St Francis - 4th October

To me St. Francis is more than just the Patron saint of ecology etc.  His love for Jesus was so total and so completely giving.  He took every word of Christ to heart and eagerly lived it out with total self giving.  His witness bore much fruit as we see so many religious congregations, lay foundations which are based on his spirituality.  The simplicity of his life, his poverty, and his suffering were all for Jesus. 

Dearest and most holy St. Francis, please help us to live for Jesus and give our all to Jesus.  Help us to detach ourselves from all things and people and put Jesus first in our hearts.  Pray and intercede for all Priests that they may learn to love Jesus again and realise the great gift of their Priesthood of which you yourself felt so unworthy.  St. Francis pray for us and for all Priests and Religious.

Let down by those in the Church

People will always let us down.  We see this especially in the Church, because we are all sinners.  Perhaps we have high expectations of others because we expect people in the Church to be Christian towards us always.  Unfortunately this doesnt always happen.  As we know very well.  It is more often the case that the people that hurt us the most are those that are in the Church.   What can we do in this situation. 

We have to remember that it is only Christ we can depend on ultimately.  Jesus will never abandon us or hurt us when others do.  Many of the Saints were harshly treated within their own communities such as St. Francis, St Bernadette, St. John of the Cross, and St. Faustina just to name but a few. 
But when we look at Christ, He too was humiliated and painfully hurt by those around Him.  He was crushed by suffering because of jealousy and pure hatred from some members of His own community and ultimately betrayed by one of His disciples.  But He accepted all of this for us, for our sins.  So perhaps for those who feel abandoned, who feel lost, who feel let down by those in the Church, remember Christ on the Cross because He too felt the same.  It doesnt mean that we have to accept sin, no, but we must rise above it and yes we are called to love one another, but to do this we have to continually turn to Jesus.  We cannot always expect that love we give to others to be returned.  But, God calls us to love anyway.  It is a hard task but we are called to rely on Jesus and to trust Him alone.  He took up the way of suffering by taking up the Cross, so to follow Him, so must we.   It is not the Catholic Church in itself that lets us down, it is its members, we all let each other down. 

Lord have mercy on us for we have sinned.