OCTOBER 9 2026 FATHER RETO DAVATZ
Today’s Gospel reminds us of the need for persistence in prayer. God loves to hear from his children. He wants us to know that it is from him that comes our daily bread. He gives us what we need, but he expects us to be responsible about asking for those things and doing so with trust, all the while knowing that he knows what’s best for us.
St. Francis of Assisi died exactly 800 years ago. He left a legacy of peace and a large religious family of friars, sisters and laypeople.
In this great saint, we see a man who started off his life seeking the glory of victory, in battle and popularity. But God intervened, and through his grace and Francis’s own will, a change was effected.
Just like the friend who comes at midnight in Jesus’s parables, God kept knocking on Francis’ heart, slowly, slowly turning Francis’s natural human inclinations towards the deeper things.
God asked Francis, “Would you rather serve an earthly king or the King of kings, a mere servant, or the Master?” And so, Francis was caught up at that moment in what would be God’s dream for him.
But God dreams for us that require us to catch up to him and set aside the petty and lesser inclinations of our hearts. What, then, would be his true destiny, and what really is our heart’s deepest desire?
Well, it is God who made us, so let us not forget that. And he knew, God knew, the real Francis, beyond the man who wanted to conquer as a knight in shining armour so that he could capture the most beautiful bride. But in that moment, there was a change. We call it the power of grace or call or vocation.
Francis would henceforth choose to conquer hearts. How would he do this? By embracing Lady Poverty, and through it, becoming the freest, most joyful man anywhere.
And so, did this increase his popularity? Not at first, but slowly, the Lord, as he himself would say, gave him brothers and more and more brothers, and with St. Clare, sisters, who would follow a separate but similar path.
His was a life of rebuilding the Church, and through outreach to the marginalized, he spread the kingdom.
As a conventual Franciscan friar, I have felt that same dream spark to life in me. And of course, in following Jesus according to how he shared it with us in his stories, we are the ones indeed who follow, must follow up with him.
We must be responsible enough to ask the Lord for help and extend that help to others in need. Only in this way will we see God’s dream for us fully realized.
Francis became a beggar on behalf of beggars. He realized that Jesus was in the poor, his greatest treasure. And so, by embracing his minority, his littleness, Francis found God’s greatness, and he chose to never let go.
We can only do this when we ask God and really mean it. If we are good beggars, persistent yet docile to his will, God will not only show us where the greatest need is out there, but he will show us where it is within us.
And that is the dream I wish to dream. Will you dream it with me and become a Franciscan? Ask God today if he is still asking something of you that you have yet to discover about yourself.
