Do We Need a Hero to Save The Church ?

Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He said to them, "Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them." Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the Good News and curing diseases everywhere.

In a few days, the Church will be celebrating the memorial of St. Francis of Assisi.  I want to bring him up early because the Church needs a man with his devotion, his trust, his love, and his disdain for himself now.  He was born into a rich merchant family and he was, in his early days, what we would call a playboy and quite a party person.  There was not a goblet of wine that could defeat him and he lived for himself and his amusement and counted the hours spent in debauchery as time that was wisely spent.  As a young man, he did not bridle his passions, he lived for them!  Yet, for all of the outward appearances, inside this young man burned a question. That question was, "Is this all there is to life?"  He buried his worry beneath pleasure and self-seeking.  One day he approached a ruined church and he gazed at the cross hanging there and especially at the corpus of Christ portrayed on it. 

The image of the savior on the cross spoke to Francis and told him, "Francis, repair my church which is falling down."  Francis was a changed man from this moment on.  He set to work repairing the broken down the church of San Damiano, brick by brick.  When he ran out of bricks he obtained a donation of money from his father.  It would have been better if his father had known about it at the time, but Francis had his job to do and was ready to weather the coming storm when his father found a significant amount of money had gone astray.  In the end, his father was paid back and in front of the bishop, Francis removed all of his costly garments and told his startled father, "Up until today I called you my Father. Now I call God my father."  He returned the finery to his dad and the bishop who was shielding Francis' nakedness with his robe gave him a rough-hewn habit to wear.  Francis went back to rebuilding the church.  He endured a lot of ill-treatment from former friends, but he kept begging and soon had a supply of bricks to continue his repair of the church.  Most of his friends laughed at Francis and thought that he had gone crazy.  Children would throw rocks and donkey exhaust at the mendicant as he wandered the town in search of his supplies or a bit of food.  One day he attained his first follower and at mass that day they decided to engage in a practice at the time by opening the Bible to see what word God had for them that day.  They opened the Bible at the same place we are viewing today.  From that moment on, Francis and his followers began to court Lady Poverty and there was no one more faithful to her than Francis. 

Today in our Church a crisis is blazing.  Those in charge of it have forgotten sacred principles that are supposed to guide them in managing the Church.  They have relied too much on their own understanding and their own passions while what they need is a healthy dose of trust in God.  I do not know how far up the ladder the corruption of our Church goes.  I fear that it goes straight to the top, to the holy father himself but I pray not. I pray that someone, somewhere, in the Magisterium there is a man that will be able to lead us out of the desert that we have created.  Our current pontiff, while a good example, does not seem to have the wherewithal to be able to pull people together.  I pray to God that he gives our Pope the power to mend the Church and the courage to wield the sword and cut out the cancer or I pray that God gives us one who can do the job and get the Church back on the right path again. 

Is this an impossible job?  In the words of Francis: 

"Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."  One more quote before you go.  Francis, by the end of his life, had built a great and holy order of men, caused a great many reforms in the Church, was the inspiration of St. Clare to form her order or nuns, established an order for lay people who could not leave the world, received the Stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his body because he prayed to feel the suffering of Jesus.  All of this and more he had done while embracing Lady Poverty as he called her.  He said to his brothers shortly before his death, "Let us begin now, brothers, for until now we have done nothing."

Remember the Poor Souls in Purgatory today. 

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."