Genesis 1:29
Then God said. “I give you every seedbearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.”
In the last reflection, we looked at the structure of the Canticle of the Creatures in terms of the flow of Creation. The Canticle starts with God the Creator, moves through the heavens to earth, and lastly focuses on man as the final act in God’s initial burst of creative energy. We then noted that the flow of Creation is fundamentally circular. It must return to God, so the end of the Canticle reinforces the praise of God that took place in the introduction.
In this reflection, we will look at an alternate interpretation. This analysis is similar to the last, with only minor changes in the arrangement. But instead of focusing on the flow of the Canticle, it is directed to the attributes that Francis assigns to God and His creatures as he moves through the composition. It looks like this:
- Strophes 1-2: Opening, Concerning the Attributes of God
- Strophes 3-9: Concerning the Attributes of the Creatures
- Strophes 10-11: Concerning the Attributes of Man
- Strophes 12-13: Assigning an Attribute to Death
- Strophe 14: Refrain, Returning to the Attributes of God
In the opening, we see Francis referring to God as “most high, all powerful and good.” “Praises, glory, honor and blessings” belong to Him alone. “No human is worthy to mention His name.” Francis is attributing to God superiority and otherness in relation to man. His distinctiveness is such that He is essentially incomprehensible except when He chooses to reveal Himself. Fortunately for us, He has chosen to make Himself known through both Creation and the Incarnation. That revelation makes it undeniably clear that He is the definition of Love. His Goodness is pure, indisputable and absolute. Our only worthwhile option is to accept Him as such and praise Him in response.
In strophes 3-9, we see the Goodness and Love of God confirmed by the characteristics He infuses into Creation. As might be expected from One who is completely virtuous, the qualities He introduces are all positive and, even more importantly, are all designed to provide for the welfare of man. His creatures are “beautiful, radiant, splendorous, precious, serene, humble and chaste.” They also provide us with light and sustenance. They are useful, capable of governing us, and they feed us with fruit and herbs.
Francis is essentially describing a paradise where a Loving Creator has anticipated and fulfilled our needs before we knew them. Because of the Holiness of the Creator, this paradise is sacred. His Image is inscribed in the signs and vestiges that populate His handiwork. When we failed to recognize Him via His Creation, rather than abandoning us, He choose to enter Creation personally as the Living Word, further revealing His Goodness and Love. We should thrive, but often we do not, because we fail to respond to Him with Humility and Poverty. Instead, we prefer sin to Him, and we struggle when we should prosper.
Francis was reminded of our failings by the behavior of the mayor and bishop of Assisi. Reverence for God was wholly absent not only in the way they were treating each other, but more critically in the example they were setting for their followers. In response, He recognized that the Canticle was incomplete without reference to the attributes that man must embrace to return to paradise and the state of praise that God rightly expects from him. The list he offers is necessarily incomplete because of the vastness of words it would take to address all of man’s shortcomings. But in response to the specific issue facing him, he offers pardon based in God’s Love as a starting point, for what greater praise of God is there than to love an adversary just as Jesus commanded?
He then moves to the universal condition of man. Recognizing in the dispute between the mayor and bishop a version of the “infirmity and tribulation” that all men suffer, he reveals an all-encompassing reward for praising God within hardship. We might be suffering physically as Francis was, or we might be suffering spiritually as the mayor and the bishop were. Either way, if we embrace Poverty and persevere in praise, God will grant us Peace, empowering us to surmount every trial He asks us to undergo while steadily refining us along the way. Better, not only will He assist us to “endure in Peace,” He will also finally reward consistent steadfastness with a crown.
This crown then represents the assurance Francis received from God when he turned to prayer in his suffering. Francis is affirming that the promise of the Kingdom he received is available to anyone who embraces the constant praise he calls us to via the Canticle.
It was the Holy Spirit that moved Francis to expand the Canticle when the dispute between the mayor and bishop arose. At the end of his life, the Spirit inspired Francis a second time, again to address a collective experience we all must face. In this extension, Francis exhorts us to continue our praise even through death, the experience “no one living can escape.”
To make this easier, Francis personifies death. It would be strange to praise God through the unembodied, mysterious and frightening form of the grim reaper. But by attributing to death the title “Sister,” Francis establishes kinship between us and death. Instead of a brooding specter, we now have a loving and trustworthy “Sister” to carefully guide us through the transition from this world to the next.
Strophe 13 feels like it might have been more at home with strophes 10 and 11. Conforming myself to God’s “Most Holy Will” feels like an attribute that will help me toward salvation. Why did the Holy Spirit hold this off until the end? We must remember that just as our creation was the Will of God, so is our death. This truth makes us uncomfortable. We resist it, potentially making us more susceptible to fighting against God’s Will when it comes to our death that we are at any other time. So perhaps this strophe is not just about seeking absolution for our sins at the end or our life? It is meant to emphasize the importance of serenely accepting God’s Will when facing our own mortality?
We ended the last reflection by affirming the circular nature of the flow of Creation. The final movement had to be back to God. The same holds true here. All these attributes are sourced in God, so it is only appropriate that the refrain take us back to Him through praise, blessing and thanks. At the same time, it is also proper that it emphasizes service to God with humility. This is another attribute men must embrace to properly praise their Creator, whose Name they are otherwise unworthy to mention.
- We can infer from the attributes of Creation emphasized by Francis that the earth was meant to be a paradise. Why does it seem so often to be anything but? How does the OFS Rule and the Franciscan charism ask you to respond to the state of the world? What personal attributes do you need to bring to bear? How should praise fit into your response?
- If God created a paradise for us during our earthly life, what are the attributes of whatever is waiting for us in eternal life? Does pondering those attributes help you to “praise the Lord through your Sister Bodily Death”? Do you equate “serenely tending toward the ultimate encounter with the Father” (Article 19 of the Rule) with “being found by death in God’s Most Holy Will?”
OFS Ongoing 
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