St. Francis Was Right After All
Justo L. Gonzalez

It was many years ago. My father sat between my brother and me, as he read us the stories of St. Francis - how he spoke with "brother wolf," and how he praised "sister water" and even "sister death." Other people sought to kill the wolf, and saw in water simply something to drink and to wash in. But Francis saw himself as their brother and car ed for them as his sisters and his brothers.

I loved those stories, but in my mind they were part of fantasyland, as when our father also read to us from the tales of Jules Verne or from the Sunday comics.

Eventually I grew up, or I thought I did. St. Francis, Superman and Captain Nemo became distant and cherished memories of an ideal world that never was. It was time to go on with the real business of living. Study. Get your degrees. Build a career. There is little time in real life for "sister eagle" or "brother fox."

Today I sit in my study, reading my Bible. It is a long time since I saw an eagle flying free, or a fox running across a field. I read in Genesis 2:7 that "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground," and I regret how much time I have spent Ëhow much time this entire civilization has spentËtrying to deny this earthy nature of ours. I even remember hearing sermons about how the human problem is that we have an earthy nature. But no, in the story of Genesis, being made out of the ground i s part of God's good creation.

Then I keep reading, and I am suddenly struck by something I had never noticed before: "out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree...out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air." The trees, the birds and the animals are made "out of the ground," just as I am. What the narrator in Genesis is saying is not only that humankind is made out of the ground, and that this is good, but also that all other living things are ma de out of the ground, and that this too is good. We are all kindred, and that is good.

In several passages in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of the birds, the grass, and the lilies, and then says that "your Father" who takes care of them will also take care of us. I have traditionally understood that "your" to refer to the disciples or at most to humankind. But now I am not so sure. Is Jesus saying simply that a sparrow does not fall without the heavenly Parent of believers knowing it, and that we, as children of that Parent, should consider ourselves even more protected? Or is he saying rather that the sparrow is a child of the same Parent as we are, who takes care of both the sparrow and us? I think the latter.

Time has passed since those days when my father, now in his tenth decade, told me the stories of  St. Francis. During that time, I have learned the importance of family. I have learned that I need family in order to live. But I have also learned that my family is greater than I originally thoughtËthat my family includes many people to whom I am n ot directly related by blood. And now I am beginning to learn that my family, those from whom I draw support and without whom I cannot even conceive of myself, is even wider than people that the family God has given me to love and to cherish, and to find support in them, includes all these trees, and rocks, and birds that I have treated so lightly.

 St. Francis was right after all.

Justo L. Gonzalez is the editor of Apuntes, a journal of Hispanic theology and of Commentario Biblico Hispanoamericano. He directs the Hispanic Summer Seminary Program of the Fund for Theological Education, Decatur, Ga.