And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” Jesus answered him, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God” (9:61-62).

Jesus again invites us to the radical call of the Gospel to put God before all else, even before family and again even more radical than the Old Testament. When Elijah called Elisha to follow him, Elijah allowed Elisha to say goodbye to his family and settle his estate, so to speak, before they left together (cf 1 Kings 19:19-21).

A dramatic account of one who took this radical call literally is recorded for the person whose memorial we celebrate today, St Francis of Assisi. Francis who lived a carefree life, self absorbed with dreams of glory in his youth, moved to a total commitment to Jesus. And his choice to renounce his clothes, and his inheritance publically, standing naked before the bishop and his parents, expressed the dramatic expression of “taking the most rigorous form of the sequela Christi [the following of Christ]… the highest and most rigorous form of asceticism” (Manselli, 59).

This conversion scene is artfully expressed in Franco Zeffirelli’s, Brother Sun Sister Moon, the YouTube link of which is posted below. It is still powerful, as it expresses Francis’ total commitment to give his whole life to Christ. “His supreme choice matured slowly and, clarified by his kiss for the leper, was to move from one part of society to another – from the part that had an orderly family and social system over to the other of the poor, the derelicts, the abandoned. With this renunciation, his choice achieved its ultimate and definitive consummation” (Manselli, 59).

Most historians agree that it was his kissing of the leper that was the significant event that led to Francis being able to give himself totally to Jesus, because it was the leper that so repulsed his senses. Francis led a pampered life of the early emerging middle class. The leper represented the complete antithesis of who he was. In the act of embracing that which he abhorred, he was free. Francis loved the leper unconditionally and in so doing encountered Jesus in his distressing disguise of the poor.

Who are the lepers in our life? Who or what is the key barrier between us giving our life totally and wholly to our loving God and Father as Francis did? Jesus give us the courage to identify that which we abhor and to then be empowered to embrace you in its distressing disguise and so be free to serve you wholly. St Francis of Assisi, pray for us!

Today’s Mass readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/100417.cfm

Painting: Jusepi de Ribera 1643

Manselli, Raoul. St Francis of Assisi. Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988.

1972 Franco Zeffirelli movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon