Letter #33: The Sixth Seal

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Letter #33: The Sixth Seal

[2011-10-05]

[Engleză]

Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

This was the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

============================

Who was St. Francis?

Who was St. Francis of Assisi, really? Was he just a sort of superficial "hippy" who preached to birds?

No. Quite the contrary...

(Giotto's fresco of St. Francis preaching to the birds)

More than 700 years ago, on February 24, 1209, St. Francis, then 27 years old, heard a sermon that changed his life.

The sermon was on Matthew 10:9.

Christ there tells his followers they should go forth and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, taking no money with them, not even a walking stick or shoes for the road.

Inspired, Francis decided to devote himself to a life of poverty.

Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the Gospel precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance.

(One of the earliest depcitions of Francis)

This is why he became known as "il poverello," the "little poor man," and why it is said that he married no ordinary woman, but "Lady Poverty."

But this was not the only remarkable thing about Francis.

Toward the end of his life, in a mystical vision, he became the first person in the Christian tradition to receive the "stigmata," the wounds of Christ himself, making him, in a sense, a living copy of his crucified Lord.

And this is the reason Francis was called by his follower, St. Bonaventure, "the angel of the 6th seal."

===================================

The "Root of All Good"

Francis would have agreed with the phrase of St. Paul: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” ("Radix omnium malorum cupiditas est," Letter to Timothy, 6:10)

If the love of money is the root of all evil, what then is the root of all good?

Francis proposed a seemingly outrageous answer: the love of poverty is the root of all good.

Why so? Because he saw that, for one who loves poverty, all the desires of this world fall away.

No longer is there a desire to gather gold and silver and nickel and copper coins, or dollars, euros, rubles and yen, all the paper currencies, or bonds and stocks, or interest rate swaps and options, or jewels, or the works of master artists.

No longer is there a desire to amass these "goods" at any cost, including trickery, deception and cheating -- including the knowledge that some other men and women may be left destitute and miserable in the process.

Rather, there is a desire to preach repentance to all, and the common good for all the sons and daughters of God, for all men: the good of peace, and justice, and wisdom, and humility.

And Francis is an example that following this path does not mean a man or a woman must quiver and crawl, without the power and the trappings of power so well known in our world.

Being humble, loving poverty, does not have to mean being weak.

In fact, the way of Francis -- the way of Christ -- is the strongest way a man or a woman can live, and the most long-lasting, for it builds peace in this present time, and it leaves a testimony for all ages to come, as Francis's life has, and it reaches even unto eternity.

It is a prophetic way to live...

The Sixth Seal

And this applies to St. Francis, because many in his time, and since, have believed that he was actually a type of prophet, a man who in himself spoke and fulfilled prophecy.

What prophecy?

In the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible -- and arguably the most enigmatic -- an aging John of Patmos describes a mystical vision granted to him concerning the future of human history, and of that history's final end (to be brief, that end is a wedding; human history, in this vision, in the Bible as whole, ends in a marriage between the Lord and his spouse, who is mystically the Church, gathered from all nations, from the farthest ends of the earth).

John's vision begins when he sees a scroll "sealed with seven seals" of wax so that unauthorized people cannot open the scroll and read it.

Then, each one of the "seven seals" is opened, revealing an apocalyptic event.

The opening of the first four seals release "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," each with their own specific mission (some identify these as the Antichrist, War, Famine and Death).

(The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Victor Vasnetsov. The Lamb, very small with a golden halo, is visible at the top.)

The opening of the fifth seal releases the cries of those martyred for the "word of God."

The sixth and next to last seal initiates a time of cataclysmic events.

The seventh seal reveals seven angels with trumpets who sound the trumpets to end all time.

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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