which, as you see, is falling into ruin."
Francis. Francisco. Franchesco.
Yes, my heart did fill up when I first heard that name.
For now let us not focus on any great acts or heartbreaking stances we might discover in the life of one man, Jorge Bergoglio. Like all of us he has been molded, for better and for worse, by a culture, an era, a schooling.
Instead, may we, as a body of Christ, take that chosen name of Francis into the depths of our brokenness. May that name, Francis, be a clarion call, a communal beckoning, a groan of the spirit that rushes us to love and restore and renew our shell-shocked church and battle-scarred world.
It is not up to one selected man. It is not up to the cardinals and bishops. It is not up to the fathers and the monks and the sisters. It is up to all and each of us, through and in and with our compassionate and ever-flowering Christ, to hear the cry of the poor, to be made into channels of peace, to wrap the wounds of the bleeding, to weep with the brokenhearted, to embrace the neglected and abandoned, to bring love where there has been hatred, to understand rather than be understood, to walk gently on our mother Earth.
And this we are called to do in spite of -- and because of -- our flaws, limitations, youth, age, culturally-inherited hatreds, political leanings, past mistakes, stupidities, hip rationalizations, myopias, complacencies, and hesitations. This we are to do within whatever ordinary or extraordinary lives we find ourselves living.
This we are to do alongside each other -- in little, hidden ways, or in big, obvious ways -- in solitude, in family, or in community -- trusting that there is a wild grace and power and nourishment in surrendering, as disciples and journeyers on a path of Heart, to humanity's inevitable mutuality and common destiny in realms we cannot now fathom.
In doing this, we will bless the memory and the name and the work and the heart of Francis.
From Franco Zeffirelli's film on the early life of St. Francis of Assisi -- Brother Sun, Sister Moon
