St Francis Detail from Viriditas- Finding God In All Things

St Francis (Detail from “Viriditas: Finding God In All Things)
“Joy fall to thee father Francis,/ Drawn to the Life that died;/ With the gnarls of the nails in thee; niche of the lance;/ his Lovescape crucified/ And seal of his seraph-arrival...”
From “The Wreck of the Deutschland” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
“...he was always occupied with Jesus: Jesus he bore in his heart, mouth, eyes, ears, and in his entire body; Jesus.”
1 Blessed Thomas Celano
“Put yourself out Brother Francis !” I used to cry. “Put yourself out before you burn up the world!”
Nikos Katzanzakis
“We warned him that the Ancients say/ drawing too close to the fiery shrub would mean death/ for human jars cannot bear liquid fire./ But he seemed to revel in the secrets found within the chambers of heat,/ and with him in our midst/ we too could burn without end./ We warned him not to cross too far to the other side,/ for we dreaded losing him/ yet he seemed at home nimbly scaling the ladder to the sky/ to the rhythm of the silent music./ Ah, but the time we hold most dear,/ the time which seemed out-of-time indeed,/ was that mid-September we found him hidden in the cleft of the rock./ His body could no longer bear the Love,/ and he broke out in Wounds.”
“The Legend of the Three Companions” by William Hart McNichols
Ever since I can remember, there has been Francis. I have loved him for so many reasons. During theology school, at the Mass on the feast of Francis, our teacher, Fr Emerich Meir, OFM, said in his homily (in reference to Rudolph Otto’s book) “Francis had an I-Thou relationship to all of creation.” And our present Pope Francis took on the seraphic wings to write his magnificent encyclical “Laudato si” on this I-Thou relationship, and the demonic threat of climate change. For who but “wicked servants” would choose greed over the fragile existence of God’s Beautiful World?
Because in his autobiography, St Ignatius recalled thinking in his dramatic convalescence at the Castle In Loyola, “What if I should do what Francis did? What if I should do what Dominic did?” I decided in 1984 to visit the tomb of Ignatius in Rome, the tomb of Dominic in Bologna and the tomb of Francis in Assisi. But it was my bus trip from Assisi to Mt. La Verna (sometimes here called Mt Alvernia, ) where Francis received the Wounds, that has burned into me ever since. And to tell the honest truth, I asked my dear friend Fr Andre’ Cirino, OFM, if I could join the SFO’s (Secular Franciscan Order) in the Bronx, because I wanted to share the Charism of the Wounds, that comes with being a Franciscan; from Francis all the way up to the 20th century and Padre Pio.
Now, we all bear wounds; whether it be wounds of emotional, physical or spiritual violence, or wounds of self-righteousness, pride, jealousy, or wounds of despair and depression. A most mysterious part of the Resurrection is that Jesus kept the wounds. So we watch him in the post-resurrection accounts speaking and acting oddly, mystically, differently... and healing with his wounds; I think that’s part of what Henri Nouwen was trying to say in his very popular book, “The Wounded Healer.” Reading the post-resurrection stories about Jesus, listen and watch him closely.
With both Francis and Padre Pio, the blood-soaked bandages were used by their contemporaries to heal (animals too w Francis) people and so, the precious blood became a miraculous salve. And when we were 10 years old being Confirmed by the Archbishop, he would lightly slap us on the cheek, with his gloved hand, to signify we’d better get ready to suffer for loving our faith. There was a costume-jewelry red jewel on each glove to signify the Wounds. It’s something symbolic, enigmatic, that has also stayed with me all these years.
This year Francis’ feast happens to fall on Yom Kippur, the Holy Day of Atonement. I wish Pope Francis would designate a Year of Francis, like he did with Joseph, so that we might be inspired by a Year of Atonement into ways of preserving Mother Earth.
In this detail from a very large painting with icons (“Viriditas: Finding God In All Things”) I did for The Environmental Sustainability Centre at Loyola University in Chicago, I began with the four figures at the bottom of the 10ft piece, Francis, Hildegard, the Child Jesus and Ignatius, all deeply rooted, grounded, nourished by the red earth of the Blood of Christ; the earth you might say, of the Sangre de Cristos. Then I worked my way up through Creation and into my poor attempt to picture the Holy Spirit bursting out of the void, (my picture of the Big Bang Theory !) to the Creator’s words “Let there be Light ...” (Genesis 1:3)
Dear Lord Jesus,
My wounds still hurt me, and sometimes others too.
I am slowly learning not to be ashamed of my wounds,
but to create with them-in-hand.
You kept the wounds even after you rose from the dead,
Why was this ?
Are we to learn to live with our wounds, no, even to
flourish with our wounds, just like you ?
Maybe this is the kairos time in the 21st Century
where we begin to see and do this.
O Dazzling Rider, Faithful and True, O Word of God,
Your radiant light though dipped in dark red, (Revelation 19:11) still causes sheer snow-blindness.
Warm our frozen hearts. Give us courage. Do not let us slip into heartlessness,
desolation and the blindness that comes from fear.
“Then we said, here we are Lord, send us! “ (Isaiah 6:7)
Amen
Fr William Hart McNichols, SFO 💮 October 2022