Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Continuing our series on Franciscan spirituality today by looking a bit at the sacramental nature of the universe, we'll try to understand what that means.
The mystical relations of St. Francis with nature, which we've talked about before, is Canticle of Brother Sun, full as it was of a new spirituality, a sweet accent with which he addressed himself to every creature, calling them brother or sister, and their creator God. All of this was a voice too clear for its echo to be silenced; rather it was a strong appeal to penetrate the Christian significance of creation, to see creation in God and in Christ Jesus.
We find this directive note already in St. Paul, when he said to the Romans in Romans 1:20, God's infinite perfections, his eternal power, and deity have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. It's from here that Franciscan writers have taken their cue over the centuries.
St. Bonaventure, analyzing the spirit of his Seraphic Father, grasps the Pauline understanding. He compares the world to a book in which man is unable to perceive or intuit the light of divine wisdom, says Bonaventure. Dante follows this way of perceiving when, in the depths of the divine light, he sees bound by love into one single volume what in the universe seemed separate and scattered, he says in his Paradiso.
Among the creatures and God, the Franciscan doctors note relations of analogy, relations in which various grades or gradations can be distinguished. Since creatures are an effect of a creative cause, they are marked by an analogy with the Creator, meaning that they have his reflection in them, they have similarities with him in some form or fashion. Like the infinite distance that separates the divine nature from the created natures, which are limited and imperfect, as we are.
The Old Testament Book of Wisdom, Wisdom 13:5 reads, For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.
St. Bonaventure, in almost all of his works, repeats a concept which is dear to him. He says that creatures are shadows, they are echoes, they are pictures, they are what he calls vestiges, representations and spectacles proposed to us and signs divinely given so that we can see God. They are divinely given signs, says Bonaventure. Vestiges means that the marks or the footprints or the fingerprints of God are on all things and in all things. While in man, there's also the image and the likeness of God on top of that.
In his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, Bonaventure writes, It's necessary that every creature be in some way like God. It's also necessary that some creatures be expressly like God for the completion of the universe. Therefore, every creature has the character of a vestige. But some have also the character of an image, namely those that are expressly assimilated to him. This is the rational creature, i.e. man, i.e. us.
So the whole universe reflects in some small way the divine beauty. Dante again says at the opening of his Paradiso, The glory of the one who moves all things permeates the universe and glows in one part more and in another less.
First St. Augustine, especially in his work On the Trinity, and then St. Hugo of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, Blessed Raymond Lull, Dante Alighieri, Blaise Pascal, St. John Henry Newman, all of them are in this train of thought. All of them discover the sacramental character of the universe, which in its structure carries the sign and the seal of God.
The created universe, says Bonaventure, reflects, represents, and describes its Maker, the Trinity. In the universe we can read the divine attributes which preside over creation. Created things before having being in themselves, said Bonaventure, are in God as in the principle which produces them in terms of power. They're in the exemplar that expresses them in terms of wisdom, and they're in the end that preserves them in terms of will, he says. And Dante more clearly and more poetically expresses this when he writes, My Maker was divine authority, the highest wisdom, and the primal love, he says.
So Christian cosmogony finds in the secret nerves of beings, in the secret interior of things, the divine power calling forth from nothing, the heavens, the seas, the mountains, the earth, all the inhabitants, the earth, the wisdom which arranges all things in order, number, measure, from the farthest star to the smallest atom, and the goodness which supports, sustains, regulates, and governs the universals, but also the details, the particulars as well. The universe therefore is a remote, but a real expression of God. In that sense, it is sacred. It reminds us of the Creator, kind of like how our painting reminds us of the things that it represents. And in a broad sense, the universe is a sacrament of God and of Christ because it reveals God and it expresses Christ. As Pascal in his Pensées says, all things cover some mystery, all things have veils that cover God.
The sacramental character of the universe strongly felt in Franciscanism explains the love of symbols by which every being beyond its proper concrete nature, every being has a more profound elevated significance attributed to it. A mystical meaning, a meaning that reveals a mystery. This tendency, which was already in the primitive Christian art, re-flowered with new richness and spontaneity in the first Franciscan art. Lambs, doves, fish, roses, trees, flowers, fruits, they all serve the faithful, they help them to call to mind higher, more mysterious, even more real truths about life, the truths which Christ revealed and the life of grace that comes from him and that brings us back to our Creator.
So let's ask Our Lady for the grace on our end to be able to see the signs of God, the sacraments of God, the mystical meaning of nature, the truths which in creation point us to the wonder and goodness of the Creator and of the Redeemer. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.