Saint Francis Holy Fool Prayer Book

In The Holy Fool’s Prayer Book, St. Francis scholar and admirer Jon Sweeney encourages us to be fools for Christ and provides some resources by which to do it, setting out a plan whereby his readers can let their words and actions run counter to what society expects, because in so doing, they might be most faithfully living the Gospel.

Readers will encounter stories from the lives of Francis and Juniper, passages from the Gospels, the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, and from St. Paul, who wrote a lot in defense of foolishness in one of his most popular letters: First Corinthians. Sweeney includes all these teachings in the week’s worth of prayer and inspiration, “Seven Themes for Seven Days.”

Sweeney reminds us that, for people like Francis and Juniper – and even Christ himself – being a holy fool is often not just a way of discipleship but an act of protest. They wanted people to see the truth, and sometimes we wear such thick blinders that we need to be shocked in order to see through them. Sweeney offers these words in the hope that his readers will discover that being a fool can be a way of finding a new source of confidence, away from what the world offers and values, in priorities that are known primarily to others who share in the foolishness, and that they will find freedom as holy fools.