Audio Course: St. Francis of Assisi: A New Way of Being Christian

Blog Author: Br. William Short

Fr. Emmanuel Muessiggang, OFM (1908-2008)
My nearly-one-hundred-year-old friend and fellow gardener, Fr. Emmanuel, has joined the great Easter Liturgy of heaven. We celebrated his funeral this week at St. Elizabeth’s Church in Oakland CA, where he had lived for many years before he retired to San Damiano Retreat in Danville CA. In the picture above, you can see this extraordinary gardener at work. He could coax a bloom from a stick with little more than a prayer and great patience. Also a great friend of animals, he would take his daily walk around the Retreat Center with his faithful friend, Blackie the Cat, who followed him in the early years, and led him in his later years as they went on their daily rounds. Few would suspect that this was one of the last of our “China Missionaries,” the son of German immigrants, for whom English was a second language, and China his home for thirteen years. A true son of St. Francis, his love for the Chinese people, for beautiful flowers, and for animals are all of a piece. At his deathbed, Fr. Sebastian, a companion of his years in China, reminded him (as we listened), “Emmanuel, you saved your church from being desecrated by the Communists — you have nothing to worry about when you meet the Lord!”

He witnessed the cruel execution of his confrere, Br. Benedict Jensen, the Franciscan martyr of the Chinese Missions of Santa Barbara Province. Yet he never spoke in hatred of those who had imprisoned him or killed his fellow Friar, only saying that he had not really done anything significant during his long years of faithful Franciscan presence so far from his beloved home in San Francisco.

Who knows what irony may be contained in the news report that Mikhail Gorbachev, former head of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party, had spent a quiet half-hour in prayer at the tomb of St. Francis in Assisi on March 19? Assertions were first made that he was acknowledging his identity as a Christian believer, soon followed by well-publicized denials. As Fr. Emmanuel, who had suffered at the hands of Communist Party members in China, completed his Franciscan journey toward his Father’s house, one whom he could have well considered his enemy was praying at the tomb of his Brother Francis, the Little Poor One of Assisi. Were they praying for each other? “The Lord only knows,” as my grandmother would say. Yet we remember that the same Brother Francis went to meet Malek el-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt, during the time of the Fifth Crusade in order to fulfill the Lord’s command: “Love your enemies.” And perhaps he too was surprised to find that “the enemy” showed him kindness.

Two brothers who never met, Mikhail and Emmanuel, joined by a thin but very strong bond, a devotion to a Poor Man who shows us a new way of being Christian. May we have the grace and courage to follow their example.

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