Novena of Saint Francis of Assisi Day Two

Going out to the margins 

 In The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis laid out his vision of our call to be disciples-missionaries. This means a church that “goes out” even to the peripheries, to the margins. In paragraph 20, he wrote:

In our day Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples” echoes in the changing scenarios and ever new challenges to the Church’s mission of evangelization, and all of us are called to take part in this new missionary “going forth”. Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the “peripheries” in need of the light of the Gospel.

Saint Francis of Assisi went out to the peripheries in many ways, going beyond his comfort zone.

Francis enjoyed a comfortable existence as a young man. His father was a fairly prosperous merchant in fine cloth. He enjoyed a social life with other young people of his social class.

But after his experience as a prisoner of war something happened. My guess he may have been somewhat fastidious. He tried to avoid any encounters with lepers, but one day, moved by the Spirit, he embraced a leper. That was for him a moment of real conversion – what appalled him became a source of joy and peace. As he wrote in his testament:

The Lord granted me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance in this way: While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul and body

He then began to attend the lepers – not as one who comes in, does a good work, and then leaves. He began to accompany them and to be with them. Soon after, reflecting on the Gospels and the call of the Lord in his life, Francis embraced holy poverty and mingled with the marginalized. I am sure that he shared the smell of the sheep, that Pope Francis has recommended.

For Saint Francis being poor and being with the poor were central elements of his calling. It wasn’t easy at first, but he embraced it and shows us the way to embrace the poor and marginalized not as objects of charity, but as our sisters and brothers.

As Pope Francis said in Havana Cuba, in 2015:

Service always looks to their faces [the faces of the most vulnerable], touches their flesh, senses their closeness and even, in some cases, ‘suffers’ that closeness and tries to help them. Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.

Saint Francis gives us an example of seeing the face of Christ in the face of the poor. Recalling his life and the admonitions of Pope Francis we can begin to bridge the gap between peoples and live as witnesses of the Reign of God, of the life filled with love and joy. As Pope Francis noted in The Joy of the Gospel:

We achieve fulfillment when we break down walls and our hearts are filled with faces and names!

We know the poor - by name.

Sculpture outside San Damiano, Assisi

Deacon reflection 4

The deacon and serving in the margins

 

The tradition says that the first seven deacons were chosen by the apostles in response to a crisis in the early Christian community. (Acts 6:1-7) The Hellenists, the non-Hebrew speaking followers, complained that their widows were being neglected in the daily ministry. So seven “reputable men, filled with wisdom and the Holy Spirit” were chosen.

 

It is notable that the name “deacon” does not appear in the account in the Acts of the Apostles, though the complaint was the widows were neglected in the daily diakonia (ἐν τῇ διακονίᾳ τῇ καθημερινῇ).

 

For many years this was understood as serving at the table, caring for the physical needs of the Hellenists in the community. Recently, some writers have contended that it is inadequate to speak of them as serving at table since the word deacon had a wider meaning at that time. I don’t want to go into this dispute here which I think is overstated and may mislead us in trying to comprehend the ministry of the deacon which should be seen as three-fold.

 

A recent Instruction of the Vatican Congregation of the Clergy "The pastoral conversion of the Parish community in the service of the evangelizing mission of the Church” noted that Pope Saint Paul VI, “reaffirmed that the deacon serves Christian communities ‘in proclaiming the Word of God, in sacramental ministry and in the exercise of charity’.”

 

What is interesting in the Acts of the Apostles is that, though the deacons were formed to assist those in need, we find two of them, Stephen and Philip, evangelizing. Stephen, the first martyr, defends the community in the face of the religious leaders of the day. But Philip evangelizes and baptizes those outside the Jewish community, people in Samaria, a people despised by the Judean community, and then an Ethiopian eunuch.

I would suggest that the first “deacons” were needed to respond to those at the margins – first the widows of the Hellenists in the community and then Samaritans and even an Ethiopian.

 

From his first days as Pope, Pope Francis has spoken of the call to “go to the peripheries,” to seek out those on the margins. (Cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 20.) He has shown this in his washing of the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday, in his visit to the refugees on Lampedusa in the first months of his papacy, in his openness to people of many faiths – and no faith.

 

As I see my ministry as a deacon, I am called to go out to the peripheries; for me this means, at the very least, going out to the impoverished in the remote parts of the parish where I serve here in Honduras. For others it may mean reaching out to those in prisons and hospitals. I have heard of one deacon who is active in the struggle for the abolition of the death penalty in the state where he lives. I know of another deacon who is reaching out in solidarity with the gay and lesbian communities in the town.

 

The deacon should not be reduced to being in humble service to the poor, nor should he be limited to a role at the altar or to preaching and teaching. We should be involved in all – but with a special emphasis on reaching out to the marginalized.

 

The deacon should be one who goes out, in imitation of Jesus who did not remain in heaven to save us from afar but, “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; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 5-8)

 

Jesus come to be with those on the margins and so should the deacon leave the sanctuary to be with those at the margins, serving them and being a living sign of the Gospel, at times evangelizing with words.

 

The question is whether I as a deacon am really serving in the margins.