A simple map for living is why St. Francis is still listened to and followed today in our fractious and divided world. What he teaches, if lived out, brings joy, which is the result of union with God who lives with us and within all of creation. God lives in creation but is also apart from creation as its Creator who existed before the existence of the universe. St. Francis’s teachings, then, become both a theology and a way of living. They are a theology that emerges from the concrete, practical choices he made in the effort to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who is the teacher and the embodiment of what it means to live and love in God.
— from the book Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis
