St. Francis was born around 1181 in Assisi, Italy, to a wealthy merchant family.
Starts: September 25th
Feastday: October 4th
St. Francis of Assisi Novena
Introduction
St. Francis was born around 1181 in Assisi, Italy, to a wealthy merchant family.
He lived a luxurious life corresponding with his wealth, was much liked, and was high spirited.
As a young man he took part in one of the many inter-city battles that were common at the time, this one against Perugia. Instead of finding the fighting noble and glorious, he saw brutal bloodshed, was captured, and was held for ransom, since it was apparent that he was from a wealthy family.
The year he spent in prison was a key turning point in his life. Soon after his release, he accepted the grace from God of deep conversion of heart. God famously called him to “rebuild my church, which is falling into ruin,” leading Francis to begin repairing the broken-down church of San Damiano, stone by stone.
However God showed him that He meant to repair His Church in a much broader sense, ultimately by having Francis found the Franciscan mendicant Order.
What seems obvious to us today, a mendicant or begging Order of friars, was quite novel back then, and it took many years for St. Francis to win ecclesiastical approval for his new Order.
St. Francis’s life has many more incredible facets. Of note is that he never chose to become a priest, but was a simple friar and deacon.
Intro Prayer (to be said each day)
Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.
Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor disturbance.
Where there is poverty with joy, there is neither covetousness nor avarice.
Where there is inner peace and meditation, there is neither anxiousness nor dissipation.
Where there is fear of the Lord to guard the house (cf. Lk. 11:21), there the enemy cannot gain entry.
Where there is mercy and discernment, there is neither excess nor hardness of heart.
Concluding Prayer (to be said each day)
Glorious Saint Francis, who voluntarily renounced all the comforts and riches of thy home to follow more perfectly the life of poverty and abnegation of Jesus Christ: Obtain for us, we pray, a generous contempt of all things in this world, that we may secure the true and eternal things of heaven.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.
O glorious Saint Francis, who during the whole course of thy life continually wept over the passion of the Redeemer, and labored most zealously for the salvation of souls: Obtain for us, we pray, the grace of weeping continually over those sins by which we have crucified afresh Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may attain to be of the number of those who shall eternally bless His supreme mercy.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.
O glorious Saint Francis, who, loving above all things suffering and the Cross, merited to bear in thy body the miraculous stigmata, by which thou becamest a living image of Jesus Christ crucified: Obtain for us, we pray, the grace to bear in our bodies the mortifications of Christ, that we may merit one day to receive the consolations which are infallibly promised to all those who now weep.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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