Every year on Oct. 4 a strange thing happens outside of an ecumenical list of churches around the globe. As if each church were reenacting Noah’s Ark, a bevy of animals and their human counterparts congregate just outside the doors for a ceremonial Blessing of the Animals to commemorate the feast day of Francis of Assisi. The sight of horses, dogs, cats, birds, snakes, and pot-bellied pigs jockeying for position could be called disarmingly odd to a first timer or refreshingly quaint to the already initiated. As a follower of St. Francis myself, I would label the spectacle as revolutionary in a small way that continues to subtly permeate Christian culture to this day. Rather than celebrate the quirkiness of the ritual itself, I would like to speak to St. Francis as an icon for justice whose way of organizing and advocacy is not only rooted in Christianity, but may just provide the necessary strategy for handling a major justice issue of our time: Do all God’s creatures have a place in God’s house?
From the day Christ spoke through a cross at San Damiano Church, “Francis, go repair my household, which you see has fallen into ruin,” Francis of Assisi was called to restore God’s household. This call echoes the prophet Isaiah who called young people to restorative justice as “repairers of the breach and restorers of ruined dwellings” (Is 58:12). Scripture tells us that God’s household has many dwelling places (John 14:2): our worship spaces are contained in houses (Rom 16:5), our bodies are temples of God (1 Cor 6:19), even the Earth itself is a house within God’s household (2 Cor 5:1). The revolutionary thing that Francis appreciated about God’s household was the significance of the incarnation: Everything came to be through the Word of God (John 1:10) and the Word itself became Jesus Christ. By virtue of Creation, everything is related to Christ and a mirror to God.
The significance of the Incarnation is really what is fundamental to understanding Francis, and it is essential to an appreciation of Franciscan restorative justice. The broadest definition of God’s household is Creation itself, and Francis sang an ode to this relationship in his Canticle of the Creatures. The praises are directed to God as manifested through the creatures of the known universe of his time: animals, elements, and celestial bodies. With this Franciscan theology, every creature was an equal member of one family, and all humans were governed by his sister, Mother Earth. Nowhere is the broken relationship with our Mother Earth more evident than with the climate crisis. Through violent extraction of minerals, continuous burning of fossil fuels, and unsustainable carnivorous diets, we have managed to disrupt the global climate to a point that appears to be nearly irreversible. It is especially disheartening to think that this behavior may have seemed justified by more utilitarian theological approaches that appreciate nonhuman creatures merely as commodities and not as mirror images of an unseen God.
It was not just Francis’ Christian worldview but his approach to restorative justice that was distinct. In Eager to Love: The Alternative way of Francis of Assisi, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM said this about the so called Franciscan Alternative Orthodoxy:
“Francis’s starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness, and God’s identification with that suffering in Jesus … His Christ was Cosmic while also deeply personal, his cathedral was creation itself, he preferred the bottom of society to the top. He invariably emphasized inclusion of the seeming outsider over any club of insiders, and he was much more a mystic than a moralist . ..He was a fundamentalist, not about doctrinal scriptures, but about lifestyle scriptures.”
Because Francis imagined a merciful God, his cosmic theology was progressive, his definition of church was inclusive, and his emphasis on lifestyle scriptures admits a certain kind of hidden power that comes when we focus on living the Gospel even as we preach it. The approach itself is a fundamental to a Franciscan organizing strategy.
Francis’ organizational strategy started from an appreciation that we all share God’s household. In the first draft of his rule of life, all were welcomed as brothers and sisters, God was the only superior, conscience was paramount, and the Gospel was preached through deeds as well as words. Everyone was a benefactor (i.e., no enemies), so instead of engaging in adversarial argumentation, the brothers would subject themselves to the others’ point of view or appeal to God’s working through the conscience of the other person. This method can be found in Francis’ Letter to the Rulers of People, his meeting with the Sultan Al-Kamil of Egypt during the 5 th Crusade, and his appeal to get his rule of life approved directly by Pope Innocent III.
If the way of life of Francis of Assisi is by any means prophetic, the spiritual traditions of the world will acknowledge that they all share the same spiritual household. If global agreement on a response to the climate crisis is to be reached, it will likely require an acknowledgement that the climate impacts exist beyond national boundaries. Navigating this impasse will require more than an acknowledgement of Golden Rule or stewardship ethics; it may require acknowledging our dependent role on this earth, our common origin, and the already existent basis for a universal kinship that celebrates both our interdependence and our familiality.
Rhett Engelking is the director of the Franciscan Earth Corps, a ministry of the Franciscan Action Network.
Image: Saint Francis of Assisi, stained glass in the church of St. James the Greater in Elba, Italy. Zvonimir Atletic / Shutterstock.com
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