Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”

Choice vacations, fine clothes, good looks, health and fame, at least money – all these impress most of us to some degree. And that's true even if we know that they don't necessarily tell us anything significant about a person. If we do get more to the interior of another it is often to be impressed by their intelligence or superior education, intellectual gifts, their wit. We're still not at the heart of a person, the character; that is often recognized only with difficulty and more slowly, if we can get beyond all the less important qualities.

For a man like Saint Francis, so free from the influence of externals, even education was a dubious undertaking. As he saw his followers increase, he was distressed to hear that one group in Bologna, Italy was planning a school. We would certainly regard a school as a desirable enterprise. But for Saint Francis it suggested a departure from his primary concern with the inner life, the following of Christ.  And it signaled for him the possibility of putting too much emphasis on worldly values.

The challenge for all of us who prize the good things of our world and of human life is to realize they are all of less importance than the heart, than our relation to God, our character. Often we only come to this conviction by experiencing the shallow attraction of externals, by seeing how little they mean. Despite our reservations about Francis and education, we can still be inspired by his freedom from externals, from the urge to accumulate and consume.

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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