"Praise to you, my Lord, for our Sister Mother Earth. Praise to you, my Lord, with all your creatures." St. Francis of Assisi

Francis was led by his original and radically new way of living the body-spirit relation to set up a fraternal dialogue with all creatures in the universe, both living and nonliving. The Canticle of Brother Sun, which sums up the Franciscan vision in poetic and minstrellike fashion, testifies most beautifully and eloquently to this fact.

This understanding of the universe led Francis as a "new Adam" to exult ecstatically before the spectacle of nature and to develop a profound love for the inanimate universe. Of course he was aware of the moral ambiguity inherent in earthly realities, including the human body, where Francis calls the body "enemy".

Francis recovered for Christian spirituality those wonderful pages of Genesis which depict the creation of the world as good and which had been thrust aside by some earlier spiritual movements.

However, Francis recovered for Christian spirituality those wonderful pages of Genesis which depict the creation of the world as good and which had been thrust aside by some earlier spiritual movements. Since God, "the Good," "all Good," "the highest Good," was the very center of his spirit, he in turn lived always in love's orbit. Thanks to the liberating effect of poverty, he was reminded unceasingly of the fundamental Gospel principle of salvation: "Live in the world, but do not be of the world!"

Without underestimating the positive influence of several factors then at work in various parts of Europe (such as Gothic culture with its increased emphasis on realism) we must insist that this renewed awareness of the value of earthly realities is due in large part to the Franciscan vision. That vision has solid biblical and theological sources. Creatures are "brothers" and "sisters" for three fundamental reasons: (1) they share with us a common origin and therefore the same Father; (2) they share with us the gift of existence and the same destiny; and (3) all things are symbols and bearers of Christ, the firstborn brother of every creature.

Francis' outlook is diametrically opposed to the idea of humanity's absolute dominion over the physical world and to the thoughtless exploitation of creatures.

Even the humblest creatures bespoke to Francis the presence of Christ, and the whole physical world was to him a sort of gigantic natural monstrance of the incarnate Word of God. In Sun, Flower, Vine, Light, Lamb, Stone— in all creatures, Francis saw a Christian testimony to the presence of the Most High. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the harmony Francis enjoyed with all earthly realities was his submissiveness to them. Knowing that God can express his will through any of his works, the Little Poor Man scanned creation attentively, listened to its mysterious voices, and listened to the mute language of things, growing all the while in vital spiritual enthusiasm. This, surely, is the highest level of liberation that creatures ever enjoyed at the hands of a Christian mystic. Francis treated objects "as beings endowed with reason" and spoke to them "as if he were speaking to human beings".

Francis's outlook is diametrically opposed to the idea of humanity's absolute dominion over the physical world and to the thoughtless exploitation of creatures. For the Franciscan no creature can be reduced to the status of a mere object to be used and consumed by human beings.

Confirmation of this is easily found in Franciscan art, such as the icon depicting the Poverello's "sermon to the birds," that striking fraternal communion of the Saint of Assisi with the world of animate and inanimate creatures.