Today’s liturgy really points to two (of many) aspects of St. Francis’ spirituality and mission: living without possessions and the task of rebuilding Christs’ Church. 

The context of social divisions and the abuse of the powerless in European life of the High Middle Ages could be found in all areas of human interaction:  growing wealth and power of Church Institutions and orders was practically universal.  Even Monastic houses of both men and women were places of great wealth and comparative comfort.  Warfare with the Moslems was rampant.  Wars among local political groups, cities and local feudal families were notorious.  The rise of the wealth and power of the merchant class which exacerbated various social divisions along with almost universal ignorance of the faith among the laity were all difficult “signs of the times” that ended up leading eventually to the break in the Christian Church and the rise of warring nation states.

For Francis the core evil of his time was the greedy grasping for wealth and power.  His own conversion seems to have hinged on his awareness that human conflict is invariably stirred up when some have too much material wealth and others have little or none.  The material wealth of Christ’s Church was a   scandal most evident in the exercise of papal and episcopal acquisition of such wealth.  For Francis then, today’s passage from Luke’s Gospel that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head, and for those who follow Christ NOTHING must take precedence over loving and serving God’s will, became his “rule of life.”

Francis’ call to a possession-less way of life was and is still enormously challenging, but no more so than the other spiritual command Francis followed to “rebuild the Church.”  Like Nehemiah the prophet that we hear in the first reading, St. Francis heard the voice of Jesus from the cross as a command to rebuild a brick and mortar building (for the Prophet it was the call of God to rebuild the City Walls of Jerusalem).  But both came to see that the brick and mortar was symbolic for rebuilding the incorporeal but real edifice of relationships of love and peace making.  For St. Francis the evident solution to rebuilding the Faith is to build an intimate relationship with God.  The Church is first of all God’s family – not the house we pray in.  

I need to hear the challenge of Saint Francis in our world obsessed by possessions and power and notoriously divided.  I need to find joy in the loving care of each person for every other person, and I need to fight the seeds of corruption in my heart that destroy community by unbridled lust for possessions.  I need to hear over and over that love alone will bring me and any of us to find our truest selves, for love is God’s own being.

Like Saint Francis I want to “consider all things so much rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found with him.”  Phil 3.8-9