Feast of Saints Francis & Clare

Feast of St. Francis and St. Clare: Job 39:1-18; Psalm 121

Prayer of St. Clare, Matthew 11:25-30

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

October 5, 2025

Good Morning, St. Aidan’s and St. Cyprian’s.

I can’t quite say when it started – sometime early in the year my family and I began to notice large hawks flashing by our windows just a few feet out. I would be making the bed in the morning when, whoosh, one would streak by from right to left. Then a few moments later, another streak from left to right. Our cats would sit riveted, their heads turning back and forth as if at a tennis match. On a day off I was worked in our little backyard below, they swooped not that far above my head and I could see clearly that they were carrying twigs and similar items. They were building a nest – a first in the eight years we’ve lived in this location. Some weeks later, perhaps in May, it became clear the baby hawks had been born – we heard a distinct combination of cries and wondered when we would see them. Then one day in late June or early July, all three of our cats sat on the window ledge in our dining room, which looks out into the canopy of several large live oak trees. They were stock still, staring intently. What were they looking at?  At least one of the juvenile hawks, sitting right outside the window, staring back at them— and us. Over the following weeks this pattern continued. We might be eating at the table, or making our way into the kitchen, and realize we were being watched. Or we would see one of them having a snack in the tree as dramatic detritus floated to the ground below. One day after school, our oldest took an amazing video from the dining room in which both juveniles and their two parents were making their way through the oak undercroft, occasionally crying out. One Saturday morning in mid-July our youngest pointed out one of the hawks sitting on the railing of our balcony, staring at us in the living room. It swiveled its head back and forth, occasionally calling out. I grabbed my camera and took a series of photos. We wondered how long this family would stick around before the juveniles would truly make their way out into the world, shifting their territory beyond our immediate neighborhood. Sure enough, after we returned from vacation in early August they made their way.

Did we know the exact moment of their birth, as God asks of Job in our first reading (Job 39:1)? No indeed. Did we understand the vagaries of their territory and how that had shifted and enlarged? Again, no. Only that as with the deer in Job, the young ones had “become strong, [growing] up in the open; they go forth, and do not return” (39:4). The privilege of our shared proximity for those few months brought into a space of awe, of wonder in the vast complexity of creation, of reverence for God who in the divine mystery created these amazing creatures.

Deep respect for and joy in creation is a hallmark of St. Francis of Assisi whose feast, together with St. Clare, we celebrate today. Looking through early writings describing and celebrating Francis, it is clear that the emphasis on creation and creatures associated with this feast day is no mere sentimental flourish. For Francis, creation in all its dimensions drew forth praise. Creation conveyed a sense of radiance that the lovers of God could not but rejoice in and seek to reflect back in all dimensions of their lives. This language of being a divine lover conveys the intensity of spiritual devotion and emotion felt by the followers of St. Francis’ way. You can hear it in our second reading from St. Clare, who was an early follower of Francis and who led the community of women that became known as the Poor Clares. A life that renounced possessions, proclaimed God’s Good News in the saving life and death of Jesus Christ, and centered itself in contemplative prayer and radical service “reflect[ed] the glory of the Lord.” Such a life could allow one’s heart, one’s whole person, to become gradually transformed in a profoundly creation centered way. For we humans were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). To seek to place our hearts in the very substance of the divine is to come to reflect more and more that mystery from which all creation emerged. When we do this, we “will feel what love is.” A “sweetness is revealed to us through the Spirit,” Clare says, in a way that “no eye has seen and no ear has heard.”^[1] Our passage from Matthew’s gospel gestures in this same mysterious direction—the deep knowledge that God the Parent and God the Son have of one another, in their union (Matthew 11:26). This knowledge, this deep relationship, this love, is something that we can taste and reflect out in the world – what Clare calls “the love that God has for [God’s] lovers.”^[2]

On this Feast Day, one of the ways we express this love is through sharing the love we have for the animal companions we have in our lives, offering them a blessing. It is always one of my favorite practices in the Church year, because it is inevitably wacky, joyous, and filled with delight. I have also come to believe that it reflects the spirit of Francis. As one of the early followers of Francis – or “little flowers,” as they came to be called – wrote, “we who were with him used to see him always in such joy, both inwardly and outwardly, over all creatures in general, gladly touching them and seeing them, that his spirit seemed to be not on earth but in heaven.” The follower goes on to reference the Canticle of the Sun, which Francis composed shortly before his death “for [God’s] creatures to incite the hearts of their hearers to the praise of God, and so that God might be praised by all through [God’s] creatures.”^[3] “Be praised, my Lord, for all your creatures,” that Canticle intones. For the sun, the moon, addressed with kinship language. For stars, “formed by You so bright, precious and beautiful.” Water and fire, earth “who nourishes and watches us while bringing forth abundance of fruits with colored flowered herbs.”^[4] Gardens were a favorite of Francis. We sang a version of this canticle just last weekend when we memorialized our sister Vicki Gray who has gone home to God.

But my new favorite example of Francis’ love for animals – if not strictly historical, at the very least expressive of the radical creational center of his spirituality – involved a creature who had neither features nor fur. In the garden of a house where Francis stayed one summer, there was a fig tree. And in that fig tree there was a cicada. As I learned in college in a story I shared with you at Pentecost a few years ago, there was likely more than one cicada in that fig tree. In any case, as he made his way through the garden, Francis developed a connection with this particular one.

Stretching out his hand he said to her: ‘Come to me, my sister cicada.’ Immediately she jumped onto the fingers of his hand and with the finger of his other hand he began to stroke the cicada, saying, ‘Sing, my sister cicada.’ Immediately she obeyed him and began to sing and Saint Francis was much comforted and began to praise God. For a good hour he held her thus in his hand.^[5]

An hour! He put her back onto the branch and continued on his way. This is reported to have happened for eight days in a row. Given that the number eight is associated in Christian tradition with new life, I imagine this number signals something about this beautiful, generative encounter. Imagine how loud, how strange, how beautiful, how renewing. Francis, whose favorite feast day of the Christian Year was Christmas, incarnation-centered as that feast is, wanted us, in Jesus’ words, to “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10), shared with and uplifting creation.^[6]

In this moment, with such chaos, destruction, fear and hate abounding in our world, with the vulnerability of creation itself more palpable than ever, may we observe and celebrate this day in the spirit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare. May we offer ourselves to God and to all God’s creatures with renewed devotion, with deep gratitude, with awe and reverence, with fierce and renewing divine love. In the prayer attributed to Francis that we will sing after Communion: “Where all is doubt, may we sow faith; where all is gloom, may we sow hope; where all is night, may we sow light; where all is tears, may we sow joy.”^[7] Amen.

^[1] St. Clare of Assisi, The St. Clare Prayer Book: Listening for God’s Leading, ed. Jon M. Sweeney (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2007).

^[2] St. Clare of Assisi, The St. Clare Prayer Book.

^[3] “Humanistic Hagiography: The Writings of St. Francis’ Companions,” in ed. Mary-Ann Stouck, Medieval Saints: A Reader (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1999), 493.

^[4] Canticle of the Sun, in Stouck, 506

^[5] “The Writings of St. Francis’ Companions,” in Stouck, 495

^[6] “The Writings of St. Francis’ Companions,” in Stouck, 496

^[7] “Lord, Make Us Servants of Your Peace,” in The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing, 1982), 593.