Francis and the Choir of All Things

In the autumn of 1225, nearly blind and wracked with pain, Francis of Assisi lay in a small hut beside the church of San Damiano. His eyes, burned by years of desert sun and weeping prayer, could no longer see the Umbrian hills he loved. Yet it was there, in that dark suffering, that he composed what many consider the first great poem in the Italian language — the Canticle of Brother Sun.

"Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Sun," he dictated, "through Sister Moon and the Stars, through Brother Wind and Sister Water." Francis named them one by one, as if calling roll in a great congregation — fire, earth, flowers, fruit — summoning each element to take its place in the chorus.

What startles us is not that he wrote a hymn to creation. It is that he wrote it while he could not see creation. Francis heard the choir singing even when darkness surrounded him. He understood what the psalmist knew: praise is not a response to comfort. It is the fundamental posture of everything that exists before the One who made it.

Psalm 148 issues the same roll call — sun and moon, sea creatures and cedar trees, kings and children. The entire cosmos is a cathedral, and every created thing already knows the hymn. The only question is whether we will join in.