Holy Poverty

St. Francis of Assisi
Patron Saint of Animals
Merchants & Ecology

Magpie 65

St Francis of Assisi

Born in Assis in Umbria, in 1181, the son of an affluent cloth merchant, Francesco Bernardone, as he grew, enjoyed a very rich easy and permissive life.

Aged twenty-five he had a dream in which God told him his direction in life was wrong.  Across the years he began to shed his life of privilege and adopted a life of poverty.  He became a preacher - never a priest - but was not a reformer.  He preached of returning to God and obedience to the church.

His life of poverty led to ill health and he became blind.  He responded to his blindness and suffering by writing the Canticle of Brother Sun.  He never recovered from his illness and died in 1226 at the age of forty-five.

Francesco had never sought to eradicate poverty - rather make it Holy.

It could be argued that to achieve Holy Poverty, Francesco depended on the goodwill, charity and toil of others in that they provided for him - thus their toil and labour denying them this same Holy status.

Millions are born into abject poverty each day - does this make them Holy by misfortune of birth, or to achieve this Holy state, impoverished as they are, do they have to relinquish what little they have?  Their life?

St. Francis endorsed a very specific kind of poverty that only Christians of means could embrace - so does this mean that he encouraged the stealing of the one spiritual advantage, that is, their poverty that only the poor could have?

A Mother's Prayer

Brother Sun                                                                   

You shine down

Upon us

Scorching this arid land;

Bringing

Drought and famine.

O Lord
I beseech thee.
Cry for me
And all your children.
Let your tears
Fall as rain
And bring life
To Sister Earth
To sustain us.

Lord I entreat thee;
Save my children
From Sister Death.
Deliver my children
From the despair
Of their lives
And make this their
Heaven on Earth.

O Lord
How can I pardon You
For the sickness and trial
They bear as they
Die a lingering death?
How can I
Endure in peace?

Lord show me the way.

Amen.

This perhaps controversial take on the prompt was never intended - it just happened that I remembered having the same unanswered questions as a child and wonder what your thoughts might be.

Anna :o]

With thanks to Tess at Magpie Tales 65