The beauty of the beasts: all creatures great and small deserve a blessing on St. Francis' feast day.

THE FIRST TIME I WITNESSED AN ANIMAL BLESSING was in October 1996--in the courtyard of a Franciscan church near downtown San Francisco. A congenial, brown-robed friar blessed the pets with holy water, calling each dog, cat, rabbit, gerbil, or police horse by name and touching them gently with his hand. It was a happy, magical event in honor of St. Francis of Assisi.

In 2002 I was invited to the 18th annual St. Francis Day Celebration at St. John the Divine, the huge Episcopal cathedral in upper Manhattan. This two-hour joy-filled celebration, in which hundreds of worshipers held pets in their laps, concluded with what had to be one of the most spectacular animal blessings in the world.

At the very end, the great bronze cathedral doors opened and down the center aisle came a man carrying a huge eagle, followed by a camel, two llamas, a ram, a man carrying a boa constrictor, and a woman with a tropical bird, to mention just a few of the creatures. As they approached the altar, the bishop solemnly blessed them. Afterwards, on the cathedral lawn, the blessing of smaller pets took place. By day's end, I felt that I had returned to the Garden of Eden where all creatures, human and nonhuman, were coming back together as one happy family.

Last year on St. Francis' feast day (October 4), I conducted, for the first time, an animal blessing at Chatfield College, a small Catholic college in rural Ohio. It was wonderful to see the caring, reverent attitude that people displayed toward their animals. I felt a special bond with these creatures as they moved, rather amazingly, from frenzied yelping and snarling to peaceful serenity as the blessing proceeded.

Although the practice of animal blessings surely goes back to St. Francis of Assisi, who died in 1226, the popularity of this custom seems to have surged only in recent decades. I have no boyhood memory, for example, of animal blessings taking place at my Franciscan-run parish in southern Indiana in the 1940s and '50s, nor at other parishes.

In our day, however, the custom seems to be multiplying. The website www.petblessing.org, sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of Cincinnati, lists several hundred blessing sites in more than 45 states, including Alaska and Hawaii. A number of Lutheran, Episcopal, and other denominational sites are included.

St. Francis is certainly the right saint to honor as the patron of pets and animals. In 1997 Pope John Paul II named Francis the patron of ecology, noting that this saint "invited all creation--animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon--to give honor and praise to the Lord."

For more than 30 years I have wondered why St. Francis went about the Italian countryside calling all creatures by the name of "Brother" and "Sister" as he did in his famous "Canticle to Brother Sun." More and more, I have come to see that the answer is wrapped up in two great Judeo-Christian mysteries: the mystery of creation and the mystery of the Incarnation. If the same loving Creator in heaven made all creatures, then all of them--whether plant, animal, or mineral--form one family of creation.

It was rather simple for Francis: If he had the same Father in heaven as the violet and the wolf, well, then the violet and the wolf were his sister and brother.

THE INCARNATION, MOREOVER, ADDED A WHOLE NEW DIGnity and worth to all creatures everywhere. When God entered the family of creation through the birth of Christ, the whole network of creation, not just human creatures, received a new glory. That's why on Christmas day St. Francis wanted the emperor to instruct all citizens to scatter grain on the roads so that the birds and animals would have plenty to eat. The beasts in the stables, too, should have special food on this day. In Francis' mind, all creatures deserved to share in the celebration because, at the incarnation, God made the whole world his home.

Because of these two great mysteries, all creatures deserve to have their dignity recognized and blessed. And what better time for such recognition than on the feast of St. Francis?

By JACK WINTZ, O.F.M., author of the children's book St. Francis in San Francisco (Paulist, 2001) and of Friar Jack's E-spirations (www.friarjack.org).