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Before I get to the actual canticle written by St. Francis of Assisi, I would like to provide some background to the circumstances surrounding this most famous writing. For most of us with romantic views of the saints, we often imagine them much as the heroes in legends and fairy tales. Their lives are intriguing, full of the things that fantasies are made of. And so it is with St. Francis, especially in the way he wrote The Canticle Of The Creatures (or better known as The Canticle Of Brother Sun). I, for one, always imagined Francis frolicking in the fields outside of his beloved Assisi with birds singing, flowers in bloom, totally rapt in the love of God. "God's Little Fool" as some have affectionally called him. And this is how I imagined the scene when Francis wrote his famous Canticle. Except for being rapt in the love of God, the rest is all fantasy, for the truth of how Francis came to write the Canticle is a complete contrast to the romantic scene in my imagination. According to his biographers, Francis wrote this Canticle in the spring of 1225, just a year and a half before his death. He had received the gift of the Stigmata six months earlier and was suffering from the excruciating pain from these loving wounds as well as weakness from the loss of blood. His years of fasting and penance caused damage to his stomach and spleen. Francis suffered from excruciating headaches and was painfully blind, some say from all the years of weeping in remorse for his sins. Francis described the pain as tiny pieces of glass piercing his eyes. Francis stayed briefly at the convent of San Damiano, where St. Clare cared for her beloved spiritual father. A hut was built for him outside the convent, and there Francis lay in torment and suffering. The hut was teeming with mice who harassed him constantly, climbing onto the table where he ate and into his bed when he tried to sleep; sqeaking and scurrying over his face. Close to despair, Francis cried out to God and was immediately consoled by his beloved Father in heaven. "The next morning, as the sun rose, Francis called his companions and said, 'The Lord has deigned to assure me that I shall one day enter His Kingdom. So to show Him my gratitude, I desired to compose this new song which you are about to hear.' And the blind saint, for whom the least ray of light was a torture, sang to them what he called CLICK HERE: THE CANTICLE WITH LAKE APPLET CLICK HERE: THE CANTICLE NON-JAVA LAKE APPLET |
