloved Community, we pray for you every day that you might continue to bring it about in your little corner of the world.
Today's Meditation features a reflection on Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis from Give Us this Day.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION: Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis
Blessed Among Us
St. Francis of Assisi
Founder, Friars Minor (1182–1226)
At the conclave of 2013, as the votes arrived to elect Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the new pope, one of the cardinals whispered to him, “Don’t forget the poor.” Immediately Bergoglio “thought of Francis of Assisi . . . the man of poverty, peace, who loves and takes care of creation. . . .” And so he became the first pope to choose the name Francis.
As soon became clear, the choice of a name implied an agenda, a program for renewal. St. Francis, after all, was the saint who set out to rebuild the Church by evoking the example and spirit of the Poor Man, Jesus. St. Francis spurned violence and privilege. He reached out to members of other religions. He cherished the earth and all its creatures. He pointed to a new form of human and cosmic community, marked by love and mercy. And he did all this with a spirit of joy and freedom.
Ten years into the papacy of Pope Francis, the inspiration of St. Francis is evident. His encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home was inspired by Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures. Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship was inspired by St. Francis’s meeting with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil.
For many Christians over the past thousand years, the example of St. Francis has offered a distinctive key to the Gospel. Among the central features of that key: an option for the poor and those on the margins, a resolve to live the Beatitudes, and a determination to proclaim the Gospel not only with words but with one’s life.
“I think St. Francis of Assisi is in the depths of every human being, for all are touched by grace—just as the call to holiness is in the depths of every human being.”—Carlo Carretto
St. Francis of Assisi
Where is he, the clear one
whose song has died away?
Do the poor, who can only wait
feel that young and joyous one among them?
Does he rise for them, perhaps at nightfall--
poverty's evening star?
Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours III, 34