We Have Come To Worship Him ... With Saint Francis

1. We adore You, Lord Jesus Christ

2. Adore with Saint Francis

1. We adore You, Lord Jesus Christ

The theme of the World Youth Day was: “We have come to worship Him ...”, and we add for this International Franciscan Youth meeting: “... with Saint Francis”. Participating in the World Youth Day and in this International Franciscan Youth meeting, we are invited to worship, to adore the Lord, inwardly and outwardly, with Saint Francis.

Julian of Speyer, a German Friar, in his “Life of Saint Francis”, written in 1234/35, tells us as follows: “The brothers asked Blessed Francis to teach them how to pray. Speaking simply, he passed on to them this formula saying, «When you will pray, say ‘Our Father’ and ‘We adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, in all your churches throughout the whole world, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world’.» The brothers, humbly carrying out these instructions and regarding these simple words as having the force of a mandate of obedience, even bowed toward churches they could only see in the distance, and lying prostate on the ground, adored as they had been instructed.” (Julian Speyer, ch. 5).

From the very beginning of the life of his Order, Francis stressed the need to adore our Lord Jesus Christ, inwardly and outwardly. We do well to notice that this adoration was not just an attitude of the mind, but expressed by bodily posture, “bowing inwardly and outwardly”, “lying prostrate on the ground”, turning “toward churches they could only see in the distance”. We can safely state that Franciscan adoration is holistic, involving our whole personality, body and mind, heart and soul. There are many other instances where the brothers saw Francis absorbed in prayer and adoration with his whole person: “When praying in the woods or solitary places, Francis would fill the forest with groans, water the places with tears, strike his breast with his hand ... Thus he would direct all his attention and affection toward the one thing he asked of the Lord, not so much praying as becoming totally prayer” (2Cel 61).

Francis invites all those who are inspired by his example, to “love God and adore Him with a pure heart and a pure mind, because He who seeks this above all things has said: True adorers adore the Father in spirit and truth. (Jn 4:23) For all, who adore Him must adore Him in the Spirit of truth (cf. Jn 4:24)” (2LetF 46-47).

To adore God, we need to be blessed with “a pure heart and a pure mind”, for then we will see God. “The truly clean of heart -- says Saint Francis -- are those who look down upon earthly things, seek those of heaven, and, with a clean heart and spirit, never cease adoring and seeing the Lord God living and true” (Adm 16). Francis himself was one of those “truly clean of heart”, who was able to see God in all things, as Thomas of Celano tells us: “Who would be able to tell of the sweet tenderness he enjoyed while contemplating in creatures the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Creator? From this reflection he often overflowed with amazing, unspeakable joy ad he looked at the sun, gazed at the moon, or observed the stars in the sky. ... This man, full of the spirit of God never stopped glorifying, praising and blessing the Creator and Ruler of all things in all the elements and creatures” (1Cel 29).

2. Adore with Saint Francis

To see and to contemplate reality with Francis does not mean to change the world around us, but to change ourselves, or better to let God guide us and let ourselves be changed. And even here, it is not so much a change in the structure of our personality or a change in our bodily faculties, in our senses or our intellect, but a change in the way we see things. The eyes remain the same eyes, the mind remains the same mind, the person remains the same person.

Contemplating with Francis means to look at reality with clean and pure eyes, free of the will to possess, but capable to see the good which is present in any thing and in each person. It was this way of looking at reality which made Francis see all things as “brothers and sisters”, which made it possible for him to make peace with the wolf of Gubbio, to see the sultan of Egypt as a brother, and be welcomed in the houses of the poor and of the rich alike. Francis was able to leave aside his own judgements and to look with the eyes of the Spirit. He told one of his brothers, a Minister, to love his brothers: “Love them and do not wish that they be better Christians. ... And if he would sin a thousand times before your eyes, love him ore than me so that you may draw him to the Lord, and always be merciful with brothers such as these” (LetterMin, 7.11).

Once we are able to look at people and at things with clean eyes, we will see God: “Blessed are the clean in heart, for they will see God” (Mt 5,8). As soon as we can put aside our own interest, stop worrying about our own selves, we will be able “to adore and to see the Lord God living and true” (Adm 16). People and things will become transparent, translucent, they will shine with the light of God and show us the Creator from whom they all come. We will then see other people as our sisters and brothers, because we have one Father, who is in heaven. We will be able to accept other people as they are, not as we want them to be, because each of them is placed in great excellence, for God “created and formed us to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His likeness according to the Spirit” (Adm 5).

To contemplate with Francis is too look at things with our whole self, with the eyes and the senses of our body. Francis wanted to see things as concrete as possible, to see with his own bodily eyes what Jesus had endured for us. To contemplate with Francis means to take the incarnation serious, to look for God in the realities of our daily life, to try to see and to feel what God has done for us, what Jesus has experienced in His life on earth. It means to look at the cross and to see and to touch and to smell and to hear with all our bodily senses what God has done for us and is doing for us and with us.

To contemplate with Francis means to approach reality around us in a realistic way, to let reality around us approach us as it is. It does mean to accept reality, to embrace the lepers, to show them mercy. Francis can teach us to be fully realistic, to look at reality with open eyes, to see things as they are, not idealizing them, but accept them, accept the wolf who has killed people. And then ... reality will change, the wolf becomes a brother, the enemy a friend, the world a place of God’s grace. It is the way of God himself. Jesus redeemed the world by accepting reality, by being nailed to a cross, by being rejected. But God rose Him from the death and by His holy cross redeemed the world.

“We adore You, Lord Jesus Christ, in all your churches throughout the whole world and we bless You because by your holy cross You have redeemed the world”.