Blessing of the Animals

On October 8th, we observed the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi by inviting our animal friends to the church for a special blessing.

Born to a wealthy Italian family in ~1181 Francis, soon adopted a life of poverty and created a monastic community the whose attitude and actions were to closely mimic those of Christ and his apostles. There are Franciscan communities to this day in both the Catholic and Anglican/Episcopal traditions.

The tradition of associating St. Francis, whose feast day is October 4th, with animals is old and widespread.  The Fioretti (“Little Flowers”) is a collection of legends and folklore that sprang up after his death. As someone who saw God reflected in nature, “St. Francis was a great lover of God’s creation. In the Canticle of the Sun he gives God thanks for Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth, all of which he sees as rendering praise to God, and was thus named the patron saint of ecology. He is also the co-patron (with Catherine of Siena) of Italy and the namesake for the city of San Francisco.

In the Episcopal church, the feast is most spectacularly observed at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York, where living things ranging from elephants and camels to spiders and moss are included in a grand procession through the church.