St Francis, Matthew 6:26 Wall Art

Birds, a wolf and a brown habit

Francis sits on a mossy boulder in a worn brown habit tied with a rough rope, sandals on his feet and a broad smile half hidden in his beard. On his outstretched palm three small birds have landed side by side: one with an orange breast like a robin, one soft blue, one pale yellow. A fourth perches on his shoulder and a fifth on his forearm, as if the crowd is still arriving.

Behind him to the right, a gray and cream wolf lies stretched on the grass with its head up, watching without the slightest threat. Around the rock are a few gray stones and tufts of green and gold. The words “Behold the fowls of the air” are lettered above in brown, with Matthew 6:26.

What is Jesus saying in Matthew 6:26?

The verse sits in the Sermon on the Mount, in a passage about worry. The King James Version reads: “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” “Fowls” simply meant birds of any kind in 1611. Jesus is not praising idleness; birds work hard all day. His point is that anxiety about tomorrow adds nothing, and that a Father who cares for sparrows will not forget his children. A few verses later come the lilies of the field and the line about seeking first the kingdom of God.

Few people have taken these words more literally than Francis of Assisi (about 1181 to 1226), the son of a rich cloth merchant who gave everything away. The early stories collected about him describe him stopping on the road to preach to a flock of birds, telling them to praise the Creator who clothes and feeds them, and they stayed to listen until he blessed them.

The wolf comes from the town of Gubbio, where, according to the Little Flowers of Saint Francis, a wolf was attacking people and livestock. Francis walked out to meet it, made peace between the animal and the townspeople, and the wolf lived among them, fed at their doors, for the rest of its life.

Garden rooms, nurseries and animal lovers

Francis is the patron of animals and of ecology, and many parishes hold a blessing of pets on or near his feast day, October 4. This print is a warm choice for someone who loves their dog, keeps a bird feeder or gardens, and it sits well in a sunroom, a mudroom by the back door or a child's bedroom.