A Saintly Model

While I am not at a point in my life of embracing Roman Catholicism instead of my Methodist heritage, I have recently found myself doing a good bit of reading about St. Francis.  Francis did not live a long life by today's standards and neither was his appearance so striking that people would be caused to take a second look.  However, after all these centuries, people still are pulled under the shadow of his spiritual influence.  He was a radical disciple of Jesus who lived simply. embraced poverty as a way of life,  and who desired for his life to be shaped by the power of the gospel of Christ.    

Toward the end of his life it saddened him to see the monastic order that bore his name to lose its distinctiveness.  Those who came after him sought a less austere life and allowed their lives to be shaped by accumulation in a way that Francis never embraced.  This trouble the church of our day has with the accumulation of more of what can be held in the hands is apparently an old affliction.  Throughout the history of the church it has struggled to embrace the simple life for the one which makes for heftier volumes of rules, bigger offering plates, and buildings that become monuments to the people who gather instead of simple shrines in which to worship.  Affluence in the church is surely a deadly sin.    

We can surely justify the obscene amounts of money we spend on our buildings and our comfort, but at some point in the face of the human need all around us, the justification wears a bit thin.  St. Francis would be appalled at the love affair the church has with wealth.  Jesus was the one who inspired Francis to live as he did and He is after all these centuries still calling us to live a simple life where accumulation never gets in the way of compassion.