In 2025 we celebrate the eighth centenary of the composition of the Canticle of the Creatures. Francis of Assisi, in the spring of 1225, a few months after the experience of La Verna, wanted to spend a period of fifty days at the monastery of San Damiano, where Clare and the first Poor Clare Sisters lived. During that stay at San Damiano, after a night troubled by the pains of his illnesses but also visited by the Lord who had given him the certainty of His love and salvation, Francis composed that hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God, which we all know.
Celebrating the Centenary of the Canticle of the Creaturesas a Franciscan Family leads us to a radical change in our relationship with creation: we shift from possessing creation to caring for our common home. In fact, each one of us must respond sincerely to these questions: How do I want to live out my relationship with other creatures? As a ruler who claims the right to do what he wants with them? As a consumer of resources who sees them as an opportunity to be taken advantage of? Or as a brother who pauses before creation, who admires its beauty and safeguards its existence? We are faced with an anthropological and ecological challenge that will determine our future, because it is linked to the future of our Mother and Sister Earth. We are called to face contemporary society and reintroduce “the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world” (Laudato si’ 11).
