This year, the Church marks the 8th centenary of the death of St Francis of Assisi, which happened in the later evening of October 3rd, 1226. As part of the celebrations, his relics have been removed from his tomb, and exposed for the veneration of the faithful; they were placed before the altar of the lower church of the great basilica at Assisi this past Sunday, and will remain there until March 22nd. As noted in passing in this video from Rome Reports, the precise location of the remains was unknown for centuries; they were rediscovered in December of 1818 after nearly two months of exploratory digging.
In the YouTube archive of the old newsreel company British Pathé, I found this video (without soundtrack) of an event of the 7th centenary, a visit to Assisi by Cardinal Merry del Val, then serving Pope Pius XI as the Secretary of the Holy Office. In those days, it was still considered wholly inappropriate to film or photograph the Mass, and so the footage is all of the comings and goings outside the basilica, including part of a solemn procession. (At about 1:20, a cleric in biretta and surplice who is acting as MC for the procession looks at the camera, and seems just about to smile when the shot cuts away.)
Saint Francis ends his Canticle of the Sun with this one-verse stanza:
Laudate et benedicete mi Signore et rengratiate
e seruiteli cum grande humilitate.
Which I translate as:
Praise and bless my Lord, and give Him thanks
And serve Him with great humility.
The verse is an apt summary of the canticle, which is not, as is often thought, a praise of nature. In fact, as the Dutch Franciscan Jan van den Eijnden points out, it is not about nature at all, but about creation, the difference being that you can think about nature without thinking about God, but you cannot think about creation without thinking about the Creator. Francis is not a lover of nature but of creation, and he loves it not for its own sake but because it is the product of his loving Father.
And so, the point of the Canticle of the Sun is to praise and bless God the Creator, and to encourage its reader to serve God with humility. In this respect, the Canticle is identical to several Psalms (148 comes to mind) and the Canticle of the Three Youths in Daniel 3, 56-88. What is distinctive about Francis’ canticle is that it never addresses creation directly but repeatedly tells God that He should be praised through this or that creature. The Old Testament canticles, by contrast, command a list of creatures to praise and bless the Lord, to join together in a cosmic act of worship.
Nor is the content of the canticle so much a radical departure from the Christian worldview as a particularly vivid expression of it. Catholic thought initially sounds like a contradiction, for it combines a contempt for the world with a care for creation. What is meant by “the world,” however, are the man-made values that give us false promises of happiness, promises that often lead to an exploitation of nature. Contempt for the world, then, actually fosters care for creation, which is seen as a duty of stewardship. And creation is valued because it is a divine sign that eloquently points to God.
Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume
Modernity, on the other hand, is the photographic negative of this Christian formula, encouraging a contempt for creation and a care for worldly success. Beginning in the sixteenth century, philosophers like Machiavelli and Hobbes portrayed nature as something that needed to be beaten into submission through technological domination. It was only a matter of time before the technology caught up with this ideology, leaving us the world in which we live today.
It was in response to this situation that Pope Francis wrote his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’. The title is taken from a recurring phrase in Francis’ Canticle of the Sun (laudato si’ means “praised be”), and since Saint Francis wrote in the Umbrian dialect of Italian, the encyclical holds the distinction of being the only one that does not have a Latin title. But comparing the two compositions is a game of apples and oranges, for the goals of each are different. Pope Francis’ encyclical is diatribic in tone and consists largely of socio-political criticisms, such as a condemnation of “disposable culture” and the use of air conditioning. The Canticle of the Sun, on the other hand, is laudatory in tone and was intended by Saint Francis to praise God, console himself, and edify his neighbor about his eternal destiny. And the Saint succeeded. For centuries, the Canticle of the Sun has inspired the Franciscan community of friars and sisters and Third-Order members to be good stewards of creation as an act of divine praise, and it has helped them serve the Lord with great humility and die in a state of grace.
This article originally appeared as “Call to Humility” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:12, international edition (December 2025), p. 15. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
For those who think of Saint Francis of Assisi as nothing more than a Christian Dr. Doolittle, a friar who talks to the animals and hugs tree, the following stanzas of the Canticle of the Sun come as something of a shock:
Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli ke perdonano per lo Tuo amore et sostengono infirmitate et tribulatione.
Beati quelli ke ’l sosterranno in pace,
ka da Te, Altissimo, sirano incoronati.
Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale,
da la quale nullu homo uiuente pò skappare:
guai a quelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali;
beati quelli ke trouarà ne le Tue sanctissime uoluntati,
ka la morte secunda no ’l farrà male.
Which I translate as:
Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.
Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who will find Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.
The first stanza praises God for giving people the grace to forgive and to bear infirmity and tribulation. The second stanza contains the only “Beatitude” in the canticle, that is, a statement beginning with “Blessed are…” In this case, Francis proclaims that those who endure in peace are blessed and will be crowned by the Most High.
These two stanzas are distinctive in that they do not praise suffering directly but praise those who respond to suffering in the right way. It is an obvious fact that every human being suffers during his or her life, for the Lord “maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5, 45). Even those who do not deserve to suffer, such as Our Lord and Our Lady, suffered greatly. The key is how one responds to suffering: in a spirit of acceptance and forgiveness or in a spirit of denial, anger, or despair. And the model for the right kind of response is Saint Francis. When he wrote these stanzas, Francis was in great pain, was going blind, and was living in a hut infested with mice that kept him awake at night. But thanks to a consolation from God, he learned to rejoice in all his troubles.
Even more astonishingly, Francis learned to embrace bodily death like a sister, which is why he wrote the stanza on death as he lay dying. The Saint understood that thanks to Jesus Christ, bodily “death is swallowed up in victory” and has no victory anymore, no sting (see I Cor. 15, 54-55). For as St. Paul explains:
The dead shall rise again incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (I Cor. 15, 52-53).
In other words, bodily death—probably the greatest natural fear in the human heart and certainly the one thing that modern man goes out of his way to avoid through medication, diet, and exercise—becomes nothing against the backdrop of eternal life. “And fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul,” Our Lord commands, “but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Matt. 10, 2). Moreover, bodily death is nothing in comparison to the greatest evil of all: eternal death or eternal damnation. Saint Francis was poignantly aware of this fact, which is why he adds the only warning in the canticle: “Woe to those who die in mortal sin.” Let us remember that it is called mortal sin because it is a sin that mortally wounds our chances of salvation, that kills our friendship with God. Woe indeed to those who die in such a state. Saint Francis said that he wrote Canticle of the Sun to edify his neighbor, and this section is a key part of that edification.
Memento Mori
This article originally appeared as “Eternal Crown” in the Messenger of Saint Anthony 127:11, international edition (November 2025), p. 33. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
In the Canticle of the Sun, Saint Francis moves from a direct praise of the Creator to a praise of the Creator in individual creatures such as the sun, water, and air. And in the eighth stanza, he zooms out to a more complex object:
Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra,
la quale ne sustenta et gouerna,
et produce diuersi fructi con coloriti fior et herba.
Which I translate as:
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
As we have noted in an earlier article, Francis chose the title “brother” or “sister” based on the gender of the noun in Italian: since the Italian word for earth or land (terra) is feminine, Francis calls the earth “sister.”
But we never explained why Francis addresses creatures as siblings in the first place. Why not, for example, call the sun and the earth friends or comrades instead? The answer, I believe, is to emphasize that all creation has the same Maker and that subsequently, all creatures are related to each other. Rather than see the environment as something that is alien or “other” than us, the healthier model is to see us all as products of God—while still acknowledging, of course, our unique dignity as human beings.
Moreover, when something is your brother or sister, you feel a familial responsibility to take care of it. It is said that some Arab cultures refer to a chivalrous man as a “brother of girls.” As Msgr. Arthur Tonne explains, the expression indicates a man “to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and strength and courage to fight for their protection.” Imagine if all humankind were a “brother of girls” to each other and to all creation.
But can creation also be our mother? The danger in saying so is that it might lead to pantheism, the believe that everything is God (which ends up meaning that God is nothing). G.K. Chesterton goes so far as to say:
Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.
Chesterton may be exaggerating a bit, but I believe his main concern is the reason why Saint Francis calls the Earth “Sister Mother.” If he called her “Mother” only, it could make him a nature-worshipper; but if he called her “Sister” only, it would be a denial of the earth’s role in governing all of the individual elements Francis has been talking about it in the canticle. “Sister Mother” makes no sense in describing normal family relations, but it makes all the sense in the world in describing our peculiar relationship to the planet on which we dwell. For even though we receive our unique spiritual essence from our Heavenly Father, it was he who chose to make us from the slime of the earth.
This article originally appeared in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:10, international edition (October 2025), p. 15. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
In his Canticle of the Sun, Saint Francis of Assisi has this to say about fire:
Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Focu,
per lo quale ennallumini la nocte:
ed ello è bello et iucundo et robustoso et forte.
Which I translate as:
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.
In the natural world, fire can be a destructive force, obliterating neighborhoods and forests. In the Catholic imagination, fire often represents bad things, such as the vices that burn within our souls. And of course, both eternal punishment and temporal punishment in the afterlife are described in terms of fire: the everlasting inferno of Hell and the refiner’s fire that is Purgatory.
On the other hand, the same Catholic imagination sees fire in a positive light. The Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of flame at the first Pentecost, setting the hearts of the disciples on fire with a love of God. There is an old blessing of fire that praises it for piercing the gloom of darkness. And the blessing of fire on Holy Saturday is an important prelude to the blessing of the Paschal Candle. It is also interesting that the Church insists that fire be present at every sacrifice of the Mass (in the form of lit candles) no matter how brightly lit the altar is.
Elijah calls down fire from Heaven
On a natural level, the management of fire is said to be one of the key elements in the development of our species, separating us decisively from the rest of the animal kingdom. That is certainly the point of the legend about Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. Fire exponentially increases our (delicious) food options, keeps us warm, and brings us light.
Saint Francis chooses to look at the bright side of fire when he talks about his brother, describing him as beautiful and playful and robust and strong.
Fire can certainly be beautiful. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) thought we were fools to move one of the most beautiful sights in the world—a living fire—from the fireplace to a furnace in the basement. And fire is also playful: after all, it dances. Finally, fire is robust and strong, especially with the right fuel like a nice, dry, crackling log.
There is a charming story regarding Saint Francis of Assisi and fire. Saint Clare had asked to dine with Saint Francis, and after saying no several times, he finally agreed at the urging of his disciples. Francis had the table set on the bare ground, which was his custom. The two saints sat down along with several of their companions. As the first course was being served, Francis began speaking of God so sweetly and profoundly that the entire group went into a rapture. Meanwhile, it appeared to the residents of Assisi that Francis’ church (St. Mary of the Angels) and the entire forest around it were on fire. Grabbing their extinguishers and what not, they raced to where the group was dining, only to find them safe and sound, rapt in contemplation. According to the collection of stories known as the Little Flowers: “Then they knew for sure that it had been a heavenly and not a material fire that God had miraculously shown them to symbolize the fire of divine love which was burning in the souls of those holy friars and nuns.” Happy and relieved, they withdrew.
The ecstasy of Francis and his companions lasted a long time, and when it was over, all were so refreshed by spiritual food that none of them had a bite of their actual meal.
This article originally appeared in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:9, international edition (September 2025), p. 15. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
After wishing that Brother Wind and the air praise God, Saint Francis turns to Sister Water:
Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor’Acqua,
la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.
Which I translate as:
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Water, it would seem, captures the human imagination like no other earthly element. “Meditation and water are wedded for ever,” writes Herman Melville in Moby Dick. “Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it.” Norman Maclean concludes his beautiful novel A River Runs through It with this observation:
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
And this magic stuff becomes even more magical, so to speak, when mixed with sanctifying grace. Our Lord knew what He was doing when He made water the matter for the sacrament of our initiation into eternal life. In the Old Testament, water is both life and death: life, for example, for the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea and death for the Egyptians who followed them. Water is also cleansing and healing, as in the case of the Naaman the Aramean who was cured of leprosy after bathing seven times in the River Jordan. The sacrament of baptism combines all these characteristics: being plunged in the waters of baptism brings death to self and life in Christ, and it washes us clean of all sin.
Saint Francis gives three descriptions for water. First, it is “very useful.” Water not only sustains our lives but the lives of every other creature on whom we depend for sustenance, every plant and animal. And there is no beverage we consume that does not contain H2O. Water is also essential to cleanliness and, despite its dangers, it is a lot of fun to boat on or to swim in or simply to gaze upon from the shore.
Second, water is precious. Thanks to our impressive modern water-treatment plants and an amazing network of indoor plumbing, it is easy to forget how difficult it was for many of our ancestors to have a reliable source of potable water, and how difficult it still is in some parts of the developing world. Francis was surely grateful for water. “To him,” writes Msgr. Arthur Tonne, “plain Sister Water tasted better than the richest wine.”
Third, the Saint calls water “chaste.” It is a curious choice. No doubt he is referring to water’s purity, but like English, the Italian language has its own word for purity. Chastity, on the other hand, is a special kind of purity, a purity regarding sexual desire and activity. The image that emerges is of Sister Water as a humble and dear maiden, not unlike the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a surprising image but fitting, since Francis has personified water by calling it/her his sister.
And perhaps this image of chastity should make us more concerned about polluting or sullying Sister Water. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an island of microplastic debris in the Pacific Ocean three times the size of France; and 703,000,000 people today (one in ten) lack access to clean water. Let’s do a better job protecting our sister’s chastity.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
This article appeared as “Song of Water” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:7, international edition (July/August 2025), p. 33. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
In the Canticle of the Sun, Saint Francis moves from the sun, moon, and stars to Brother Wind, the air, and the weather:
Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Uento
et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo,
per lo quale, a le Tue creature dài sustentamento.
Which I translate as:
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through whom you give sustenance to Your creatures.
Survivalists talk about the so-called the Rules of Three. It is extremely difficult to survive three months without companionship, three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours in a harsh environment, and three minutes without air.
The wind and the air, filled as they are with oxygen, provide life for all creatures on earth. But they have also been loaded from time immemorial with theological significance. In the Bible, there is often an equivalence between wind and spirit: indeed, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, they are the same word – ruah, pneuma, and spiritus, respectively. In the Book of Genesis, the spirit of God moves over the waters when God creates the heavens and the earth, and the “spirit” here can either be a wind or the Holy Spirit. At the first Pentecost, it is both, for the Holy Spirit manifests Himself on that occasion as a mighty wind; indeed, one of the titles of the Holy Spirit is the Breath of God. And when Jesus imparts the Holy Spirit on the Apostles after He rises from the dead, He does so by breathing on them:
And He said to them: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20, 22-23).
Furthermore, in Saint Francis’ day and up until the 1960s, the Roman Rite of Baptism required the priest to perform ritual acts of breathing. The “insufflation” was when he breathed three times on the baptismal water and said to Almighty God: “Do You with Your mouth bless these pure waters: that besides their natural virtue of cleansing the body, they may also be effectual for purifying the soul.” The “exsufflation,” on the other hand, was when the priest breathed three times on the baptismal candidate and said to the devil: “Go out of him...you unclean spirit, and give way to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.”
Finally, besides the Holy Spirit, wind can symbolize the human soul: “And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2, 7).
Saint Francis next praises the air as cloudy and serene. For me, these words conjure up the picture of a bright blue sky populated by puffy white clouds, the kind that can look like all manner of animals and faces.
In the past century we have learned not to take the air for granted. Industrial pollution of the atmosphere has led to smog, acid rain, lead poisoning, and according to scientific consensus, climate change, with carbon dioxide emissions creating a greenhouse effect that leads to more extreme weather.
And weather is possibly the theme of Saint Francis’ final object of praise in this stanza. I say “possibly” because the standard English interpretation of the word Francis chose, tempo, is “every kind of weather.” But a more direct translation of tempo is simply “season.” Is Francis praising rain, drought, sleet, and snow, or spring, summer, fall, and winter? In some respects, it does not matter, for it is indeed through the seasons, which consists of different kinds of weather, that God gives sustenance to all His creatures. And for that we are grateful.
This article appeared as “Brother Wind” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:6, international edition (June 2025), p. 21. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
After Brother Sun, St. Francis turns to other lights in the sky:
Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le stelle:
in celu l’ài formate clarite et pretiose et belle.
Which I translate as:
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven you formed them bright and precious and beautiful.
In the Canticle of the Sun, Francis follows the gender of the noun in Italian to determine whether he addresses a creature as brother or sister. Objects that have a masculine noun are called “brother” and objects that have a feminine noun are called “sister.” Since luna (moon) is feminine in gender, Francis calls the moon his sister.
He also calls the moon and stars bright, precious, and beautiful. We have translated the word clarite, from which we derive the English word “clear,” as “bright,” because that is its meaning, but the word can also suggest a kind of perfection, like a diamond’s clarity. Francis, in other words, is describing the moon and stars as jewels in the sky. One wonders if the Saint is contrasting his worldview before his conversion, when he delighted in the finer things of life (like clothes and maybe jewels), to his current view of the world, now seen through the eyes of God.
Saint Francis does not mention the night by name, but it is obviously implied by the nocturnal celestial objects that he wants to praise God. The night can have negative metaphorical meaning. As the deprivation of light, it can symbolize a deprivation of goodness, understanding, or grace. That is why St. John of the Cross called his period of spiritual dryness the “dark night of the soul.”
St. John of the Cross
The night can also be a frightening thing on a more practical level. The temperature drops (which in winter can be life-threatening), and the darkness not only makes it difficult to travel but provides cover for nocturnal predators like wolves and tigers and as well as human predators like highway robbers and burglars. To this day, most violent crimes, such as murder and rape, are committed at night. Add to this folklore about witches, vampires, and ghosts, and you can see why the night was so feared by our ancestors.
On the other hand, the night has also enjoyed a good reputation. The moon and stars are indeed beautiful, and in an age free of light pollution, the constellations were especially spectacular on a cloudless night. Thanks to Aristotle, ancient and medieval Europeans thought of heavenly bodies as perfect in every way, from their shape to their orbits. Contrary to a popular misconception, geocentrists took no pride in thinking of the earth as the center of the universe, for if the heavens were the realm of perfection, the earth was the realm of imperfection. If the moon is a perfect sphere, the earth is a muddy mess.
Moreover, Christian artists liked to think of the moon as a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the stars as the Saints, just as the sun was a metaphor for God. Since the moon reflects the light of the sun and has long been associated with femininity, it is the perfect symbol for the Mother who bore and perfectly reflects the Light of the world. And one medieval hymn for a saint praises the day of his death as the moment when “he moved up to the constellations” (migravit sidera).
Although Saint Francis does not allegorize the heavenly bodies, his praise of their natural qualities provides the kind of appreciation for nature that opens up to such symbolism, and it helps us move beyond the moon and the stars to the Love that moves them.
This article appeared as “Beauty of the Night” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:5, international edition (May 2025), p. 37. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
After devoting two stanzas in his Canticle of the Sun to God and man (which we have traced in our series of article here and here), Francis devotes the rest of his composition to God and material creation. He moves more or less altitudinally, from the highest thing in the physical universe on down. For him, that means starting with the sun:
Laudato sie, mi Signore cum tucte le Tue creature,
spetialmente messor lo frate Sole,
lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui.
Et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore:
de Te, Altissimo, porta significatione.
Which I translate as:
Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
who is the day, and who enlightens us through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor!
He brings meaning about You, O Most High.
The stanza initiates a pattern that is common throughout the Canticle: it commands God to be praised by one of his creatures, whom Francis identifies as a brother or sister. This stanza, however, is unique in two ways. First, this is the only time that Francis addresses a creature with a title of respect: he calls the sun not simply a brother but “Sir Brother.” Such deference points to the prominence of the sun in the order of creation. The sun enlightens us, and it is beautiful and radiant with great splendor.
Second, this is the only time that Francis says that a creature discloses something about God. The verse de Te, Altissimo, porta significatione is difficult to translate, but it indicates that the sun carries within itself some meaningful information about God. Of course, that is true of every creature. As Pope Benedict XVI once said, “All Creation speaks of God and is praise of God.” Francis is not denying that every created things speaks of God; he is singling out the sun for being especially indicative of God.
So what is it that the sun and God have in common, or rather, what does the sun tell us about God? Francis mentions three attributes: the sun enlightens us, it is beautiful, and it radiates.
Regarding enlightenment, in the Prologue to the Gospel according to Saint John, the Son of God is described as “the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (1, 9), and the same can be said of the other two Persons of the Holy Trinity as well. One can even toy with aligning each Person of the Trinity with some solar quality, as does St. Ambrose in one of his hymns:
O Splendor of the Father’s glory,
Bringing forth light from light,
Light of light and Font of light,
Illuminating the days of days.
And true Sun, flow on,
Glittering with everlasting brilliance;
And the radiance of the Holy Spirit,
Pour fourth onto our senses.
Second, the sun’s beauty reminds us of God’s, not only because both are splendid but because both are in a way the cause of beauty in other things. The sun is the “cause” of beauty in visible things insofar as we could not see their beauty without the sun. And it is much more the case that God is the cause of beauty in all things, for He made all things good, and the good is beautiful.
Third, just as the sun’s radiance is the chief source of warmth on earth, so too is God’s love the chief source of spiritual warmth in our lives. In Revelation 12, 1 (not to mention the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feast we celebrate today), the Blessed Virgin Mary is depicted as a “woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Mary, full of grace, is basking in God’s love, and so was Saint Francis when he wrote this Canticle.
This article appeared as “Sir Brother Sun” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:4, international edition (April 2025), p. 37. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
The first two stanzas of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun (which we began examining last week) are:
Altissimu, omnipotente bon Signore,
Tue so le laude, la gloria e l’honore et onne benedictione.
Ad Te solo, Altissimo, se konfano,
et nullu homo ène dignu te mentouare.
Which I and others translate as:
Most High, Almighty, good Lord,
Yours are praise, glory, honor, and every blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no man is worthy of mentioning You.
Saint Francis begins his song about creation with praise of the Creator, for creation owes all its goodness to its Creator. Two themes emerge: the transcendence of God and the lowliness of man.
The key thing to understand about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is that He is not the highest point in the pyramid of existence: He is above the pyramid altogether. As C.S. Lewis writes: “If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house.” [1] Just as an architect utterly transcends the house that he makes and is made of an entirely different stuff than a house, so too does God utterly transcend His creation and has an Essence entirely different from that of His creation.
C.S. Lewis and his house
That said, divine transcendence does not mean divine distance. As St. Augustine notes, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves: He is secretissimus et praesentissimus, most hidden and most present. [2] Unlike the architect who can walk away from and forget about the house that he built, God remains utterly present to His creation at all time; if He forgot about it for one moment, it would cease to exist. And creation abounds with God’s fingerprints, eloquently pointing back to its Creator. Again Augustine comes to mind. “Tell me of my God, since you are not He,” the Bishop of Hippo dramatically says to all creatures. “Tell me something of Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us!” Augustine adds that “their answer was their beauty.” [3]
In his Canticle, Saint Francis indicates God’s transcendence with the words “Most High” (which he uses twice) and “Almighty” and by ascribing to God all praise, glory, honor, and blessing. This glorious, Supreme God is then contrasted with measly man, who is not even worthy of mentioning God. (Francis may have in mind the Jewish convention of never uttering the holy name of God, YHWH, a name too lofty to pass over sinful human lips.) It is a curious paradox: man can know that he has a Creator, but his own creatureliness and sinfulness make him unworthy to talk about Him.
And yet that is precisely what Francis does in this canticle. Unworthy though he is, he knows that he has been redeemed and given the gift of Faith which enables him to know, love, and serve his Creator. And he does so because giving God all praise and admitting one’s own lowliness is paradoxically liberating and exhilarating. Francis’ posture in the Canticle once more calls to mind Augustine, who begins his Confessions with:
Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And man desires to praise Thee. He is but a tiny part of all that Thou hast created. He bears about him his mortality, the evidence of his sinfulness, and the evidence that Thou dost resist the proud: yet this tiny part of all that Thou hast created desires to praise Thee. Thou dost so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy. For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee. [4]
This article appeared as “Holy Creation” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:3, international edition (March 2025), p. 21. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
The year of Our Lord 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures (also known as the Canticle of Brother Sun), and to honor this momentous occasion we will devote the next several issues to it.
The Canticle was a groundbreaking achievement. Written in the Umbrian dialect, it is believed to be the first work of literature by a known author in the Italian language. The Canticle inspired Franz Liszt (1811–1886) to compose several pieces entitled “Cantico del sol di Francesco d'Assisi” for solo piano, organ, and orchestra. And William Henry Draper’s English hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King,” is a paraphrase of the Canticle. The Canticle beautifully encapsulates Saint Francis’ profound spiritual worldview and has an admirable poetic style.
The Canticle of the Creatures consists of thirteen stanzas. After addressing the Lord, Saint Francis mentions Brother Sun, Sister Moon and the Stars, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth, and Sister Bodily Death. The Canticle concludes with a warning about dying in mortal sin and a call to serve God in great humility.
The tone of the Canticle is overwhelmingly joyful, which is ironic given the circumstances in which it was written. In 1225, Saint Francis returned to the church of San Damiano, a place close to his heart. It was here that he received the calling from God to repair His Church, and it was here that he foresaw the establishment of the Order of Poor Clares, who now had custody of the church. But Francis was not in good condition. His body was racked with pain because of the austerities he inflicted on himself and because of the stigmata he had received on Mount Verna a few months earlier on September 13, 1224. The Poor Clares had built for him “a little cell made of mats,” but the cell was infested with mice and the weather was dreary, making it difficult for him to sleep. To top it all off, Francis was going blind from trachoma, which he may have contracted when he visited Egypt to convert the Muslims.
One night, as he was reflecting on all his ills, he received an assurance from God of “the promise of His kingdom.” Relieved, the next morning Francis told his spiritual brothers how grateful he was for this consolation, and that he should rejoice in all his troubles. He resolved to write a “new praise of the Lord for His creatures” with a threefold purpose: to praise God, to console ourselves, and to edify our neighbor. After meditating for a while, Saint Francis then dictated most of the Canticle. He added more stanzas later, including the stanza about Sister Bodily Death as he lay dying in October 1226.
It may seem strange that a canticle of joy should be the product of pain and misery, but as St. Augustine observes, man has an inbuilt desire to praise God, and that doing so brings him joy. Such is the case even in the darkest of times, which affords a heightened opportunity to let go of oneself fully and to let in God. A French Franciscan priest named Eloï Leclerc wrote a beautiful book entitled the Canticle of Brother Sun, which he concludes by stating that the hymn first came to life for him in a crowded freight train headed for the Dachau death camp, when a fellow friar who was dying of hunger and exhaustion sang it.
This article appeared as “Praised Be You” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:2, international edition (February 2025), p. 21. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
Last week, for the feast of St Francis of Assisi, I posted about the oldest known altarpiece of him, the work of an artist named Bonventura Berlinghieri, which is dated to 1235, only seven years after Francis’ canonization. As a follow-up, here is the second oldest such work, known as the Bardi altarpiece or panel, after the chapel where it has been kept since 1595 within the Franciscan order’s church in Florence, the basilica of the Holy Cross. For a long time, the artist’s name was unknown, and he was simply called the Master of the Bardi St Francis. It is now generally accepted as the work of a Florentine painter called Coppo di Marcovaldo, who lived from roughly 1225-76; about 10 other works of his survive, almost all in various parts of Tuscany, but only three are attributed to him with absolute certainty. The painting is dated to around 1245-50; if the attribution to Coppo is correct, that would mean he made it when he was about 20-25 years old. (All images from Wikimedia Commons by Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0.)
The Saint appears in the middle, wearing the Franciscan habit, showing the stigmata as he gives a blessing, and holding a book. The border around him is populated with Franciscan friars. The inscription above his head reads, “Hunc exaudite perhibentem dogmata vitae. - Listen to this man who offers the teachings of life.” Although the body of St Francis is still artificially elongated in the manner of the Byzantine iconographic style which prevailed in Italy at the time, the proportions of the head, hands and feet are much better rendered than in Berlinghieri’s work.
The Bardi panel is similar in form to Berlinghieri’s, but more elaborate, with 20 stories from the Saint’s life, where the other has only six. Some of these are taken from Thomas of Celano’s biography, the first, written in 1228-9, very shortly after the canonization, and do not appear in the version by St Bonaventure which officially replaced it in 1266. They run counterclockwise from the upper left side. Here we see St Francis delivered from prison after being captured during a battle between Assisi and its perennial rival, nearby Perugia, and his renunciation of all his worldly possessions in the presence of his parents and of the bishop of Assisi.
Francis designs the habit of his followers (not yet an order in the proper sense) in the presence of the bishop of Assisi, and hears the words from the reading of the Gospel which will inspire the Franciscan rule and way of life. At the lower right, he removes his shoes as a symbol of his embrace of poverty.
Francis and his followers receive approval of the Rule from Pope Innocent III, and he makes the first Christmas creche.
Preaching to the birds, and to the Saracens in the presence of the Sultan.
Francis rescues a lamb which is grazing among goats, and exchanges his habit to rescue two lambs that are being taken to slaughter.
Francis receives the stigmata, and does public penance for improperly breaking a fast.
Francis teaches the lepers, holding one on his knee and washing the feet of another; he appears to Brother Monaldo during a general chapter of the order held at Arles in southern France, while St. Anthony is preaching.
The remaining panels (those on the right side) are to be read upwards from the bottom. During his funeral, as his soul ascends to heaven, Francis heals a girl with a twisted neck and several demoniacs.
Pope Gregory IX canonizes him; he prevents the wreck of a ship sailing out of Ancona on the Adriatic coast of Italy.
Pilgrims bring offerings of candles to his tomb; he heals a man suffering from gout.
St Francis of Assisi died late in the evening on October 3, 1226, at the age of about 44, and was canonized in July of 1228 by Pope Gregory IX. His order was almost from the start among the most important patrons of the arts, especially in its Italian heartlands of Umbria and Tuscany, and there is hardly a town of any size in those regions that does not (or did not formerly) boast some interesting and beautiful artwork made to honor their founder or one of their other Saints. I add the words “or did not formerly” because with the coming of the age of revolutions, and the suppression of so many churches of the religious orders, many of these works are now lost or removed to museums.
The church of St Francis in the little town of Pescia in Tuscany, about half-way between Lucca and Pistoia, had a medieval painting of the Saint, a work whose style was by the 17th century as utterly out of fashion as a painting could be. A local artist named Alessandro Bardelli (1583-1633) was therefore hired to make a new painting as a frame for it, which would display the original central image of Francis, but surrounded by a group of angels. (All images from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 4.0)
In the 19th century, when Bardelli’s work had in turn fallen out of fashion, a painter and art critic also from that area named Michele Ridolfi (1793-1854), removed the frame to reveal the complete original image. The Italian Wikipedia article about the painting says that the date (1235) and the signature of the artist, Bonaventura Berlinghieri (1210 ca. - 1287), around St Francis’ feet, were covered by the frame, but in the photograph above, they are clearly visible. If the article is correct, then either the painting was positioned differently within the frame, or the aperture has subsequently been enlarged. In any case, Berlinghieri’s work, made just 7 years after Francis’ canonization, turns out to be the oldest known painting of him and various episodes from his life. It is a work very much in the style of Byzantine icons, the style which prevailed in central Italy at the time, and which would be superseded largely under the impetus which the Franciscans themselves gave to the more naturalistic style of later artists like Cimabue and Giotto. (Click image to enlarge.)
St Francis is depicted in his habit of sackcloth and rope, holding the book of the Gospels, and with the stigmata clearly visible, although on his raised right hand it has faded. Six episodes from his life are depicted, running clockwise from the upper right: the founding of the Third Order; the healing of a crippled man; the healing of a possessed; the healing of a little girl with a bent neck; the preaching to the birds; the reception of the stigmata.
Today, the Church marks the 800th anniversary of one of the most thoroughly well-attested miracles in its history, St Francis’ reception of the Stigmata in the year 1224, a bit more than two years before his death. The Stigmata were of course seen by many people during those two years; the revised Butler’s Live of the Saints quotes one of the very earliest documents to speak of them, the letter which Brother Elias, whom Francis personally chose to run his Order, sent to his brethren in France to announce the death of their founder. “From the beginning of ages there has not been heard so great a wonder, save only in the Son of God who is Christ our God. For a long while before his death, our father and brother appeared crucified, bearing in his body the five wounds which are verily the Stigmata of Christ; for his hands and feet had as it were piercings made by nails fixed in from above and below, which laid open the scars and had the black appearance of nails; while his side appeared to have been lanced, and blood often trickled therefrom.”
St Francis Receives the Stigmata, by Giotto, 1295-1300; originally painted for the church of St Francis in Pisa, now in the Louvre. The predella panels show the vision of Pope Innocent III, who in a dream beheld St Francis holding up the collapsing Lateran Basilica, followed by the approval of the Franciscan Rule, and St Francis preaching to the birds. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
One of the very few acts of the brief pontificate of the Dominican Pope Benedict XI (October 1303 – July 1304) was to grant to his fellow mendicants of the Franciscan Order permission to keep a special feast of the Stigmata of St Francis. St Bonaventure’s Legenda Major, which the Order recognized as the official biography of its founder, and read at Matins on his feast day, states that Francis received the Stigmata “around the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross”, which is on September 14th. Since the 15th was at the time the octave of Our Lady’s Nativity, and the 16th the very ancient feast of Ss Cornelius and Cyprian, the feast of the Stigmata was assigned to the 17th, where it is still kept to this day.
Before the Tridentine reform, the Franciscans repeated the introit of the Exaltation, Nos autem gloriari oportet, at the Mass of the Stigmata, emphasizing not only the merely historical connection between the two events, but also the uniqueness of their founder, whom St Bonaventure describes as one “marked with a privilege not granted to any age before his own.” The modern Missal cites this introit to Galatians, 6, 14, but it is really an ecclesiastical composition, and hardly even a paraphrase of any verse of Scripture. It is also the introit of Holy Thursday, and in the post-Tridentine period, this use was apparently felt to be a little hubristic; it was therefore replaced with a new one, Mihi autem, which quotes that same verse exactly. “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”
The verse with which it is sung is the first of Psalm 141, “I cried to the Lord with my voice: with my voice I made supplication to the Lord,” the Psalm which St Francis was in the midst of reciting at the moment of his death. The music of this later introit is copied almost identically from another which also begins with the words Mihi autem, and is sung on the feasts of various Apostles, underscoring the point that St Francis was, as one of the antiphons of his proper Office says, a “vir catholicus et totus apostolicus – a Catholic man, wholly like the Apostles.”
This feast has the distinction of being the very first one added to the general calendar after the Tridentine reform not as the principal feast of a Saint, but one instituted to commemorate a miracle. [1] This was originally done by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90), who, like St Bonaventure, had been Minister General of the Franciscans, and showed a great deal of liturgical favoritism to his order. (He also added the feasts of Ss Anthony of Padua and Francis di Paola, the founder of the Minim Friars, to the calendar, and made Bonaventure a Doctor of the Church.) When Pope Clement VIII issued the first revision of the Pian Breviary in 1602, the feast was suppressed, only to be restored 13 years later by Pope Paul V [2], at the behest of one of his most trusted councilors, St Robert Bellarmine.
St Robert had a great devotion to St Francis, on whose feast day he was born in 1542. His native city, Montepulciano, is in the southeastern part of Tuscany, fairly close to both Assisi and Bagnoreggio, the home of St Bonaventure, and very much in the original Franciscan heartland. Not long after he entered the Jesuits, the master general, St Francis Borgia, commissioned a new chapel dedicated to his name-saint, with a painting of him receiving the Stigmata as the main altarpiece. It was built within what was then the Order’s only church in Rome, dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, devotion to which was a Franciscan creation, and heavily promoted by another of their Saints, Bernardin of Siena, who was also Tuscan. This chapel was clearly intended to underline the similarities between the Jesuits and Franciscans as orders promoting reform within the Church, while remaining wholly obedient to it, zealous evangelizers, strictly orthodox, and spiritually grounded in an intensely personal devotion to and union with Christ.
The chapel of the Sacred Heart, originally dedicated to St Francis of Assisi, at the Jesuit church of the Holy Name of Jesus in Rome, popularly known as ‘il Gesù.’ In 1920, the original altarpiece of St Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Durante Alberti was replaced by the painting of the Sacred Heart seen here, a work of Pompeo Battoni done in oil on slate in 1767. Previously displayed on the altar of St Francis Xavier, which is right outside this chapel, it was the very first image of the Sacred Heart to be exposed for veneration in Italy after the visions of St Margaret Mary Alacoque. The other images of St Francis, all part of the chapel’s original decoration, remain in place. (Photo courtesy of Mr Jacob Stein, author of the blog Passio Xpi.)
But the extension of the feast to the general calendar also touches on a much larger issue, one which colors the Tridentine reform, and especially that of the Breviary, in several ways, namely, the response to the Protestant reformation.
St Francis is today held in admiration so broadly by Catholics, non-Catholics and even non-Christians alike, that it is perhaps hard for us to appreciate today how he was seen by the original Protestant reformers. Even within Luther’s lifetime, it was hardly possible to get two of them together to agree on any point; broadly speaking, however, they generally accepted that things had really gone wrong in the Church with the coming of the mendicants, especially the Franciscans, and the flourishing of their teachings in the universities. Luther himself once said “If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house, I would set fire to it”, and more generally, “a friar is evil every way, whether in the monastery or out of it.” Most Protestants had no patience for the ascetic ideals embodied by Saints like Francis and the other mendicants, an attitude sadly shared by supercilious humanists within the Church like Erasmus.
Of course, the mendicants were not immune to the widespread decadence of religious and clerical life justly decried by the true reformers of that age, and which sadly provided much grist for the Protestant mill. And yet, while Ignatius of Loyola was still the equivalent of a freshman in college, the great Franciscan reform of the Capuchins had already begun; where the Jesuits would soon prove the most effective of the new orders in combatting the heresies of the 16th century, the Capuchins would take that role among the older ones. This may be what moved Luther to say, “If the emperor would merit immortal praise, he would utterly root out the order of the Capuchins, and, for an everlasting remembrance of their abominations, cause their books to remain in safe custody. ’Tis the worst and most poisonous sect; the (other orders of) friars are in no way comparable with these confounded lice.” [3]
Fra Matteo Bassi, founder of the Capuchins, and quite possibly the only founder of a Franciscan order who was never canonized; 17th century, author unknown. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
The Tridentine reform was in its essence the Catholic Church’s answer to the question of what to do with what it had developed over the course of the Middle Ages, in response to the Protestant rejection of such developments, and putative return to the most ancient roots of the Christian Faith. It sought to determine which parts of the Church’s medieval inheritance were of perennial or continued value, which needed to be rejected, and which needed to be modified and reformed. This included all aspects of its life: its many institutional forms, its intellectual tradition, its art and architecture, and of course, its liturgy.
St Francis was both a product of the Middle Ages, and a creator of one of its most important and characteristic institutions; he was no more a creation of Luther and Calvin’s imaginary “primitive” church than he was a modern environmentalist. The placement of his feast on the general calendar serves as a very useful reminder that it was a man of that era who was the first conformed to Christ so entirely that he merited to bear His wounds upon his own body.
On April 16, 1959, Pope St John XXIII addressed the following words to a gathering of Franciscans in the Lateran Basilica, where Pope Innocent III had once met the Poor Man of Assisi himself, the occasion being the 750th anniversary of the approval of the Franciscan Rule. “Beloved sons! Permit us to add a special word from the heart, to all those present who belong to the peaceable army of the Lay Tertiaries of St Francis. ‘Ego sum Ioseph, frater vester.’ (‘I am Joseph, your brother’, citing Genesis 45, 4, Joseph being his middle name), … This we ourselves have been since our youth, when, having just turned fourteen, on March 1, 1896, we were regularly inscribed through the ministry of Canon Luigi Isacchi, our spiritual father, who was then the director of the seminary of Bergamo.” He went on to recall the Franciscan house of Baccanello, near the place where he grew up, as the first religious house he ever knew, and that four days earlier, he had canonized his first Saint, the Franciscan Carlo of Sezze.
The following year, Pope John approved the decree for the reform of the Breviary and Missal which reduced the feast of St Francis’ Stigmata to a commemoration. As such, the Mass can still be celebrated ad libitum, but is no longer mandatory, and the story of the Stigmata is no longer told in the Breviary. In the post-Conciliar reform, it was removed from the general calendar entirely, and replaced by the feast of St Robert Bellarmine, who died in 1621 on the very feast day he had promoted. It is still kept by the Franciscan Orders.
[1] Before the Tridentine reform, there were many feasts and Saints who were celebrated everywhere the Roman Rite was used, and many of these feasts did originate in Rome itself, but there was no such thing as a “general” calendar of feasts that had to be kept ubique et ab omnibus. When the first general calendar was created in 1568, which is to say, a calendar created with the specific intention that it would also be used outside its diocese of origin, a number of miracle feasts were included; all of these were present in pre-Tridentine editions of the Roman liturgical books, and celebrated in many other places as well.
[2] The feast was added to the calendar by Pope Paul V as a semidouble ad libitum in 1615, made mandatory by Pope Clement IX (1667-69), and raised to the rank of double by Clement XIV, the last Franciscan Pope.
[3] Thanks to Dr Donald Prudlo for this quote from Luther, and the one that precedes it.
In yesterday’s post about Saints Catherine of Siena and Francis of Assisi being made the patron Saints of Italy, I explained a bit about the state of cold war that existed between the Papacy and the kingdom of Italy in the period of the so-called Risorgimento, and how the Popes from 1870 until 1929 were confined to the Vatican. A friend then brought to my attention this video from the always-interesting YouTube channel Caeremoniale Romanum, a British Pathé newsreel, which shows Pius XI going to the Lateran basilica for the first time in his papacy, to celebrate the feast of the Ascension in 1933.
Our friend Fr Joseph Koczera, SJ, also shared with us this picture of an inscription (written in a very elevated and formal style of classical Latin) in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which commemorates the visit of Pope Pius XII during which he solemnly proclaimed Ss Catherine and Francis to be the patrons of Italy. (The church is called “sopra Minerva – over Minerva” because it was built on the site of a Roman temple.)
“On May 5 in the year 1940, Pius XII, shining forth in the majesty of the papacy, entered this church, was present for a solemn Mass, commended the Italian people to the heavenly patrons Francis and Catherine, and paid outstanding tributes to them both from the pulpit; going into the neighboring buildings (i.e. the Dominican house), together with the leaders of the city, he gladdened the Dominican and Franciscan families with his appearance and speech; in the piazza of the Minerva, he graced the celebrating crowd with an auspicious prayer. The Dominican friars set up (this inscription) for the memory of posterity.”
__99659.1541619784.gif?c=2)
