St. Francis of Assisi Day

LaSalette Christmas Lights Display

In my hometown, Attleboro, MA, there is a Roman Catholic shrine dedicated to Lady LaSalette. The shrine acknowledges an appearance of the Virgin Mary in the countryside of France in a town named LaSalette. There are a small number of priests and nuns who live and work at the shrine and people can also hold retreats there. But the largest attraction to the shrine is the Christmas lights display. Every year, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, the shrine decorates its property with hundreds of thousands of lights. People come from all over – even Canada – to visit the shrine during the Christmas season to see the lights. It’s really a festive event – they pipe Christmas carols throughout the display, they sell hot chocolate, and sometimes even have concerts of singing groups and that sort of thing. It’s a great way to get into the Christmas spirit.

When I was in high school, I got a job in the shrine’s gift shop. We sold all sorts of religious things: cards, crucifixes, nativity sets, rosaries…you name it, we sold it (if it was religious). It was during this time that I became familiar with the saints – not the football team – more specifically, the ones officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. This was my first real exposure to this sort of thing. I was a good Lutheran girl – we didn’t really talk about saints much outside of Santa Lucia which our Swedish family celebrated near Christmas. (Italian saint, Swedish holiday…I never really understood that)

Many of the guests were very interested in getting medals or other kinds of saint-memorabilia. People seemed to know exactly what they were looking for: a medal of Saint Christopher to hang in their car – the patron saint of safe travel; a statue of Saint Joseph to plant upside down in their gardens to help sell their houses; and Saint Jude for anyone going through a crisis.

I developed a real fascination with the saints – and a real knack for being able to identify them by appearance.

Perhaps this is why, when thinking about St. Francis and Blessing of the Animals Day – while very excited about having our animals join us in worship on Sunday – I became very intrigued to learn more about this St. Francis guy. How did he get so lucky as to get the honor of being associated with the blessing of the animals?

So, I went to the web – I wanted to see what was out there about who this guy was. I’d like to share with you a bit about Francis.

Francis lived in Assisi, Italy from 1181-1226, he was born into a middle-class family who sold textiles. And, that’s what Francis did: he sold textiles to help his family and so he did not attend school; he has described himself as “illiterate and uncultured.”

At a young age, he joined his region’s army and went to war. It was this war-time experience that is initially credited with causing Francis to lose his taste for worldly things (as a nation still recovering from two wars I think we can relate). When the war was over, he apparently traveled to Rome and instead of visiting the normal pilgrimage sights, Francis begged with the poor people at the doors to the basilicas. There’s very little I found that explained why he did this specifically, but, when he returned to Assisi, he vowed to live a life of poverty.

In all of this, Francis never left the church; but, he did do something rather radical: he changed the commonly understood image of Christ. And, this is the lasting gift that Francis gave to us and the church.

You see, Francis saw Christ as the perfect model of selfless love and suffering and this, for him, was the message of the gospel. For Francis, the crucified Christ – crucified God, was the concrete embodiment of the message of the gospels.

That may sound a bit dreary, but in Francis’ day there was a different emphasis. The church wasn’t emphasizing the crucified Christ that resonated with Francis – their emphasis was elsewhere – more of the resurrected Christ rather than the crucified Christ: the victor over death, the ruler of the heavens. Francis’ life experiences helped him experience a different side of Christ.

Francis’ new lens thought which he saw the living Christ helped him to see the living God in all of creation. He came to believe that all creatures were truly our brothers and sisters. He had three specific reasons: (1) we all share a common origin, the same Creator; (2) we all share the same gift of existence and will share the same destiny of death; and (3) all things are symbols and bearers of Christ. Even the humblest of creatures hold the presence of Christ and the whole physical world was to him a sort of gigantic vision of the incarnate Word of God.

Because of this, Francis recognized God in all creation, even speaking to creatures as if they were “endowed with reason,” like humans.

It is no wonder then, that Francis became the patron saint of animals and the environment.

Reading all of this about Francis really got me interested and thinking about this idea of how God is imaged: how is God imagined? Now, don’t get me wrong – I know that the Ten Commandments say we are not to make a graven image and worship it as God. That’s not what I’m talking about: I’m not looking for a God substitute; rather, like Francis, I’m wanted to really think about how I saw, and see, God.

For me, it was helpful to go back and see just what these authors were talking about. And so, I went back to my web and began looking at how, as creation, we have depicted God and Jesus.

This is one of the oldest depictions – drawings – of Jesus. It is called “The Healing of the Paralytic” and depicts one of the healing scenes from the stories of Jesus. Art historians have dated this drawing to the year 235 CE.

This second picture is also dated to the 3rd Century and is entitled “Jesus the Good Shepherd.” The painting was found painted on the wall of a catacomb.

These are both very simple images of Jesus so far: the healer and the shepherd – two images of Jesus that we still have to this day. But, does that look like the images of Jesus that you know?

Just about this time, there was a great shift – both politically and religiously. In 313, Constantine (emperor of Rome) signed the Edict of Milan which decriminalized Christianity – it had been against the law to be Christian before that. Constantine is also famed for having converted to Christianity as well. With this big event – the image of Christ began to change

This is a mosaic depicting the image of Christ that came along with this monumental shift: Christ as emperor. He’s wearing military dress and looks more like a knight in battle. This mosaic is from around the year 500.

This is now starting to look like some of the images of Christ that we’re familiar with – notice Jesus finally has a beard? This is Christ as Pantocrator. Pantocrator means “all powerful” – some have translated it as “ruler of all.” This image of Christ (similar to the previous one) is the image that would have been most common during the days when St. Francis was around. This image can be found in Hagia Sophia and is dated to 1261.

Let’s compare these images to the depictions of St. Francis.

This is a fresco dating to 1280 by Cinabue. It’s estimated that this image of Francis may be the closest to his actual likeness considering people were able to describe Francis to Cinabue. Notice he has a halo which signifies his sainthood and that he’s holy. Pantocrator had that too. But Francis attempted to live in the image of God.

Here is a fresco depicting Francis with birds. You can visually see how radically different Francis is depicted compared to Pantocrator. It really isn’t a subtle change is it?

Seeing all of these images got me thinking: how do I image God? What are the images of God out there? So, I went back to the web and I googled “God.”

This is the first image of God that came up in my google search. It’s called “God the Father” by Cima de Conegliano and it’s from 1515. It’s the old white made with white hair and  a long beard. God has a halo like those earlier images of Christ.

This is the second image that came up. It is part of the fresco at the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo entitled “Creation of the Sun and Moon.” This is a different image of God – God the creator. But, it’s still an older white man.

I thought it was neat that by the time I got to the fifth image, I came across this one:

It’s called “The Eye of God” – this is actually a Helix Nebula – a dying star. But, this is quite a different image of God from that old white man in a beard!

So, I began to think: what are the images of Jesus? So, I googled “Jesus.”

This was the first image that popped up. It has no fancy title or artist that I could find. I’m imagining it’s part of the “Jesus is my homeboy” movement – more of a personal friend in Jesus idea.

This is the second image I got in my results – it’s the shepherd image again. Now Jesus has a beard, light skin, he’s wearing a tunic, he kind of has a halo. It’s neat that that image of Christ that we first saw in the 3rd century is still around!

I saw this one in the search results and had to include it – my church at home had this framed on the wall – do others recognize it?

This one is interesting. It’s from a BBC report called “Son of God” where historians attempted to recreated – as accurately as they could – what Jesus looked like. They based their guess on remains found in archeological digs and on old paintings from the time that Jesus would have lived. It estimates Jesus’s head shape, facial features, hair color and style, skin color, beard, etc. Is it what you expected?

So, I wanted to move out of what other people thought – or what google produced for that matter. I wondered “how do we, as Prince of Peace, envision God?”

So, I asked the youth at youth group. We made a God Pinterest board – Pinterest is an online site that allows you to virtually pin ideas, images, etc. to a “board” like a designer might, to see how things go together (i.e. weddings, remodeling a room, vacation ideas, etc.)

The youth cut out images and words from magazines and pinned them to an actual board. Here are some images of what they made:

The whole God Pinterest Board

This is how they understand God – pretty cool huh?

This made me ask myself, where have I seen God lately?

I saw God at the ELCA youth gathering this summer.

I see God in nature – sunflowers are my favorite flower!

That's my God daughter Cassidy (and her stink face). She just turned one!

And this is my partner, Laura, and our puppy, Cinna – I see God in my family.

For just a moment, I encourage you to think about God – what do you think about? Where does your mind go? Now think about Jesus Christ – what images speak to you? What do you think about?

The big question is: What difference does it make? If you think of God as the father with the white hair or if you think more of the eye of God image, what difference does it make? If you think of Christ as Pantocrator – “ruler of all” – or if Jesus as your homeboy speaks to you, what difference does it make?

Maybe it doesn’t make a big difference at all to you. Or maybe it’s a monumental one. Francis’s difference was monumental – it changed his life – he lived differently because of how he saw Christ.

How might you live into your image of God? How is your understanding of Christ calling you to live?

May the courage of St. Francis be in your hearts as you continue to discern these challenging questions.

Amen.

Much of my information about St. Francis came from two websites: The Franciscan Friars of California and Wikipedia. Much of the early information on the old depictions of Jesus came from Wikipedia.