Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sit still, sit at the feet of Jesus
Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing.
And Swedish Christian existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard agreed. He prayed:
So may You give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may You grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing.
You that gives both the beginning and the completion, may You early, at the dawn of day, give to the young the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may You give to the old a renewed remembrance of their first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.
Richard Foster says about this prayer and others, “It is a wonderful thing to see a first-rate philosopher at prayer. Tough-minded thinking and tenderhearted reverence are friends, not enemies.”
Martha and Kierkegaard are joined by Francis, all dedicating themselves to willing the one thing.  St. Francis of Assisi vacillated during his younger years. He loved the high life, but then he would give all his money to an unknown beggar. He intended a military career, but a vision made him lose interest in any worldly life. By the time he was twenty four he had dedicated himself neither to marriage nor the military, but to “Lady Poverty.” His father, a wealthy clothing merchant, disowned him, so Francis removed his clothes and walked naked through the town square.
O, Lord, you have probed me and you know me. Truly you have formed my inmost being; you have knit me in my mother’s womb.
Francis became a beggar, restoring several small churches around Assisi. Over time he took to nursing lepers. He gathered followers, including his former girlfriend and his mother, received permission to start a new order of monks, traveled to Egypt trying to end the Fifth Crusade, preached to animals and birds, celebrated Jesus’ birth by setting up the first known nativity scene, and then, near the end of his short life (1181-1225), Francis received the Stigmata – the wounds experienced by Jesus on the cross.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, I know that full well.
Today, on this Tuesday, October 4, don’t be surprised if you go to mass and find others there who have brought their pets and other animals to church for a blessing. And perhaps you will do that too.
Margaret is flying to Urbana this morning. I am driving to meet her there on Friday. Our lives seem scattered with so many things, which fly like little birds here and there, more and more as we grow older.
But our love for God? The One Thing? That only grows. Our certainty of God’s love for us weathers anything and everything. Early in the morning and late into the night, we listen for God.
Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
 (Galatians 1, Psalm 139, Luke 11, Luke 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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