HAMMERED INTO HOLINESS 020

The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

“He had been shaped by many testing blows of painful sicknesses, like a stone fit to be set in the building of the heavenly Jerusalem, and as it were a hammered work that under the mallet of manifold trials is brought unto perfection.” -Exodus 90

We remember Francis today, not as the harmless garden statue surrounded by birds, but as a man forged under the hammer. Before the robe and the legend came the ruin — a spoiled, wealthy, pleasure-chasing young man in Assisi. His conversion didn’t come in comfort - his lightening bolt had him embracing a leper. What once filled him with disgust became sweetness to his soul. That moment was the beginning of his penance — and his freedom.

Francis immediately entered the trades, yep as a mason…he picked up a trowel. He rebuilt crumbling chapels by hand, stone by stone. He slept on the ground, fasted, prayed, and begged. He wasn’t performing holiness - he was becoming it, hammered out like a piece of iron under divine fire. His father disinherited him, his mother secretly slipped him support. His peace was hard-won, not inherited.

We all need that kind of conversion again - our own “deliberate discomfort”

We’ve been trained to medicate our pain, not sanctify it.

We incessantly curate our routines, anesthetize our discomforts, and then wonder why we feel hollow or why our children seem so misdirected, so lost.

Penance is not punishment — it’s participation. It’s a way back into the real. It’s what happens when you STOP COMPLAINING about your cross and START CARRYING it.

Where do you start?

1 - Wake up early.

2 - Turn off the noise.

3 - Serve someone who can’t repay you.

4 - Go touch the leper: the messy, inconvenient, uncomfortable thing in your life you’ve been avoiding….thats where CHRIST is WAITING

You want PEACE? Pick up your hammer.

You want PURPOSE? Rebuild the ruin in front of you.

You want to MEET GOD? Step into the suffering you’ve been dodging — and do it with love.

Francis didn’t find God in theory. He found Him in blisters, hunger, humiliation, and joy.

He became a saint because he said yes to being hammered into shape.

Reflection Question:

Where is God inviting you into “deliberate discomfort” — the place you’ve been avoiding because it’s hard, humbling, or inconvenient — and what might He be trying to hammer into shape through it?

Homework:

This weekend, choose one act of penance you can feel.

Serve or help someone without credit, comfort, or convenience — especially in a place that makes you uneasy. Offer it quietly, as your own small brick in rebuilding what’s been broken.