Previous Post – Stories from the Neighbourhood

With new fatherhood & our Justice DTS upon on, I failed to write several St. Francis posts this past week, including yesterday, the Feast of St. Francis.  So, while delayed, I wanted to point you towards one of my favorite Franciscans, Dan Horan OFM over at DatingGod.com.  His Feast Day post was entitled Following Francis of Assisi Today: Who Are Our Lepers? Here’s an excerpt:

I think that these two constitutive elements of the Franciscan life — humility and poverty — are really important aspects of the Christian life upon which we all can reflect today. That Francis desired the brothers all serve the lepers signifies that they were to transcend the boundaries of social and class distinctions, to risk meeting the stranger and the unknown, to “get dirty” in the messiness of human living, and bring peace, understanding and love all the while. The lepers were the voiceless, the marginalized, the ignored, despised and forgotten. Who are our lepers today? Who are the ones that the rest of the Church, society and world wishes to push off outside of our everyday experience so that we never have to encounter them? They are out there and we are called to be among them.