Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
We're continuing our series on Franciscan spirituality today, probably about three-quarters of the way through our series, and we'll speak on how God reveals himself in nature.
Nature has meaning for those who know how to filter a knowledge of things through a spirit that is upright, sincere, and pure.
That's the lens through which St. Francis viewed the natural world.
He looked at nature with a mystical eye, meaning that he saw it with the eyes of someone who lives in the mysterious reality of God's grace and grasps the immediate significance of things.
For those of you who are maybe familiar with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, this would fall under the gift of knowledge, which is a gift that helps us rightly judge creatures in their relation to God.
Having conquered what St. Paul would call in Romans 8:21, the glorious liberty of the children of God, St. Francis was free of the egoism which oppresses and exploits people.
His biographer, Blessed Thomas of Celano, said that Francis knew with the penetrating intuition of his heart how to comprehend the secrets of creatures.
He knew how to glimpse into the depths of each being, its belonging to God, and to see in it something that also reveals God.
Celano says that the Seraphic Father contemplated in creatures the wisdom of the Creator, His power, and His goodness.
His Brother Sun, who is beautiful, radiant, with great splendor, signifies in his own way the greatness of God, St. Francis would say.
He said that the Sun porta significatione, which means it carries its own meaning.
Francis would say that everything carries its own meaning of God.
Everything says something about him.
The Sun, the Moon, the stars, the wind, the water, the fire, the earth, fruits, flowers, even death, which reminds us of our misery and reminds us of God's sovereignty over his creatures.
Every created being manifests some attribute of God's divinity, of his infinite power, of his providence, even in the most unpleasant creatures as a reflection of the divine perfections.
Celano writes, everything is like a clear mirror of his goodness, a clear mirror of God's goodness.
19th-century French scholar, Bl. Frédéric Ozanam, writing of the Franciscan poets of the 13th century, says that there, where other eyes see only perishable beauties, Francis discovers, though by a second sight, the eternal relationships that unite the physical order to the moral order and the mysteries of nature to those of faith.
St. Bonaventure, in his major life of St. Francis, says, aroused by everything to divine love, Francis rejoiced in all the works of the Lord's hands, and through their delightful display he rose into their life-giving reason and cause.
In beautiful things, he beheld beauty itself, and through the footprints impressed in things, he followed his Beloved everywhere, out of them all making for himself a ladder through which he could climb up to lay hold of Him with a capital H, Him who is utterly desirable, writes St. Bonaventure.
Our saint was seized by an extraordinary and indescribable joy in things, and his profound and clear knowledge of creatures was transformed into praise of God, into songs of adoration and love.
Celano writes that the fields and the vineyards, the rocks and woods, and all the beauties of the field, flowing springs, blooming gardens, earth and fire, air and wind, all these he urged to love God and to willing service.
He used to call all the creatures by the name of brother and sister, and in a wonderful way unknown to others, he could discern the secrets of the heart of creatures, like someone who had already passed into the freedom of the glory of the children of God, again quoting from St. Paul.
Francis embraced all things with an unheard-of love, says Celano, speaking to them of the Lord and exhorting them to praise him.
St. Francis has this clear, limpid vision of things because the innocence of the first man in the Garden of Eden came to live in him, innocence that original sin had upended.
Through Christ, Francis reset the harmony between man and creation, because he had first reset in himself the dissonance between man and God, and the dissonance of man with himself, for that matter.
And having reset or reconstructed that harmony, he could truly know creatures and command them, and the creatures that served their maker, says St. Bonaventure, were marvelously subject to Francis' will and his command.
We read in St. Francis' biographies how the hare of Greccio and the rabbit of Trasimeno found in his arms a safe refuge, the sparrows of Aviano, the birds of Bavagna and those of the lagoon of Venice, the nightingale of the Porziuncola, the cicada, they all obeyed and competed with him in praising the Lord, the aquatic bird of Rieti, the turtle doves, the sheep of Osimo, the little lambs brought to market, the lamb of St. Veracondo, the fish in the lake of Piediluco, they all found in him a liberator and an avenger.
Brother Pheasant flew around him in a festive way, Brother Falcon at La Verna made with him a true pact of friendship, becoming Francis' intelligent alarm clock, as it were.
In his presence, the wolf of Gubbio lost his ferociousness, Brother Fire softened his ardor, and a rock on a cliff welcomed him into its lap, almost as if it were liquid wax.
You read about all these occurrences in Francis' very early biographies.
It seems then, as Thomas of Celano says, that the creatures venerate those who more than any other love their creator.
In the voice of Francis, they hear the echo of the one who one day on the lake of Gennesaret calmed a storm, who with the words, Lazarus, come forth, commands the dead, the creatures who obeyed the voice of their Lord and King also recognized the voice of his faithful herald and imitator, St. Francis.
As a 13th-century Franciscan poet, Julian of Speer, in the divine office that he wrote for St. Francis, writes, Over creatures this man held sway, yet wholly did the will obey of the God who creatures made, the delight found in everything he stored as an offering to its maker's glory paid.
Let's ask Our Lady for the grace to be able to live in harmony with creation in some way, form, or fashion as our Seraphic Father did.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.