Today is the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis. Odds are your parish will be celebrating another memorial today, but in the Franciscan world the stigmata wins out.
It seems sort of odd to me that there is a "feast" day celebrating an event that is so gruesome and austere. Seems to me that the stigmata represented, for Francis, the ultimate affirmation of his decision to walk down the road with Christ that we all have to walk and don't want to walk: the road to Golgotha.
Francis did this through poverty. Poverty in material things (he didn't even own books), but also a poverty of spirit that sought to be humble, little, even abused. Francis took all those quotes from the Gospels "give your cloak", "turn the other cheek", "give all your money to the poor" and ran with them. He didn't do it from a comfortable place of privilege and wealth, he did it from the gutter.
The stigmata is a stark and brutal reminder that to follow Christ means following that uncomfortable road of giving up the rights of power, revenge, personal gain and greed. It flies in the face of pretty much all the values that human civilizations have been founded on. It is both apolitical and deeply subversive, both forgiving but casting a judgement by its very existence.
I believe that stigmata occurs. I believe that for most of us it is something that we shouldn't gawk at, but something that should remind us that we are all called to emulate the crucified Christ. Jesus' yoke may be easy, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a yoke.
No comments:
Post a Comment