Near the end of his life, St. Francis of Assisi could barely see the world around him.

He was seriously ill. His eyesight was failing. His body was suffering. Yet from this period of darkness came one of the most luminous works of Christian spirituality: the Canticle of the Creatures.

Also known as the Canticle of the Sun, Francis’ hymn praises God through the sun, moon, stars, wind, water, fire and earth. Eight centuries later, its message continues to shape Catholic teaching on creation and humanity’s responsibility to care for it.

“Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures,” Francis begins, before turning his attention to “Sir Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon.”

Behind those famous words is the remarkable story of a man who, even as his own physical world grew dark, discovered new reasons to praise God.

A Song Born in Suffering

St. Francis is believed to have composed the Canticle between 1224 and 1226, during the final years of his life.

It was a period marked by intense physical and spiritual suffering.

Francis had withdrawn to La Verna in Tuscany for prayer and solitude. It was there, in 1224, that he received the stigmata, the wounds associated with Christ’s Crucifixion.

His health continued to deteriorate.

Francis later stayed near San Damiano, the small church outside Assisi closely associated with his conversion and with St. Clare and her community.

By then, his eyesight had become severely impaired.

Fr. Francesco Piloni, OFM, Minister of the Province of the Friars Minor of Umbria, describes a night of particular suffering when Francis cried out to God for help.

Yet it was precisely in this darkness that his great song of praise emerged.

“The young Francis can see, but his heart is in darkness,” Fr. Piloni explained. “The Francis who is now nearing death can no longer see. Yet he composes the Canticle of the Creatures while blind, and his heart shines with an immense light.”

The contrast is striking.

As a young man, Francis could see the beauty of the world but struggled to understand what his life was for. Near death, he could barely see the physical world—and yet he perceived creation with extraordinary clarity.

One of the First Great Works of Italian Literature

The Canticle is important not only to Franciscan spirituality.

It also holds a special place in the history of Italian literature.

Written in an Umbrian vernacular, rather than the Latin normally used for learned and religious works, the Canticle is widely regarded as one of the earliest works of Italian literature by a known author.

Francis was therefore doing something remarkable.

He was praising God not in the language of scholars, but in the language of ordinary people.

His words were simple and accessible. But their theological vision was profound.

The Canticle presents creation as a family.

The sun becomes Brother Sun.

The moon is Sister Moon.

Francis praises God through wind, water, fire and “our Sister Mother Earth.”

The language reveals how Francis understood humanity’s place within creation.

He did not see the natural world simply as a collection of resources to possess or control. Creation belonged first to God.

Human beings lived within it as creatures themselves.

Brother Sun and Sister Moon

Francis’ choice to call elements of creation “brother,” “sister” and “mother” is among the Canticle’s most memorable features.

For Fr. Piloni, these words reveal an important insight.

“By drawing near to creation, to the sun, the stars, the wind, the fire, even death itself, and calling them brother, sister, and mother, Francis reveals his extraordinary insight: creation is something familiar to me.”

Francis was not worshipping nature.

Rather, creation pointed beyond itself to its Creator.

The beauty of the sun could lead him to praise God. So could the stars. Water, fire and the earth all became occasions for gratitude.

Everything was a gift.

And if creation is a gift, humanity has a responsibility toward it.

Guardians of Creation

Francis’ vision has sometimes been reduced to a sentimental love of animals and nature.

But his understanding of creation went much deeper.

It began with God.

The Book of Genesis presents creation as belonging to God while entrusting human beings with a particular responsibility within it.

For Fr. Piloni, this is central to the Franciscan approach.

Human beings are called to be guardians who not only protect creation but also cultivate it.

“Creation belongs to the Lord,” he explained, “and we are called to give it back to Him.”

The principle can be expressed simply: we should return creation better than we received it.

That idea gives the Canticle a striking relevance eight centuries after it was written.

Francis lived long before industrialization, modern environmental debates or climate change. Yet his spiritual vision poses a fundamental question for every generation:

If the world is God’s gift, how should we treat it?

How St. Francis Inspired Pope Francis

The Canticle’s influence extends far beyond the Franciscan Order.

Generations of popes have drawn from St. Francis when addressing humanity’s relationship with creation.

Few did so as explicitly as Pope Francis.

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope in 2013, he became the first pontiff to take the name Francis.

The choice was inspired by the saint of Assisi.

From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis connected care for creation with care for the human person, especially the poor and vulnerable.

At his inaugural Mass, he called on humanity to protect creation, respect God’s creatures and care for the environment in which we live.

That Franciscan influence later became especially visible in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’.

Even its title comes directly from the Canticle of the Creatures: “Praise be to you.”

The encyclical presented care for our common home not simply as an environmental concern, but as a moral and spiritual responsibility.

St. Francis also remained an important inspiration for Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, dedicated to fraternity and social friendship.

The saint’s vision connected the two ideas.

For Francis, fraternity extended outward: toward other people, toward the poor and suffering, and toward the created world itself.

Pope Leo Continues the Call to Care for Creation

That legacy has continued under Pope Leo.

During celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’ in 2025, the Pope stressed that love of God cannot be separated from the way Christians treat God’s creation.

“We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures,” Pope Leo said.

His words return to the basic insight found in the Canticle.

Christian care for creation is not separate from discipleship. It flows from it.

Pope Leo has continued to emphasize themes such as humanity’s relationship with creation and the care of water, encouraging Catholics to recognize their responsibility toward the world entrusted to them.

Eight centuries after Francis sang of Brother Sun and Sister Water, the language may sound poetic.

The responsibility behind it remains very real.

The Final Creature: Sister Death

There is one part of the Canticle that makes Francis’ vision especially remarkable.

His song does not end with the beauty of the sun, stars or earth.

It ends with death.

According to Franciscan tradition, the Canticle was first recited in its entirety by Francis and two of his earliest companions, Brothers Angelo and Leo, as the saint approached death.

Francis had added a final verse praising God through what he called “our Sister Bodily Death.”

For most people, death is the opposite of everything beautiful in creation.

Francis called it his sister.

“Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,” the verse begins.

These are not the words of someone who believed death itself was good or insignificant. Francis understood its seriousness.

But he also believed that death did not have the final word.

His praise rested on Christian hope: the conviction that those united with God need not fear death as the end of everything.

The man who had once sung of Brother Sun could therefore praise God even as the sun set on his own earthly life.

A Canticle That Still Speaks 800 Years Later

The Canticle of the Creatures has survived for eight centuries because its message is larger than an appreciation of nature.

It is a song about how to see.

Francis looked at the sun and saw a reason to praise God.

He looked at water and recognized a gift.

He looked at the earth and called it mother.

He looked at death and, through faith, called it sister.

Perhaps most remarkably, he learned to see all of this at a time when his physical eyesight was disappearing.

The young Francis had once looked at the world and pursued wealth, status and glory.

The dying Francis could no longer see clearly with his eyes.

But he had learned to see creation differently.

For him, the world was no longer something simply to possess.

It was a gift to receive, protect and ultimately return to its Creator with gratitude.

Eight hundred years later, the song born from his darkness continues to ask whether we can learn to see the world in the same way.

Adapted by Jacob Stein.