Collective Worship: Francis of Assisi – a riches to rags story

October 3, 2013 parish teaching youth

Collective Worship: Francis of Assisi – a riches to rags story

You have to excuse the odd layout of these slides, but the projector doesn’t fit on the whole screen in this school.

The powerpoint is hereL S Francis 04 Oct 2013, so you can make it normal again. You make up the words, you know the story and you can make this your own…

Gathering Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2svZhZT6Pro

Francis was a rich young man, who wasted his days playing at soldiers and being a bit of a bad lad

Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW21mEhfePM

From “Francis of Assisi”, 1961

He turn away from his rich life, and lived life as poor as you could be: relying on God for everything. He had a vision where he heard God tell him to “rebuild his church”

Clip 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjjOOl72euE

and he thought he meant a physical church – the ruined Church of San Damiano, but he soon realised God meant the actual church, rebuilt with faith

Francis loved Jesus with all his heart and spent his whole life simply spreading the good news of Jesus. He invented what we now know as the Christmas Crib scene.

Francis also had a special place for nature, for all God’s creation. It was said he preached to the birds and the animals as well as the people.

He worked with the poor and those whom society turned away from. Even day, the monks who try to live the simple life of Jesus as Francis taught – the Franciscans – serve the poor, work with the very ill, love those whom no else loves, with no possessions and a very simple life of prayer and service – just as Jesus taught,Francis wrote many beautiful prayers, such as this one: