"What if Franciscans ran the world?" - Sermon for 17 Pentecost, October 5, 2025

What if Franciscans ran the world?

It’s a trick question! – Franciscans have no desire to run the world. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote of Francis of Assisi that he didn’t want to run anything. He wanted to be a tramp … but damned if an organization didn’t rise up around him. I suspect that, then as now, Franciscans only govern themselves because they have to. Saint Francis isn’t a model for authoritarians; it's no accident that only one pope in the history of the Roman Church has taken the name. Call yourself Francis only if you want to lower the expectations put on the leader of a powerful institution.

Okay, so Franciscans don’t want to run the world. Then how about someone of a Franciscan mindset? Francis of Assisi didn’t write these words, but someone of a Franciscan mindset did. Imagine living and being led this way:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we 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 (BCP 833).

High ideals, to be sure. Lofty. Even the most devout of Franciscan communities would say they don’t meet them as often as they’d like. Quoting the Trappist Merton again, this is what makes living as a Christian so difficult.

Now these ideals in St. Francis’s prayer aren’t explicitly Christian, except for the last clause. They can be aspired to and lived by anyone with a pulse and a conscience. But it is explicitly through the grace of God we receive when we gather in the name of Jesus that the ideals of this prayer lodge in our hearts and inform our actions. This is one reason why we gather, again and again, day by day, week by week, to be nourished by Word and Sacrament and mutually-sustaining and -encouraging fellowship. We may not live in a monastic community like the Franciscans and Trappists do, but the traditions of the Church offer us laics an approximation of what it is to try to live intentionally holy lives.

Holding the ideals of Francis’s prayer has proven to be beyond the capacities of the civil authorities. The ancient Prophet Habakkuk’s complaint rings every bit as true to our modern ears – the wicked still surround the righteous. Violence, wrong-doing, trouble, destruction, strife, and contention are the coin and currency of the world’s realms. They profit handsomely while losing their souls. Beholden to the deceiver and his angels whom the Archangel Michael banished from heaven, they can’t conceive of ruling as reluctant Franciscans.

But we can choose to live this way, as difficult as it is. In our hearts and homes, in our schools and workplaces, in our congregations and communities, we can choose – we must choose – to live the way of Saint Francis, which is the way of the cross, which is the way of Christ. Faith the size of a mustard seed is all it takes; that smallest of specks, fed and watered with the Body and Blood of Jesus.

You and I can be God’s vision – we are God’s vision – written plain on tablets, so those running hurriedly by, chasing the wind, may read it. Franciscans wear brown robes and Trappists white habits; I happen to wear clerical black – but these are merely garments. We all bear the indissoluble sign, plain and clear, of Baptismal water. Thus, the world will know that we follow Jesus by how we love one another, keeping covenant in word and action. In him we are made instruments of the Lord’s peace. Worthless by the world’s standards, we will have done only what we ought to have done.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

 17 Pentecost, Proper 22 – October 5, 2025

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“If Franciscans Ran the World”