Some of you might be wondering why we are outside and joined by adorable dogs and other beloved pets at church today.
The short answer is that on or near October 4 every year, we recognize the life of St. Francis of Assisi, who is known as the patron saint of animals.
But what’s with saint’s days in the first place?
In the Episcopal Church, layered throughout the year are commemorations for certain individuals from Christian history. Unlike the high holy days of Easter or Christmas, when we remember events related to Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, these feast days are optional commemorations, secondary to the primary church calendar, and more like a family history of the Christians who lived before us.
Jesus, who was both fully God and fully human, was the only person to live without sin. We worship God alone. Saints were not perfect. We don’t worship the saints, but we recognize those who have come before us because it is important to remember our history and learn from it.
We have 2000 years of church history, of people striving to follow God in their lives and communities, and often failing. Those whom we remember as saints were often offering a correction to the wider church that had gone astray. The saints in that way were like the prophets of the Old Testament, using their words and actions together to demonstrate the way of Jesus, how to love God and love others in their particular contexts.
For instance, that is why in more recent history we recognize Frederick Douglass and William Wilberforce for their courage and truth telling in decrying the evil of slavery and the hypocrisy of the church in supporting it. We also recognize Hiram Hisanori Kano, a Japanese American priest who was imprisoned in internment camps in WWII and stood against the racism and xenophobia of his time as a witness for peace and reconciliation.
The list of our saints goes on and on, including Pauli Murray, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King Jr., Augustine of Hippo, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I would encourage you to check out the book A Great Cloud of Witnesses, that details the feast days for many holy men and women who have gone before us.
We need to remember our history. The saints teach us not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed be the reneweing of our minds in Christ Jesus. By remembering and learning about the people who have gone before us who have shined forth Christ’s light to the world, we might be spurred on in our own lives to cultivate those virtues through grace as we strive to imitate Christ right here in Scarsdale in 2025.
So that leads us to the man of the hour, St. Francis of Assisi. He was born in 1181 to a wealthy family in Italy. He renounced the wealth of his family to devote himself to a life of poverty, prayer, and devotion to God. He was responding to what he saw at the time as the excesses of the church and the continued gap between the wealthy and the poor. He founded the Franciscan Order to live by those principals in community and to serve those who are in need. Francis cared deeply for others, particularly for the poor and vulnerable. He reminded others that the only way to be a friend of Christ is to cherish those for whom Christ died.
Francis’ love extended also to all of creation, including animals. Francis reminds us all to care for creation to cultivate rather than to consume.
In closing, I am going to read a prayer attributed to St. Francis, which is just as resonant today as it was 800 years ago:
Let us pray.
With all our hearts and all our souls, all our minds and all our strength, all our power and all our understanding, with every faculty and every effort, with every affection and all our emotions, with every wish and desire, we should love our Lord and God. Amen