By The Rev. John Kennedy
On Sunday, October 6, my church celebrated St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the natural world. His official feast day is on the 4th and he is the reason why so many churches, St. Mark’s included, have a Blessing of the Animals service on a Sunday in early October. His life, story, and message have inspired untold numbers of people up until the present day. In a time when the fabric of our society is torn and fraying, our relationship to the natural world is perilously out of balance, and so many of us are caught in a pursuit of wealth and status that does not truly serve us or make us happy, he is very much a saint and model of holiness, joy, simplicity of life, and peace and unity that we need.
Francis was born in 1182 as the son of a wealthy merchant in Assisi, in central Italy. In his youth, he was a far cry from the Francis we know. He liked to wear fine clothing and go to extravagant parties. He aspired to military glory, though his attempts failed. Things changed after some encounters with beggars and people suffering from leprosy. Something about this awakened his conscience. He then had a series of profound mystical experiences, and this changed the way that he saw the world.
After this, Francis desired to live a life devoted to poverty because he wanted to imitate his Lord, Jesus. This was met with intense opposition from his father. Undeterred, Francis renounced all of his possessions and materialistic values and devoted himself to the service of God in imitation of Christ.
Many people saw the life of joy, freedom, and love that Francis was living and thought, “Well, I want that!” and a movement gathered around him. There was something magnetic about him. Francis wrote a Rule for this new community, and in the year 1210, when he was about 28, Pope Innocent III approved it. Francis called it the Rule for the Order of Friars Minor. “Friar” means “brother” and “minor” just means “small; insignificant.” He chose this name to emphasize his desire to be the least of God’s servants. After this, the new Order of Friars Minor grew quickly throughout Europe.
Francis died at the age of 43 or 44 in 1226. Only seven years after that, he was declared a saint by Pope Gregory IX. Around the same time, a great basilica was built in Assisi where Francis is buried. On the feast of St. Francis in 2020, Pope Francis signed an encyclical — an official statement to the Church and to the world — on Francis’ tomb in this basilica. This document, called Fratelli tutti (“all brothers”), calls for a new vision of solidarity and friendship among people of the world.
St. Francis had a deep love for the natural world and animals. He saw and loved God in and through all creation and all creatures, and this is why we bless animals on or near his feast day. He is the patron saint of ecology and it’s no coincidence that Pope Francis, who took his name St. Francis, has been the climate change Pope, sounding an urgent call for all of us to take much better care of this planet, our common home.
Francis had a sacramental understanding of all nature, of all things. A sacrament is an outward sign — something we can see, touch, or hold on to — of inward grace, or spiritual reality and presence.
Francis saw all of creation in this way, including rocks. If you look at images of other saints, it’s common to see them praying with their gaze directed up to the sky; “heavenward.” With Francis, we often see him looking down at the ground or at an animal, because he saw God in the world — in the creatures of the world.
In the first biography of Francis, written not long after Francis died, we read that “Toward little worms even he glowed with a very great love… he picked them up from the road and placed them in a safe place, lest they be crushed by the feet of the passersby.” St. Bonaventure, the first Franciscan theologian, also wrote “Let us place our first step at the bottom, presenting to ourselves the whole material world as a mirror through which we may pass over to God.” Francis spent his life wandering around nature and praying; he would pray lying on the ground, in caves, for days at a time alone outside.
Francis’ hometown of Assisi is an extraordinarily beautiful place, so it’s natural that he was most comfortable in the outdoors; in the cathedral of nature.
Sometimes, when I go outside or for a walk in one of our parks around sunrise or sunset on a beautiful and clear day, I think how even the Sistine Chapel ceiling can’t really top this. We have the holy ground of the earth beneath our feet, the trees for our walls, and the magnificent open sky for our ceiling.
We share with Francis the gift of living in a beautiful place. It is your cathedral. So, pray in it. Seek God in it. Let the land fill you up. Get in tune with the rhythms of nature, and of the changing seasons. Watch and listen for the animals. All of this can bring you to God.
And, if you find yourself searching for God, if you’re wondering where God is, go outside for a while and then start to pray. God is not somewhere else. God is right here, all around us.
John joined St. Mark’s as Associate Rector on Palm Sunday, 2023, after serving at St. Paul’s in Ohio and Kent School in Connecticut. Ordained in 2020, he was sponsored by St. Mark’s, where he had previously worked in youth ministry. John holds a Bachelor’s in Music from Berklee College of Music and studied at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. He loves music, spiritual practice, hiking, and spending time with family. He and his wife, Emma, were married at St. Mark’s in June 2023.
