Hope was always the bedrock of Dr. Martin Luther King’s work. “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving,” he wrote. Two months later, he would be murdered in Memphis. A kindred spirit, St. Francis drew strength from one source: God. As his order grew and became unwieldy, Francis sought solitude to pray, yet he understood that he wasn’t, ultimately, in charge. This must have given him a measure of hope.
“Be my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety,” Francis wrote. “For you are my hope, O Lord. On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength; constant has been my hope in you.”
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “The Franciscan Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.“
by Christopher Heffron
