“Go and repair my house,” Jesus says to Francis as he prayed before the San Damiano Crucifix. “Go and repair my house which, as you see, is falling into ruins.” He not only repaired the little house of San Damiano, but the larger house where God dwells, Earth itself. He repaired Earth by starting first with a church, which was for Francis the new ark of the covenant, the dwelling place of God among us. A crumbling church yes, but also the earth upon which it rests and all creatures who dwell upon it and within it, and the seas whose waters Jesus himself calmed and from whose depths fishes of all sorts fed and nourished God’s people and other creatures. Everything was from God, of God, and in God, blessed and sustained in its existence. That is what needed renewing and rebuilding by listening to and heeding the words of the Gospel.
The Gospel was for living, and to skew it otherwise was to betray Love who is Jesus Christ. Learning to love each person for the sake of the God who has come among us in the person of Jesus Christ is how the house of God is repaired. The fruit of this love of Christ is joy. The price of such love is grief over the betrayals, our own and that of others, of so great a love.
—from the book Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis
by Murray Bodo, OFM
