St. Katherine Drexel Regional Fraternity
Regional Spiritual Assistant
St. Francis of Assisi Friary
1901 Prior Road
Wilmington, Delaware 19809
tel: (302) 798-1454 fax: (302) 798-3360 website: skdsfo email: pppgusa@gmail.com
August 2026
Dear Sisters and Brothers in St. Francis,
The Lord give you His peace
Through the gift of His presence in the beauty of creation
And in the wonderful image and likeness
Of our Creator in each one of us!
The Canticle of the Creatures stands as one of the most enlightening gifts that Saint Francis of Assisi offered to the Church and to the world. It is not merely a poem celebrating the beauty of creation. It is the song of a man whose heart had been transformed by grace, purified through suffering, and enlarged by forgiveness. It was composed near the end of Francis’ earthly life when blindness, illness, misunderstanding, and physical weakness had become his daily companions. Humanly speaking, he had every reason to lament. Yet instead he praised. His song emerged not from comfort but from communion, not from success but from surrender. It teaches every Franciscan that genuine praise does not ignore suffering but embraces it through trust in the goodness of God.
Francis learned to see creation not as an object to possess but as a family to receive. Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth, and finally Sister Bodily Death were not poetic devices created for literary beauty alone. They were expressions of a profound spiritual vision. Francis no longer stood above creation as its master. He stood within creation as a brother. Everything that existed pointed beyond itself to the Creator, and everything reflected something of God’s generosity. To call the sun “Brother” and the earth “Mother” was not sentimentality. It was an acknowledgment that all creatures have their origin in the same loving Father.
Yet there is a remarkable movement within the Canticle that deserves particular attention. After praising the visible elements of creation, Francis unexpectedly turns toward human relationships. He blesses those who forgive. Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love and bear infirmity and tribulation. This verse is not an interruption of the Canticle. It is its climax. The harmony of creation reaches its fullest expression when human beings are reconciled with one another. The beauty of the sun and the stars finds its fulfillment in the beauty of mercy. Francis understood that a fractured human heart cannot fully join the song of creation until it has learned forgiveness.
Forgiveness is therefore not simply one Christian virtue among many. It is the restoration of creation’s original harmony. Sin introduced division into the world. Humanity became separated from God, from one another, from creation, and even from itself. Every refusal to forgive deepens these fractures. Every act of mercy becomes a participation in God’s work of recreating the world. The Canticle invites us to hear that work taking place around us continually. Every sunrise proclaims the faithfulness of God. Every stream speaks of His generosity. Every gentle breeze whispers His tenderness. But perhaps the clearest proclamation of God’s presence is found whenever one wounded heart forgives another.
Francis did not write these words from theory. His entire life had become an apprenticeship in forgiveness. Long before he embraced lepers, rebuilt churches, or gathered companions around him, he had known the wounds of family conflict. His relationship with his father, Pietro Bernardone, remains one of the defining stories of his conversion. Pietro was a successful cloth merchant, ambitious for his son and eager that Francis should inherit both his business and his social standing. Francis, however, found himself increasingly captivated by another inheritance. The Gospel awakened within him desires that no earthly wealth could satisfy.
The conflict between father and son became public and painful. Pietro believed Francis had betrayed his family, squandered property, and dishonored the expectations placed upon him. Francis had sold cloth and given the proceeds to repair the Church of San Damiano. Pietro demanded restitution and sought legal judgment against his son. Before the bishop of Assisi, Francis did something extraordinary. He returned not only the money but even the clothes he wore. Standing naked before those assembled, he declared that from that moment he could say only, Our Father who art in heaven, for he no longer belonged to Pietro Bernardone but entirely to God.
This dramatic gesture has often been remembered as the moment of Francis’ radical poverty. Indeed, it was. Yet it must also be understood as an act of freedom from bitterness. Francis did not reject his father because he hated him. He surrendered everything because he wished to belong wholly to Christ. There is a profound difference between renunciation born of anger and renunciation born of love. Francis did not spend the remainder of his life condemning Pietro. He did not define himself by his father’s rejection. He did not carry resentment as a hidden possession after relinquishing every visible possession.
The temptation would have been understandable. Few wounds cut more deeply than those inflicted within families. The longing for parental approval remains one of the strongest desires of the human heart. To be misunderstood by one’s own father can become a lifelong burden. Yet Francis refused to allow that wound to become the center of his identity. His identity rested instead in being the beloved son of the heavenly Father. Because he discovered this deeper sonship, he became capable of forgiving the earthly father who had failed to understand him.
Forgiveness does not erase memory. Francis undoubtedly remembered every painful conversation, every accusation, every misunderstanding. Forgiveness transforms memory by removing the poison that would otherwise continue to flow from it. The past remains, but it no longer dictates the future. The wound remains visible, yet it becomes a place where grace is revealed rather than resentment.
The traditions surrounding the final years of Pietro Bernardone suggest that reconciliation did eventually occur. Whether every historical detail can be verified is less important than recognizing the unmistakable direction of Francis’ heart. Nothing in his life suggests lingering hostility. Everything points toward mercy. The man who embraced lepers, reconciled feuding civic leaders, and blessed those who forgave for love of God could hardly have excluded his own father from that mercy. Francis’ life itself became the commentary on the verse he later inserted into the Canticle.
This should speak powerfully to every Franciscan today. It is possible to profess poverty while remaining rich in resentments. It is possible to embrace simplicity while carrying complicated grudges. One may wear the habit, recite the Divine Office, serve the poor, and yet preserve old injuries within the heart. Francis would recognize such contradictions immediately. True poverty includes surrendering the illusion that we possess the right to nurse hatred. Forgiveness becomes one more form of evangelical poverty because it relinquishes our claim to revenge and entrusts justice to God.
The Canticle reminds us that creation itself never ceases giving. The sun does not withhold its light because humanity has sinned. The rain does not refuse the fields because people have become selfish. Water continues to serve. Fire continues to warm. Earth continues to nourish. All creation reflects the lavish generosity of God. Human forgiveness participates in that same divine generosity. We forgive not because others deserve it but because God continues pouring His goodness upon those who have not deserved it, including ourselves.
This does not make forgiveness easy. Francis never suggested that mercy ignores suffering. The verse about forgiveness is joined immediately to bearing infirmity and tribulation. The two belong together. Only those who have suffered know the true cost of forgiving. Cheap forgiveness denies pain. Christian forgiveness acknowledges pain fully while refusing to let pain have the final word. It is not passive resignation. It is active participation in the Cross of Christ.
Francis understood that the Crucified Lord remained the measure of every act of forgiveness. The one who prayed before the crucifix at San Damiano spent his life contemplating the God who forgave while being rejected. Christ did not wait until humanity became worthy before extending mercy. He loved first. He forgave first. Francis learned that every disciple must enter the same pattern. To forgive is to imitate the crucified Christ, whose love proved stronger than violence, betrayal, and death itself.
There is another dimension of forgiveness that Francis quietly teaches. Forgiveness also restores our ability to praise. Hearts consumed by resentment cannot truly sing. They may recite prayers, but their praise remains restrained by the weight of unresolved anger. The Canticle emerged from a heart that had become spacious enough to include every creature because it excluded bitterness. Praise and forgiveness belong together because both arise from gratitude. The forgiven person becomes forgiving. The forgiving person becomes joyful. The joyful person becomes capable of praising God in every circumstance.
Our contemporary world often encourages another path. We are taught to preserve grievances as badges of identity. Injuries become defining narratives. Social divisions deepen because forgiveness appears weak or unrealistic. Francis offers a radically different witness. Strength is revealed not through domination but through mercy. Freedom is found not in winning every conflict but in surrendering hatred. Peace begins not with changing others but with allowing Christ to heal our own hearts.
Franciscan fraternity depends upon this truth. No community can survive without forgiveness. Differences in personality, misunderstandings, failures, disappointments, and human weakness inevitably arise wherever people live together. The question is not whether conflicts will occur but whether mercy will be stronger than conflict. Francis knew this from experience. Even among his beloved brothers there were tensions and disagreements. Yet he continually recalled them to humility, mutual service, and reconciliation. The fraternity existed not because everyone was perfect but because everyone depended upon the mercy of God.
The same applies to the wider human family. When Francis crossed battle lines to meet the Sultan, he demonstrated that dialogue begins with seeing another person first as a fellow creature loved by God. Forgiveness creates the possibility of encounters that fear would otherwise prevent. It breaks the endless cycle in which injury produces retaliation and retaliation produces deeper injury. Mercy interrupts history’s habit of repeating violence.
As Franciscans contemplate the Canticle today, we may ask ourselves whether our praise extends as far as Francis’ praise. It is easy to bless God for beautiful sunsets. It is more difficult to bless Him through those who forgive. Yet Francis deliberately included them because he knew that reconciled humanity is among God’s most beautiful creations. Every act of forgiveness becomes another verse in the ongoing canticle of creation. Every restored relationship adds another harmony to the song of the universe.
Francis’ forgiveness of Pietro Bernardone becomes especially significant because it reveals that holiness begins close to home. It is easier to forgive humanity in the abstract than particular people whose words have wounded us deeply. The father who misunderstood him represented not merely one difficult relationship but the deepest personal trial of Francis’ early life. By forgiving there, Francis learned to forgive everywhere. The grace received in one relationship expanded until it embraced all creation.
The Canticle concludes by praising those who endure in peace and those whom Sister Death finds living in God’s grace. There is profound wisdom here. Death cannot frighten those who have already surrendered resentment. They have died daily to pride, vengeance, and possessiveness. They have learned that nothing truly belongs to them except the love they have received from God and shared with others. Such people can welcome Sister Death because they have already entered the freedom of the Kingdom.
Francis leaves us not simply with beautiful words but with a demanding invitation. He asks us to look upon creation with reverence, upon suffering with trust, upon enemies with mercy, and upon God with unending praise. He reminds us that forgiveness is not separate from contemplation but one of its highest expressions. The contemplative heart sees the world as God sees it, and God always sees beyond sin toward redemption. To forgive is therefore to participate in the very vision of God.
May we learn from Francis that every creature points us toward the Creator, every wound can become a place of grace, every relationship can be touched by mercy, and every act of forgiveness restores something of the original harmony for which creation longs. May we discover that the Canticle is not only a hymn to the beauty of the world but also a summons to become instruments of reconciliation within it. Then our lives, like the life of the Poor Man of Assisi, will become living songs in which Brother Sun shines more brightly because hatred has been relinquished, Sister Water flows more clearly because bitterness has been washed away, and every human heart becomes capable of joining the eternal praise of the Father through the Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit.
What a wonderful legacy we have been left in the charism of the Poverello of Assisi! If only we would realize the power that what we believe has in transforming each person! Charism is a “gift” that is freely given by God to envelop us with His love and encourage us to let go and let God lift us above and beyond the mundane and enter an experience that only grace can offer.
Peace and Blessings
Fr. Francis A. Sariego, O.F.M. Cap.
Regional Spiritual Assistant
NB-There is no reliable source to date that speaks of a formal forgiveness and acceptance of forgiveness between Francis and Pietro. Francis’ actions speak of a forgiveness granted by his interaction with all creation, people included, thus, even to his father who in the sources seems never to have formally asked or accepted forgiveness of his son.
