Ave Maria! Yesterday, September 17, was the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. From the beginning of his conversion, St. Francis had a profound love of Christ Crucified. With burning admiration, St. Francis constantly contemplated the Passion of our Lord, whom he strove to imitate as closely as possible, both exteriorly and interiorly. Two years before he died, while praying on a solitary retreat, St. Francis received the Stigmata, the sacred marks of Christ's Passion on his body. In a new and more defined way, St. Francis could truly henceforth proclaim: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
It is not so much St. Francis whom the Church glorifies on this feast but Christ Jesus Himself: the first and the last, and the living one, who died and behold is alive for evermore, and who has the keys of death and hell (Revelation 1:17-18). Dom Prosper Guéranger (1837-1875), a Benedictine monk who was one of the leading monastics and liturgists of his generation, helps us to better understand and appreciate this feast in the following commentary from his 15-volume masterpiece, The Liturgical Year.
"The Feast of the Stigmata of Saint Francis, whom we will soon honor again on his feast of October 4th, is not only to glorify a Saint; it commemorates and signifies something which goes beyond the life of any single man, even one of the greatest of the Church. The God-Man never ceases to live on in His Church, and the reproduction of His own mysteries in this Spouse whom He wants to be similar to Himself, is the explanation of history.
"In the thirteenth century it seemed that charity, whose divine precept many no longer heeded, concentrated in a few souls the fires which had once sufficed to inflame multitudes. Sanctity shone as brilliantly as ever, but the hour for the cooling of the brazier had struck for the peoples. The Church itself says so today in its liturgy, at the Collect: Lord Jesus Christ, when the world was growing cold, You reproduced the sacred marks of Your passion in the body of the most blessed Francis, in order that Your love might also set our hearts afire.' The Spouse of Christ had already begun to experience the long series of social defections among the nations, with their denials, treasons, derision, slaps, spittings in the very praetorium, all of which conclude in the legalized separation of society from its Author. The era of the Passion is advanced; the exaltation of the Holy Cross, which for centuries was triumphant in the eyes of the nations, acquires in the sight of heaven, as the Angels look down upon it, the aspect of an ever closer resemblance with the Spouse to the sufferings of her crucified Beloved.
"Saint Francis, loved today by all who know of him — and few there are who do not — was like precious marble placed before an expert sculptor. The Holy Spirit chose the flesh of the seraph of Assisi to express His divine thought, thus manifesting to the world the very specific direction He intends to give to souls thereafter. This stigmatization offers a first example, a complete image, of the new labor the divine Spirit is meditating — total union, on the very Cross of Christ itself, of the mystical Body with the divine Head. Francis is the one honored by this primacy of choice; but after him the sacred sign will be received by others, who also personify the Church. From this time on, the Stigmata of the Lord Jesus will be at all times visible, here and there on this earth."With what joy and gratitude must St. Francis have received the Stigmata! May he help us to lovingly receive our own share in the Passion of Jesus Christ, our Beloved Lord and Master!
We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You,
because by Your Holy Cross You have redeemed the world!
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