Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 486

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God

something to be grasped.

Rather, he emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

coming in human likeness;

I have heard it said by Catholics that this beginning of the twenty-first century is "the Catholic hour." The world needs what we have to offer and we are ready to offer it. 

I have heard Franciscans say, "This is the Franciscan hour. The world needs our message as never before!" 

If either is right, I think, more accurately, this is the hour of Philippians 2, and the song Saint Paul included in this chapter. Saint Francis of Assisi understood this song as few have before or since. As he danced for joy in Greccio where he invited the people on Christmas night to see the Baby in a barn; as he wept unceasingly on Good Friday in compassion for the Crucified; as he fell in ecstasy remembering the Resurrection of Jesus he understood that the Lord God Creator of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, who swept the earth with sunshine, wind and rain; who guided the fishes of the sea and governed the carnivores and herbivores of the land -- had become the most helpless and dependent of all creatures, a human baby. 

Francis knew majesty. He saw popes and emperors and generals of armies. He was trained from childhood to humbly bow before these Great Men, and their women. When he thought of God he knew God's majesty infinitely exceeded the splendor of this world's rulers, nor would he dare to strip his "God image" of that supreme dignity. He would not choose to imagine a humble God except the all-powerful, all-wise, all-beautiful, all-good God had shown himself as the least and most abused of all creatures. He would not be astonished that poor peasants dress shabbily; but he was appalled to the point of tears that the Mighty God would die naked on a cross even as his enemies cast lots for his clothing. (The casting of lots was itself a sacred ritual, used in religious ceremonies to determine God's will, profaned by pagan soldiers outside Jerusalem.)

Francis contemplated this incarnate mystery continually, and effectively reintroduced the mystery of the Incarnation to a Christian Europe. By worshiping an All-Powerful, All-Mighty God Christendom had forgotten its mission. (What nation doesn't worship power? What people doesn't believe that might is right?)

Watching emperors, kings, bishops and popes strutting through the halls of their majesty, Francis knew they were only men. The story is told that when Innocent II died in nearby Perugia, his body was left unguarded overnight in the church. Francis was among the first the next morning to discover the naked body, stripped of its finery by robbers. So much for majesty! Sic transit gloria mundi!

If the Church has anything to say to the world today, we should invite them to Behold the Humility of God, as Saint Paul knew him, in the Blessed Sacrament.

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