Flashback: Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi

"Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."

"Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

"True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice."

These are the words of St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we celebrated on October 4th.  A good and holy man, St. Francis rejected a life of wealth and comfort to embrace the poverty of Christ.  He was graced by God with many gifts, one being the ability to communicate with animals.  Another was the stigmata of Christ Himself.  Whenever you decorate for Christmas this year and put up your family's Nativity set, (creche), think of St. Francis, who made the first one, wanting people to draw ever closer to the Child Jesus and the Miracle of that first Christmas.  He began the order of the Franciscans, which thrives to this day.

For the feast day, my children and I each made our own "St. Francis" as we thought about his saintly qualities and how we can try to emulate them in our own lives.