Francis of Assisi was at home in the cosmos. We know this because at the end of his life he composed the Canticle of the Creatures, in which he sang of brotherhood and sisterhood in the family of creation: Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Sister Mother Earth. The cosmos became home to Francis because this is where he discovered love, the overflowing goodness of God.
Francis taught the brothers to accept the gifts of God’s goodness in creation and to respond with grateful hearts through bonds of love, care, concern, and companionship. Francis valued the home of the earth not as his home alone but first and foremost as God’s home.
—from the book Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth
by Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, Ilia Delio, OSF, and Pamela Wood
