The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (Latin for: “A Few Words)
This past week was the Feast of Saint Francis. We have a statue of Saint Francis up front on the right side of our chapel. His face is intense from fasting and keeping night vigils. His great prayer is mounted on the chapel wall; do you ever pray it? Think deeply upon the words, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…”
The Feast of Francis is the day when many parishes turn out to bless the animals. But to bless something isn’t to put a kind of holy whammy on the thing – boat, car, rosary, cat – but to BLESS God – to glorify God, to extol God, to celebrate God, who is God. Looking at the sunset and saying, “God, you’re wonderful!” – that’s blessing God! Or after a particularly good meeting with our families, “Oh God, how you love and care for me!” That’s blessing God. When we “Bless” a particular thing – we’re celebrating that God shares his life and love (grace) with us as we use these things.
AND WHAT ABOUT FRANCIS? The bottom line is that we admire saints much, much more than we copy them. We sanitize the saints. Make them safe to follow – no threat to our comfortable lifestyle. While I stood in front of the relic of Francis’ habit I counted no less than 35 pieces of different gray fabric patched together. It looked like a gray clown outfit. Francis was surrounded much more by lepers than rabbits and singing birds. And through it all – the rain and mud, the cold and rejection, the hunger and homelessness – Francis and his followers lived in perfect delight! “Oh Jesus, help us to get your saints right.”
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Some of us stood on the Life Chain this weekend. Life is under attack as never before. An elderly man told me last week that his 70-year-old sister was born with multiple sclerosis and that she is the happiest person he knows. Why should she have been aborted? She gives the world joy! She is with us to elicit love from us! That’s why handicapped people are with us – to make us all more loving. Mother Teresa picked the babies out of the garbage and said, “Even if she lives for 5 minutes, she will know she is loved.” Someone will say, “Well, what about those who aren’t picked out of the garbage?” So death is the answer!? Get busy! Get busy getting your life straightened out so you can do something.
I spoke rather strongly to the whole house last week at “Circle Up.” What about it since then? If we’re lamenting that this school has changed, and “It isn’t the way it used to be around here,” that’s because we’ve changed – for the worse – or because we refuse to change for the better and insist upon living in that profound selfishness which thinks of no one else but myself. “Every man for himself,” the ugly expression goes.
When this school was founded, it was student led. Even the table topics were student led. And we’ve forfeited that leadership because our sense of community is so weak. Just as our families didn’t work at home because we took and didn’t give. The house was an unruly hotel.
“Behold the Lamb of God, Christ Jesus, who did not come to BE served, but to serve, and to give his own life as a ransom for the many.” WOW! There’s a fresh model for living.
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The Feast of Saint Therese of Lisieux was this past Tuesday. She died at age 24 of Tuberculosis living as a nun for only about 9 years. She wrote her autobiography called, The Story of A Soul – a Christian classic. Mary Jo Law could get it for you if you were interested. Anyway, in the book she likens herself to a ball – a plaything – for Christ. A toy that Jesus can use and enjoy for a while and which he then puts away for a time. And she’s fine with that. Other great saints have thought likewise. St. Bernadette likened herself to a broom, which Our Lady used and them put behind the door. Mother Teresa called herself a little pencil, with which God wrote a little bit and then put down. Can you allow God to do that with you? Can you think of yourself as small and in God’s service – ready for what and how God might use you today? And then be content to wait for the next use or requirement – all in love?
