"Lepers and Wolves"

"Lepers and Wolves"

It’s wonderful news, brothers and sisters, that we come to God not by our perfection but by our imperfection. Because that gives all of us the only chance we’ll ever have. And it allows us to walk, instead of a sometimes-journey of repression or denial, a journey into truth, into ever-deeper sympathy with what’s going on inside of us. Deep within each of us live a leper and a wolf. Those are the two images that have caught the imagination of the world about Francis. We’ve pictured them but never internalized them. We always pictured meetings out there: Francis meeting the leper on the road, Francis taming the wolf in Gubbio. The stories did happen historically, but first they operate in the soul. It is on the inside that lepers and wolves are first to be found. If we haven’t been able to kiss many lepers, if we haven’t been able to tame many wolves, it’s probably because we haven’t made friends with our leper and wolf within. Name your poor leper within, today. Nurse and tend her wounds. Name your inner wolf. Tame him by gently forgiveness.

from Embracing Christ As Francis Did: In the Church of the Poor