Franciscan contemplation opens the heart and mind to take in more of the world, its beauty and suffering. Contemplative practice dilates one’s heart, like a plant unfolding before Brother Sun’s energy. It heightens our consciousness—our awareness of relationships with God and creation—strengthening our participation in creation and the life of our Creator God.
Francis lived in love and, by loving other creatures, let them be, encouraging them to grow in their uniqueness. Bonaventure claims that Francis was moved with a sense of relatedness (piety) to all things. He discovered that his life was incomplete without relationship to even the tiniest creatures of creation. Everything in creation spoke to Francis of God. Just as he was impressed by the compassionate love of God in his encounter with the Crucified, so too he came to see that same love impressed on every level of creation.
—from the book Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth
by Ilia Delio, OSF, Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, and Pamela Wood
