On cold mornings, as I pull my jacket tighter on the walk to the breadline at St. Francis of Assisi Church, I see New Yorkers lined up along 31st Street for a warm cup of coffee and a sandwich.
That moment raises a question I keep trying to answer: “Who is really standing in front of me?”
For Secular Franciscans, the answer begins with Article 4 of our Rule, which calls us to go “from gospel to life and life to gospel.” Lived honestly, that movement leads to seeing Christ in every person and honoring every person as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Other traditions, starting from very different places, espouse similar values. Listening to them does not dilute our faith; it sharpens our sight.
Article 4 describes Francis as one “who made Christ the inspiration and the center of his life with God and people.” If Christ is at the center of our life with
people, then people are not a side matter. St. Paul asks, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor 3:16).
Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).
St. Francis learned this through an encounter. As a young man, he was repelled by lepers. Then one day he embraced one. In his testament, he wrote that what had seemed bitter had turned into sweetness of soul and body. On those Assisi streets the outcast leper became a brother, and in him St. Francis met Christ.
Article 13 asks us to accept all people “as a gift of the Lord and an image of Christ.” Universal kinship is not optional in the Franciscan vision. It follows from where we place Christ.
In the Chandogya Upanishad, Uddalaka has his son Svetaketu dissolve salt in water and taste it from every part of the cup. The salt is invisible yet everywhere. So it is, he says, with the subtle essence underlying all things, and he closes again and again with “tattvamasi,” तत्त्वमसि, “that thou art” (6.8.7).
The teaching links Atman, the innermost self, with Brahman, ultimate reality: the divine is present at the root of every being. Saying namaste (hello) with pressed palms is, in one common understanding, bowing to the divine in the other.
A Franciscan hears an echo in St. Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures, with its Brother Sun and Sister Water. The theology differs, but the instinct to bow before what is sacred in another is shared.
Ancient roots: Hospitality as divine law
The Greeks held that strangers were under divine protection. Zeus Xenios was the protector of guests and suppliants, and to abuse a guest was an offense against the
king of the gods. Homer’s Odyssey, recently popularized by the film of the same name, is saturated with this conviction. When the shipwrecked Odysseus washes ashore, Nausicaa tells her attendants that all strangers and beggars
come from Zeus.
Hebrews puts it in one line: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).
Sikh scripture opens with Ik Onkar, “One Creator.” Guru Nanak taught that the
divine light, the jot, shines within every being, and Guru Gobind Singh urged Sikhs to recognize the whole human race as one.
This is lived out in the langar—the free kitchen at every gurdwara, where everyone, regardless of caste, religion, or wealth, sits on the floor and shares the same meal, prepared through seva, selfless service understood as worship itself.
During fighting with Mughal forces, Bhai Kanhaiya carried water to wounded soldiers on both sides. When others complained, he told the Guru he saw no friend or foe, only the Guru’s face in every man. The Guru blessed him and gave him ointment for his wounds.
A shared wisdom across world faiths
The Qur’an says God breathed His spirit into the first human (15:29), that He is nearer to us than the jugular vein (50:16), and that wherever we turn, there is the Face of God (2:115).
A hadith qudsi in Sahih Muslim is startlingly direct. On the Day of Resurrection, God says, “O son of Adam, I was sick, and you did not visit Me.” When the person protests, God replies that a servant of His was sick: “Did you not know that had you visited him, you would have found Me with him?”
The hadith continues with hunger and thirst, almost a twin of St. Matthew 25. In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, St. Francis crossed the lines at Damietta to meet Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil. The two seem to have parted with respect, and that meeting remains a living bridge between Franciscans and Muslims.
It would be easy, and wrong, to conclude that these traditions all say the same thing.
Christian faith speaks of indwelling: a personal God who makes a home in us, without our ceasing to be ourselves or God ceasing to be God. Advaita Vedanta reads tattvamasi as identity with Brahman.
Islam guards tawhid, God’s absolute oneness, and rejects any suggestion that a human is divine.
Sikhism holds that God remains beyond all form. Greek hospitality rested largely on reciprocity and fear of Zeus.
The convergence lies elsewhere. These traditions explain the divine differently but agree remarkably on how to treat the person in front of us: with reverence, welcome, and care. That is more modest than saying all religions are one but more honest.
Article 4 asks us to carry the gospel into life. So what does seeing the divine in every person change?
Recognizing the sacred in every stranger
On a breadline, we look people in the eye, learn their names, and treat the meal as a meeting rather than a transaction. In a boardroom, workers and customers become people who bear the image of God, not inputs and outputs.
There is a sequence here. Reverence opens into hospitality, hospitality grows into service, and service leads to justice: asking why the breadline exists and changing the conditions that create it.
Justice without reverence hardens into ideology; reverence without justice softens into sentiment. As I ponder the face of that person on the breadline, collar up, eyes down, where hunger pangs numbed the freezing cold, nothing about that person has changed; what changed is me.
A saying often attributed to St. Francis that tells us to preach the gospel always and use words only when necessary. It reminds me that the first act of faith is the way I look. Before I speak, serve, or argue about policy, I should look at the stranger at the door. And in that look, if I have learned anything from the gospel as reminded by St. Francis, the Upanishads, Homer, the Gurus, and the hadith, I may find that the One I was seeking has been standing there all along.
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