October 4, 2015

Margaret Bedggood

The Feast of St Francis of Assissi

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Many of you will be aware of Pope Francis’ recent Encyclical or Letter, addressed to “everyone on the planet” Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home. One of its major themes is our responsibility for what is happening to the Earth, our common home. And so it has been hailed as significant for its environmental message and for its call to action on climate change. And there can be no doubt that the timing had an eye to the major international conference on climate change which is to be held in Paris in December: “our last chance” as many have called it. Of course this is a good thing in itself, and it is helpful for Christians to have this urgent cause set within a religious context.

Today we celebrate St. Francis of Assisi, who is also known for his special devotion to all of creation. Pope Francis (who took that name deliberately) clearly links his Letter with St. Francis. The title, Laudato Si, is Italian dialect for “Praise be to you, (my lord)” the opening of St. Francis’ Canticle of Brother Sun which we sang a version of earlier. [1] So we have a Letter which is clearly about environmental concerns, closely tied to the Saint who, of all the saints, is most immediately identified with the care of creation.

But it would be a grave mistake to think that that is the only subject of this Letter, or of Francis’ teaching. In both, for Christians, there are several other related aspects of immense importance.

The first is the link made throughout the Letter between care for the Earth and care for the poor. The latter is classic Catholic Social Teaching – and not Marxism, as the Pope pointed out recently on his trip to the USA – well even if it is Marxism it is still Catholic Social teaching. So the Pope calls for social and economic, as well as environmental change, an integral theology. Francis too was entirely devoted to care for the poor and marginalised. [2]  But it is surely worth asking why Francis felt and acted in this way? Certainly he regarded every living thing as of inherent worth and value. But why?

There are two linked reasons why creation is so precious in Francis’ sight. First, he sees all things as God’s creation and therefore worthy of reverence because of that: to contemplate creation is “to hear a message from God”.

Likewise, T.S.Eliot, surely one of the great religious poets of the twentieth century: We praise thee, O God, for thy glory displayed in all the creatures of the earth, in the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the storm; in all of thy creatures, both the hunters and the hunted....

They affirm thee in living, all things affirm thee in living; ..

Therefore we, whom thou hast made to be conscious of thee, must consciously praise thee, in thought and in word and in deed. [3]

Looking at it in another way, Francis sees God in Christ in all of creation. A reflection from a modern religious might give us the idea:

My brother recently chided me for wasting days and nights in fruitless prayer and search for a dog lost in the woods. ‘After all’, he said, ‘it’s just a dog, and you’ve got pressing things to do.’ I’ve got to make him understand there’s no such thing as just a dog. Every dog expresses uniquely the dogginess of God, a quality of God that can be found nowhere else. God is that dog lost in the woods. While he is lost, though I may not and need not find him, there is no other way for me to seek God here and now except by seeking the lost dog... The dog, lost or found, cannot be loved too much... [for] love itself has no excess. (William McNamara, OCD)

In much the same way, Francis devotion to the Crucified Christ thus extended to embrace all God’s creatures.

And this includes, of course, humankind. In every person, he saw Christ: in Clare, his pupil and friend; in the leper, whom he first recoiled from and then embraced; in the Sultan, his “enemy”, yet with whom he achieved at least a measure of dialogue and from whom, who knows, a broadening of his ‘world-view’.  

So what does this all say about our role here, as part of creation? To praise the Creator certainly, as T.S.Eliot says. But, and here we venture into a contentious issue: what is our role in relation to all these other creatures of the Creation? Surely not one of dominion and exploitation, with ourselves at the centre. But one of stewardship and care? But not one of abandonment either. we have done so much damage; we must have a duty to make reparation too, where we can.

Faced with this deeper Franciscan focus and the Pope’s call to action, what might our response be? Holiness, said, the Pope on his USA visit last week, consists in small acts of kindness. So let us start there.

First with our relationships with others, taking the three examples from Francis: someone who is a friend, maybe a pupil, maybe a colleague – pretty easy there. Someone you don’t like or recoil from, because of disability for example? Someone whose ideas you find difficult or repulsive – or challenging?

On a communal level: one of the themes which runs through the Letter is that of “the common good”. The common good is most often used to refer to social policies, for example to combat poverty or inequality. While the Pope does use the phrase in that context, he also uses it to refer to our responsibility for climate change, for the oceans, for the preservation of biodiversity. Are our policies and actions here in Aotearoa the best they could be? If not, what might we do about that, both individually and collectively?

What if we extend these questions to the global context? Here it might seem that there is little we can do. But we can try and influence our country’s stance at the December Paris meeting on climate change. Another issue which has been in the news this week is the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These cover social, economic and environmental issues – the Pope’s agenda.

So, here’s a programme for our new Social Justice Committee? (which meets for the first time on Tuesday).

Finally, there is one other factor which is part of the Franciscan ethos, and the Pope’s letter. It is exemplified in the first verse of today’s reading: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and not to us.

I was determined that today’s talk would not be about animals and birds – but let us nevertheless end with a story, or two stories, about Francis and birds. You may know the first story, of how Francis once preached to a flock of birds. They did not fly away but waited and listened and then left at his dismissal of them? Here is a parallel story, from a medieval Franciscan manuscript:

Rapt in devotion, Francis once found by the roadside a large flock of birds, to whom he turned aside to preach, as he had done before to another flock. But when the birds saw him approaching they all flew away at the very sight of him. Then he came back and began to accuse himself most bitterly saying ‘What effrontery you have, you impudent son of Pietro Bernadone’ and this because he had expected irrational creatures to obey him as if he, and not God, were their creator.’

This is our task then: to praise God, in word and deed, and with humility, as one, but only one, of God’s creatures.

God of mercy, giver of life,

earth and sea and sky

and all that lives,

declare your presence and your glory.

Amen.

[1] The text is included later in the Letter and there are echoes of the Canticle throughout.

[2] The Pope says of him:  that he is “the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically”.

[3] The Song of the Women – NZPB p.160