On Tuesday, I went with a group of friends from the States to Assisi.Assisi, of course, is the home of the saint said by many to have lived most like Jesus, St. Francis.It made me think of the movie Francesco, the best I have seen on the life of Francis.There is an amazing scene in that movie, near the beginning of Francis’ life lived in radical poverty, where his is standing in this little, broken down chapel, the Portiuncola, surrounded by the destitute, poor, and lepers of Assisi and the surrounding area.Friends of Francis come out in hopes of talking some sense into him, bringing him back home, and enjoying the company of their fun-loving friend again.As these friends try to convince Francis, Francis takes out his small, tattered New Testament and says, “Have you ever read this?Listen to what Jesus tells his disciples…”And he reads from Mark 6: 8-9.“Jesus instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in their belts...”Then, suddenly, he appears shaken.He reads further, only now to himself, “and not even sandals on your feet…”He looks down at his feet…sees his broken up sandals, stoops down, unfastens them, and leaving them laying on the ground, he walks away, bare footed, with his eyes intensely focused on the New Testament, totally taken up in the words of Jesus.[Now an aside here, the passage actually says “They were however to wear sandals” but the point, though not so accurate here, is most accurate in the sense it gives of what was happening in the life of Francis.]
I love that scene, because it tells us something deeply true about what it was that made Francis turn so radically toward discipleship of Jesus and what, further, has made him so attractive to people throughout the ages.It is, I think, that Francis simply took Jesus at his word!For some reason, comprehensible to faith alone, Jesus impressed himself upon the heart and mind of this man of Assisi in such a way as to give him the sense that he could follow him anywhere and anyway the Master said.
How about today’s gospel (Mt 7:7-12)?Jesus says to us:“Ask and receive…seek and find…knock and it will open.”How can Jesus be so sure?Because, and it really is this direct, he knows the Father.“Your heavenly Father will give good things to those who ask him.”
Wow!That is simply incredible, good news.Maybe, even, too incredible to believe.
My pilgrimage to the city of the poor man of Jesus has inspired me, in my Lenten journey, to take Jesus more literally.To say it better, to take Jesus more at his word.
I pray for all of you, and please pray for me, that whatever that grace was that moved the heart of Francis to so utterly cast himself on the words of Jesus might somehow move in our hearts!I am asking….now lets receive it!That is, after all, how Jesus says it works!