Brothers and Sisters

May the Lord give you peace!

What a joy to celebrate the solemnity of the Seraphic Father Saint Francis, together with my Franciscan brothers. I am a bishop but my origins are the Franciscan life. And truly Saint Francis is the saint of all and for all…. The Seraphic Father Francis has always aroused and continues to arouse admiration… attention admiration even from non-believers, and from members of other religions. And it is the Gospel that we have heard that shows you why Saint Francis, who was not a man of study, of physical beauty, could arouse so many disciples, so many followers, thus becoming a universal charism…. So incisive in the lives of so many men and women. Yes, the Gospel tells us: In Him and in his holiness the Father is blessed, praised, exalted, thanked because he hid the mystery of his life from the learned, the wise, the intelligent of this world and instead revealed it to the little ones, the simple, the humble of the earth. Yes brothers and sisters Saint Francis is small, he is human, he is minor. And this is the charisma that he left us: to be minors, minor friars….

However, I would like to highlight an aspect of the life of Saint Francis of great importance. We are celebrating the 800th anniversary of the stigmata of Saint Francis. And what does it mean: Saint Francis with the stigmata, wounds of Jesus on his body. And here we can understand the sanctity of Saint Francis… his life in the cross of Christ (Even the habit is in the shape of a cross). His whole life in profound union with the crucifix, to the point of having the stigmata on his own body… that is, visibly the passion of Christ, on Mount Verna.

True suffering, the stigmata is only what we see, but Francis embraced the cross and the passion, he sang it and loved it.

1. The suffering with the family… the father’s misunderstanding, having to break with family relationships… the contempt of the angel brother (Saint Francis had a brother. This brother was very bad with Saint Francis. One cold day, in the middle of winter, with snow, Saint Francis met his brother, who scorned him and said: Francis, sell me a drop of your sweat… and Saint Francis replied: my sweat in this cold is so precious that only My God, the Lord Jesus deserves to have it…

2. The contempt of the brotherhood, when he went up to “Fontecolombo” to write our rule. And one day he received a group of friars who went up the mountain to tell Saint Francis: if you write a rule that is too severe, he will write it for you, not for us…. If we want to understand the state of mind of Saint Francis we must read the beautiful narrative of perfect joy, narrated by his secretary Brother Leo….. 3. The illness… and the eye infection, Saint Francis becomes almost blind… and beautiful almost blind, he composes the canticle of the creatures… Yes, brothers and sisters Saint Francis lives the cross of Christ, but he lives it in the Paschal Mystery of life. Of the passage of life… in the moment of trial he sings… praises the Lord….

We are living in difficult times…. Of wars, of suffering. Let us not forget the situation that our Mother Church of Jerusalem is living… the situation of Lebanon, Nicaragua, Venezuela….. without forgetting the difficult situations here on our island of Cyprus. The division of the island, the many refugees…

Let us pray brothers and sisters that the holiness of Saint Francis helps us to be men and women in love with the cross that makes us new creatures… and I conclude with the prayer of Saint John Paul II in his pilgrimage to La Verna.

O Saint Francis, stigmatized of La Verna,

the world longs for you

as an icon of Jesus crucified.

It needs your heart

open to God and to man,

of your bare and wounded feet,

of your pierced and imploring hands.

He longs for your weak voice,

but strong with the power of the Gospel.

Help, Francis, the men of today

to recognize the evil of sin

and to seek purification in penance.

Help them to free themselves from the same structures of sin

that oppress today’s society.

Rekindle in the conscience of governments

the urgency of peace in nations and among peoples.

Instil in young people your freshness of life,

capable of countering the snares

of the many cultures of death.

To those offended by every kind of wickedness,

communicate, Francis, your joy in knowing how to forgive.

To all those crucified by suffering,

by hunger and war,

reopen the doors of hope.

Amen.