Weekly Parish Email for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity: 5 October 2025

• Worship
• Church buildings and settings (this Sunday’s lesson, Week 3)
• Preaching
• The Book of Common Prayer
• Liturgy
• Sacraments
• Traditional ceremonies and services
• Ministry

The class will be viewed after Sunday service outside the sanctuary on our big television screen, after we’ve had time to fellowship for a little bit.  The classes tend to run 45 minutes to an hour, not including any discussion we’d like to have afterwards.

We encourage you to plan to make time after Sunday services to stay and learn with us!

The video (and handout if there is one) for each week’s lesson is posted on the website in our News and Announcements section.  If you can’t be here for a lesson, or if you just want to go back over it, go to that Sunday lesson’s page.  At the bottom of each lesson’s page, there’s an area to leave comments and questions!  We’d love to hear from you if you have either!

Midweek (Wednesday) Eucharist: Please note that by request of the Altar Guild, our usual Wednesday service will not be held this week; we will return to our regular schedule, Lord willing, next week. We ordinarily offer a service of Holy Communion – also known as the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass) at 10:00 on Wednesday mornings. Please note that this service includes an opportunity for the laying on of hands and anointing with oil for healing, for those who may desire this ministry. The Propers and Homily for the Wednesday service typically commemorate a saint whose day falls in that week.

Please Note: We are continuing to look for the following volunteers:

• Altar Guild – Please see Sandy, after the service, if you are willing to serve God and our parish by helping to prepare the altar and chancel for services.
• Fellowship Meal Team – Please see Amanda or Lindsey if you are willing to bring a main course, salad or side, bread, or dessert. The more folks who participate, the less each individual or family needs to spend!
• Altar Flowers – We are now doing our own altar flowers; donations toward the cost of purchasing flowers (significantly less than purchasing pre-made arrangements!), as well as donations of time and talent if your suite of skills include floral arrangements, are greatly appreciated. Please see Amanda if you can assist.
• Housekeeping – Another cost-cutting measure: we are moving toward shifting the cleaning of the church to an “in-house” operation. Volunteers to assist are greatly welcomed – please see Lindsey.

This past Saturday, the 4th of October, was the commemoration of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most beloved of non-Biblical saints, revered for his love of the poor – and of Creation. The son of a prosperous cloth-merchant in the Italian town of Assisi, Francis was born in the late 12th century (1182), his early youth was spent in the pursuit of pleasure, and aimless attempts at military glory. One day, in the church of San Damiano, he seemed to hear Christ saying to him, “Francis, repair my falling house.”He took the words literally, and sold a bale of silk from his father’s warehouse to pay for repairs to the church of San Damiano. His father was outraged, and there was a public confrontation at which his father disinherited and disowned him, and he in turn renounced his father’s wealth – one account says that he not only handed his father his purse, but also took off his expensive clothes, laid them at his father’s feet, and walked away naked.

He declared himself “wedded to Lady Poverty,” renounced all material possessions, and devoted himself to serving the poor. In his day the most dreaded of all diseases was something known as leprosy. Some modern scholars suggest that it was probably not the same as either the modern or the Biblical disease of that name, but in either case, lepers were kept at a distance and regarded with fear and disgust. Francis cared for them, fed them, bathed their sores, and kissed them.

Since he could not pay for repairs to the Church of San Damiano, he undertook to repair it by his own labors. He moved in with the priest, and begged stones lying useless in fields, shaping them for use in repairing the church. He got his meals, not by asking for money so that he might live at the expense of others, but by scrounging crusts and discarded vegetables from trash-bins, and by working as a day laborer, insisting on being paid in bread, milk, eggs, or vegetables rather than in money. Soon a few companions joined him.
After three years, in 1210, the Pope authorized the forming of the Order of Friars Minor – which, literally translated, is “Little Brothers” – commonly called the Franciscans. Francis and his companions took literally the words of Christ when he sent his disciples out to preach:

“And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand… freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves…”

In other words they would have no money, and no property, individually or collectively. Their task was to preach, “using words if necessary,” but declaring by word and action the love of God in Christ. Francis was partial to a touch of the dramatic, and it was probably he who set up the first Christmas manger scene, to bring home the Good News of God made Man for our salvation to men’s hearts and imaginations as well as to their intellects.

In 1219, Francis went to the Holy Land to preach to the Muslims. He was given a pass through the enemy lines, and spoke to the Sultan, Melek-al-Kamil. Francis proclaimed the Gospel to the Sultan, who replied that he had his own beliefs, and that Muslims were as firmly convinced of the truth of Islam as Francis was of the truth of Christianity. Francis proposed that a fire be built, and that he and a Muslim volunteer would walk side by side into the fire to show whose faith was stronger. The Sultan said he was not sure that a Muslim volunteer could be found.

Francis then offered to walk into the fire alone. The Sultan was deeply impressed, but remained unconverted. Francis proposed an armistice between the two warring sides, and drew up terms for one; the Sultan agreed, but, to Francis’s deep disappointment, the Christian leaders would not. Francis returned to Italy, but a permanent result was that the Franciscans were given custody of the Christian shrines then in Muslim hands; they remain in that role today.

Back in Italy and neighboring countries, the Order was suffering from its own success. Then, as now, many persons were deeply attracted by Francis and his air of joy, abandonment, and freedom. What they overlooked is that these were made possible only by his willingness to accept total poverty, not picturesque poverty but real dirt, rags, cold, and hunger, and lepers with real pus oozing from their sores and a real danger of infection. Many idealistic young men were joining the Order in a burst of enthusiasm and then finding themselves not so sure that such extremes of poverty were really necessary.

When there were only a few friars, they were all known to Francis personally, and the force of his personality kept the original ideals of the Order alive in them. Now that the Order was larger, this was no longer enough. In 1220 Francis resigned as minister-general of the Order, and in 1221 he agreed to a new and modified rule, which he did not approve, but could not resist. He died on 4 October 1226.

Of all the post-Biblical saints, Francis is perhaps the most popular and admired, but probably the least imitated: few can match his total identification with the poverty and suffering, the joy and the faith of Christ. His patronage of the poor, and his association with animals, have given a somewhat “New Age,” neo-hippie cast to his veneration in modern times. But in fact, he was quite orthodox in his faith and practice, despite his extreme asceticism, and might well have looked askance at some of those who champion him most vociferously today!

Keith Warner, a Roman Catholic Franciscan of the Order of Friars Minor, notes that St. Francis was not an environmentalist in the modern sense of the word, but he was a great lover of God’s creation, long before there was such a word as environmentalism, or ecology. Warner recommends, and I concur, that we look to Francis as an example of someone who prayed in nature and discovered more about both God and himself through the practice of contemplative prayer in natural surroundings: seeking God, in His good Creation.

Francis spent a third to half of each year praying in nature and the wilderness, living in hermitages, caves, under lean-to’s, on mountain-sides, and he interspersed this with preaching. There was something about that experience of being intimately related to Creation itself that helped him grow more fully into the mystery of God. And that’s what we are desperately in need of today, I believe, because we are so alienated from the earth and from ourselves. Again, I often feel closest to God in the midst of His Creation; and if I am too long apart from it, that connection grows frayed and tenuous.

Pope John Paul II named Francis the patron saint “of those who promote ecology” in 1979. Ecology in Europe refers to what we in the United States call environmentalism, or conservationism, and not just the science of ecology. Francis is the patron of those who cultivate ecological consciousness, but that means a lot more than being the patron of environmental educators, or making regular donations to the Sierra Club, or – heaven forbid! – supporting the “Green New Deal”! His example really points to a mystical or spiritual vision for all of the created world as brothers and sisters, as he describes in his Canticle of Creation – sometimes known as the Canticle of Brother Son and Sister Moon.

Even if we are not called to the extreme asceticism of Saint Francis – and I myself have a much more Benedictine cast to my spirituality – I believe that this, the contemplation of God in the midst of His created order, is something we could profitably learn from Francis’ example. While I do not accept uncritically all the ravings of today’s radical environmentalists, I have long been of the belief that we have a positive theological, as well as ethical, responsibility to care for this good Earth which God has given us. We would think someone who claimed to love Rembrandt, but then slashed a Rembrandt painting, had taken leave of his senses – or else was lying about loving him in the first place. Similarly, I do not think we can justly claim to love the Creator if we willfully or knowingly abuse His Creation.

Let us, then, following the example of St. Francis, be attentive to the presence of God both in the things of nature, and in the people around us, particularly those who are less fortunate. And let us do so in the Name, and following the example, of Christ our Lord: that Incarnate Word of God through whom all things were made, and who came among us as one who serves – and who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.