Readings for St Francis of Assisi Feast Day for Kids

Epitome:Scenes from the Life of Saint Francis (Scene 7) | Benozzo Gozzoli

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Saint of the Day for October 4

(1181 or 1182 – Oct 3, 1226)

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Saint Francis of Assisi'due south Story

The patron saint of Italy, Francis of Assisi was a poor footling human being who astounded and inspired the Church building by taking the gospel literally—non in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but by actually post-obit all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without limit, and without a sense of self-importance.

Serious illness brought the young Francis to see the emptiness of his frolicking life equally leader of Assisi's youth. Prayer—lengthy and difficult—led him to a cocky-emptying like that of Christ, climaxed by embracing a leper he met on the road. It symbolized his complete obedience to what he had heard in prayer: "Francis! Everything you have loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if you wish to know my volition. And when you lot take begun this, all that now seems sweet and lovely to yous will become intolerable and bitter, but all that you used to avoid will turn itself to cracking sugariness and exceeding joy."

From the cross in the neglected field-chapel of San Damiano, Christ told him, "Francis, get out and build upward my house, for information technology is nearly falling downwardly." Francis became the totally poor and humble workman.

He must have suspected a deeper meaning to "build up my firm." But he would have been content to be for the rest of his life the poor "cypher" man actually putting brick on brick in abandoned chapels. He gave up all his possessions, piling even his clothes before his earthly begetter—who was demanding restitution for Francis' "gifts" to the poor—and then that he would be totally free to say, "Our Father in sky." He was, for a fourth dimension, considered to exist a religious fanatic, begging from door to door when he could not get coin for his work, evoking sadness or disgust to the hearts of his former friends, ridicule from the unthinking.

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Just genuineness volition tell. A few people began to realize that this man was actually trying to be Christian. He actually believed what Jesus said: "Announce the kingdom! Possess no golden or silvery or copper in your purses, no traveling pocketbook, no sandals, no staff" (Luke 9:1-3).

Francis' first dominion for his followers was a collection of texts from the Gospels. He had no intention of founding an guild, but once it began he protected it and accepted all the legal structures needed to support it. His devotion and loyalty to the Church were accented and highly exemplary at a fourth dimension when various movements of reform tended to interruption the Church'south unity.

Francis was torn between a life devoted entirely to prayer and a life of active preaching of the Good News. He decided in favor of the latter, but always returned to confinement when he could. He wanted to be a missionary in Syria or in Africa, but was prevented by shipwreck and affliction in both cases. He did endeavour to convert the sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade.

During the final years of his relatively curt life, he died at 44, Francis was half blind and seriously ill. Ii years before his decease he received the stigmata, the real and painful wounds of Christ in his hands, feet and side.

On his deathbed, Francis said over and over again the last addition to hisAnthem of the Sun, "Be praised, O Lord, for our Sister Death." He sang Psalm 141, and at the terminate asked his superior's permission to take his dress removed when the last hour came in order that he could expire lying naked on the earth, in false of his Lord.

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Reflection

Francis of Assisi was poor but that he might exist Christ-like. He recognized cosmos equally some other manifestation of the beauty of God. In 1979, he was named patron of ecology. He did not bad penance—apologizing to "Brother Torso" later in life—that he might be totally disciplined for the will of God. Francis' poverty had a sister, Humility, by which he meant total dependence on the good God. Only all this was, as it were, preliminary to the heart of his spirituality: living the gospel life, summed upward in the clemency of Jesus and perfectly expressed in the Eucharist.

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Saint Francis of Assisi is the Patron Saint of:

Animals
Archaeologists
Environmental
Italia
Merchants
Messengers
Metal Workers

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Click here for more on Saint Francis!

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Source: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-francis-of-assisi

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