10/04/2026
Happy Feast of St. Francis!
Eight hundred years after the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi, a new generation of friars is helping us see Francis — and the Franciscan story — through new eyes.
In these works, Br. Kevin Hamzik, O.F.M., MFA, reinterprets two familiar images of Francis: the defeated young soldier whose dreams of glory had been shattered, and the stigmatized friar whose life has become so conformed to Christ that he bears the wounds of the crucified in his own body.
Between those two images lies an extraordinary journey of conversion.
The young prisoner of war could not have imagined where the Gospel would lead him. Yet through encounter, prayer, fraternity and service, Francis gradually discovered a different way of seeing God, himself and the world. His defeat became an opening. His wounds became a path toward compassion. And his conversion gave birth to a movement that continues to inspire people eight centuries later.
That movement remains alive because every generation must receive the Franciscan tradition anew — not simply preserving what Francis saw but asking what his Gospel vision asks of us now.
Young friars such as Br. Kevin remind us that tradition is not static. Through new eyes, they invite us into the same journey that transformed Francis: from ambition to surrender, from self to fraternity, from seeing the world as something to conquer to receiving it as a gift.
On this Feast of St. Francis, may we have the courage to make that journey ourselves.
Artwork by Br. Kevin Hamzik, O.F.M., MFA, curator and adjunct faculty at SBU.
