XI
One of the greatest delights of the religious faith is to abandon ourselves to gratitude, to be able to thank, from an overflowing heart, the moral being to whom we feel indebted for our wealth.
Why then, since I have long lost this faith, do I still feel each day, and several times a day, the great need of singing the canticle of Francis of Assisi, the lovely canticle in which he says:
Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, and unto all Thy creatures, especially our gracious brother the sun, who gives us the day and through whom Thou showest us Thy light. He is beautiful and radiant with a great splendor. He is the symbol of Thee, Most High.
Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our sister the moon and the stars, fashioned by Thee in the sky, clear, precious, and beautiful.
Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our mother the wind, and for the air and the clouds, for the pure sky, and for all the time during which Thou givest to thy creatures life and sustenance.
Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our sister the water, who is so useful, precious and clean.
Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our brother the fire, through whom Thou illuminest the night. He is lovely and gay, courageous and strong.
Praise unto Thee, O Lord, for our mother the earth, who sustains us and nourishes us, and brings forth divers fruits and flowers of a thousand colors and the grass.
A poet has transposed these divine strophes into the harmony of French verse and sings thus:
I shall praise you, Lord, for having made so lovely and so bright
This world where you wish us to await our life.
Now, I know very well that in this world I am not awaiting life, I am living. I know very well that it is here I must live and lose no time about it. My gratitude is all the more pressing, all the more intense.
What if it does rise to an empty heaven, that infinite gratitude!
It will not be lost. And is that heaven ever empty to which we breathe out so many dreams, where there trembles so much beauty!
The sweetest of human voices has said: “Lay up for yourselves in heaven the treasures that do not perish.” Perhaps we shall be pardoned if we dare to murmur: “Lay up for yourselves, in this world, the treasures that do not perish.”
They will not perish, these treasures, O my son, and all you whom I love, they will not perish if you thirst to discover them only that you may share them with others, that you may bequeath them to a devout posterity.
They will not perish if they find their being, their supreme reason, in that region of the soul where believers have raised up the tabernacle of a God.