Since the believing world will commemorate the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi on October 3 this year, Pope Leo XIV has expressed his hope that St. Francis’s message will find “a profound echo in the Church and society of today.” His Holiness has proclaimed 2026AD a Jubilee Year to mark this significant event. Fr. Robert LaCombe, newly appointed to St. James and St. Ambrose parishes in Lincoln, accordingly raised an ample statue of St. Francis embracing the crucified Christ from a hidden corner of the Manville church’s cellar to a place of prominence in the church’s spacious sanctuary. The humble saint’s imaginative presence will daily remind worshippers of both the intensive prayer and the extensive charity of this saint whom Pope Pius XI called “the most Christlike of all the saints” when the friar’s 700th anniversary of birth was celebrated in 1926.
The life of the Assisi poor man, from both a spiritual perspective and a practical viewpoint, is worthy of consideration on this Sunday’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. St. Francis indeed loved God as Father, as Son and as Spirit. His rejection of a life of earthly comfort was amply signified by his tossing off of his fine clothes in front of Assisi’s cathedral. His public disrobement was a dramatic sign that he sought fulfillment beyond this world’s satisfactions. His later embrace of the crucified Christ and his accepting into his own body the wounds of Christ are an even more intense reminder that true satisfaction is only heavenly bestowed. As the universal Church honors the Trinity, every believer’s thoughts should indeed turn heavenward, affirming, as Francis did, that true human realization, true human achievement, is found only from the next world in union with the Divine Persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The intense love that the Poor Man of Assisi had for the Divine Persons was apparent not only through the saint’s passionate prayer life but equally through the saint’s respect for his earthly environment, in which he certainly saw God’s hand, but even more so in his reverence for his fellow human beings, especially those on the edge of civil society. St. Francis’ embrace of the leper whose illness he found personally repugnant is a vivid testimony to the personal Trinitarian love that animated the saint’s heart. His dangerous venture into the Islamic world to greet the Sultan in Egypt certainly bears witness to broad Trinitarian love that guided the saint’s public life Francis rebuilt dilapidated churches enabling the worship of Father, Son and Spirit to continue even under humble circumstances. Francis encouraged the young cloistered nun Claire in her earnest search for closeness to God as Father, Son and Spirit.
St. Paul in his Second Letter to the church at Corinth similarly blends practical service like that found in the life of St. Francis with an act of faith in God as a Holy Trinity which was also mirrored in the piety of St. Francis. Paul’s words here and in this Sunday’s liturgy might be the oldest explicit reference to the Trinity in the New Testament. The Apostle wrote, “Brothers and sisters, rejoice. Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the holy ones greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Cor13:11-13).
St. Paul’s appeal here for the presence of Christ’s grace, God the Father’s love, and the Holy Spirit’s fellowship bears early and powerful witness to the Divine power that created and sustained the early Church in Corinth, invigorated the Medieval Church of St. Francis’ era, and continues to renew and the universal church today. St. Peter, in a later letter, would also recall the three Divine Persons as the source of great grace: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen sojourners of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, in the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification by the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ: may grace and peace be yours in abundance” (1:1).
St. Matthew also mentions the Triune God twice in his writings: “After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (28:19). And then again, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (3:17). The Holy Trinity, first fully revealed in the ancient Church and treasured in later centuries, is still the source and end of every truly religious life.
