Praying with icons - October 4, 2026
Icon of St. Francis Altarpiece
Saint Francis is often pictured in bare feet, as we see in this painting.
This is more than just a nice pastoral way of presenting his love for creation. What Francis knew and lived was that matter is the hiding place for spirit.
Hidden in creation, the spirit is always offering itself to be discovered again. Francis knew that the beyond was not really beyond in the sense of 'out there', 'up there', 'after death', but hidden in the depths of here.
As a result of his awareness that the divine was hidden in matter, Francis had a unique wholeness. He was at once traditional and entirely new in the ways of holiness.
And still a paradox. He stood barefoot on the earth and yet touched the heavens. He lived happily inside the visible and yet both suffered and rejoiced in what others thought was invisible. The strange gift of the stigmata, the wounds of Christ which he was given, are witness to this invisible becoming visible in Francis.
He was totally at home in two worlds at the same time, and thus he made them into one world. He was grounded in the church and yet moved toward the cosmos.
Francis shows us how to die into our one and only life, a life that we must learn to love. He will show it to be one continuous movement: first learning to love our life and then allowing ourselves to die into it, never to die away from it. In his Canticle to Creation, Francis sings, "Praise to you, my Lord, through our sister bodily death, from whom no one living can escape. Blessed are those whom death will find in your most holy will, for the second death shall do them no harm. Once death is incorporated into life, we're already in heaven, and there is no possibility or fear of hell."
---
Comments