MATTHEW 6:19-23
A homily from my recent Rome pilgrimage.
When I saw the Porziuncola again, the little church within the church, inside the Basilica of St. Mary’s of the Angels, in Assisi—the simple stone hut that St. Francis built in the 12th century, with brick and stucco and mud, about the size of a one-car garage, and vaulting up all around it, marbled and high-ceilinged, still another great Italian church, a basilica, with all the usual arches and statues and bronze—I thought of the soul.
I thought of us.
We all have an inner innocence. We all have an inner goodness. But our pride engulfs it–our self-consciousness–all the elaborate architecture of our egos.
We have to throw off our finery, as St. Francis famously did. Not be afraid to be who really are.
I don’t mean that we have to be spiritual athletes, because we can’t be. Francis never expected his followers to observe his own austerities. He was always very gentle with others and accommodating of their frailties and their humanness, and in fact at the end of his too-short life he even expressed regret for the way he had abused his own body. I should have been kinder to poor “brother ass,” he said, speaking of his body, of himself. At the very end he asked a friend to make him the special kind of almond cake he loved.
We have to throw off our finery, as St. Francis famously did. Not be afraid to be who really are.
St. Francis wasn’t a puritan or a scold but more a clown, not just free of pretension but full of joy in the simple things of life.