The Chapel of St Francis
A bastion against unremembrance, this remote chapel offers its golden heart and open arms to any traveller or vagabond who might approach. Attired in finery, luxurious Catholic pomp in purple and maroon, the chapel is always well presented, proud to announce its devotion and unquenchable love for the deity of Christ. Down sundry bush tracks and enveloped by the splendour of the searing Australian summer, the quaint edifice is like an architectural poem, beauteous and fair and apt to beguile. The saints are represented on small statues and cards that hang from the coastal shrubs nearby, St Antony and St Mark, St Joseph and St Peter, with the inimitable St Francis as the namesake for the building.
The hands of sundry surfers, sweating through hours of toil, and using materials gathered from the land, built this haven for the good pleasure of the abbot of the convent, and to act as a centrepiece for the nuns who focus their devotions on the small wooden tabernacle inside, which houses within the sacred heart of Jesus, indomitable through the aeons and blazing truly in any catastrophe of man. The approach is achieved by stepping stones of prayer. The tabernacle is utterly sacred, and the orientation of the mind and heart to the person of the Creator is a prerequisite which none might shirk or avoid. Once the affirmations of love have been proffered to the good Lord, and one’s devotion is avowed, then the tabernacle is able to be viewed, in absolute silence and in awe.
The cobblestones are homages to Peter, the rock upon which the church might stand. The sand from the ocean which has been congealed into a mortar is representative of the infinitude of souls who owe their salvation to Jesus, via his sacrifice at Calvary, and His resurrection to glory, where He calls the lost to communion and invests love in the hearts of the weary. The wooden pews, crafted of Australian jarrah, are but splinters of the cross, symbolic of the material upon which Christ’s Intrepid body was slain. The shingles are the wings of angels, spread in insurmountable protection against the elements, for what treasure is more deserving of protection than the home of Christ?
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