Originally published in The Tecumseh Herald, Sept. 30, 2021
Parishioners at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church along with their Protestant brethren at the United Methodist and Presbyterian churches in Tecumseh will mark the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi this weekend by hosting pet blessing events. Both events take place on Saturday, Oct. 2.
Blessings and saints go hand in hand in the Catholic tradition. I’m especially enamored of saintly “feast days,” where a particular saint is remembered. Non-Catholics often are confused by the tradition of venerating saints, which often is likened to worshipping statues or idols. For a Catholic, a saint is someone who has overcome many of the obstacles we face in our own times, sometimes even dying for their faith. We look to the saints’ walks with God to guide our own because we are imperfect souls in an imperfect and restless world.
St. Francis, whose actual feast day is October 4, started his life as the carefree son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, Italy, in the Tuscany region of the country. Today, you can walk in his footsteps through the streets of the old village, visit the place he called home as a youth, and even stand at his tomb beneath the basilica that bears his name. Like most saints, Francis had a life-changing encounter that pushed him to live a life of complete obedience to God.
In her 2015 book, “St. Francis of America: How a 13th-Century Friar Became America’s Most Popular Saint,” historian Patricia Appelbaum explores the intersection between this Catholic saint and American culture. She writes that, “For contemporary Americans, St. Francis of Assisi is one of the most widely recognized saints and one of the best loved.” Statues of St. Francis are found at garden centers, songs composed from his own writings are readily available on most streaming music, and pet blessings abound. Francis is the patron of Italy along with St. Catherine of Siena, and he is credited with writing three of the more well-known Christian hymns, “Canticle of the Sun,” “All Creatures of our God and King,” and the “Prayer of St. Francis.”
Even Jorge Mario Bergolio–a Jesuit–took the name of this humble man when he became Pope Francis in 2013.
Tradition tells us Francis was the first to introduce the idea that human beings are only one of a myriad of creations of God and that all are blessed in his eyes. It forms the foundation for the practice of a Blessing of the Pets as well as the naming of Francis as the patron saint of ecology, which Pope John Paul II declared in 1979.
The appeal of Francis in these post-modern times, Appelbaum writes, is that he “can offer action and practice in place of reasoning…Francis rejected money in favor of usefulness, concreteness, human freedom, and human community.” In other words, he epitomizes the ideal of a people dedicated to caring for their own corner of the world, whether through environmental and ecological action, serving the poor, caring for the sick, or standing up for those who have no voice in our society.
Perhaps our St. Francis of today could serve as a role model, as someone who meets people wherever they are in life and serves them through his love and action. I imagine him as a good listener, someone who seeks the face of God in every person, in every place, in everything he encounters. Someone who sets aside differences with others and seeks a peaceful compromise to whatever divides them.
Priests, ministers, and other religious figures should model peace over dissent, dialogue over silence, compassion over cruelty. Inviting others to share these values through events like a blessing of our pets is a good place to start.
SQUIBS 