The Canticle of the Three Young Men in the Furnace, found in Daniel 3:24-68, is one of the sources for St. Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures. This is a passage found in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but not in the Jewish and Protestant Bibles (for it is only found in Greek, and those communities only accept the books of the Old Testament written in Hebrew or Aramaic).
Like with St. Francis, who wrote his canticle after he received the stigmata, suffering led the three young men to praise God and to call upon all of creation to praise the Lord. They had been thrown into a fiery furnace as a punishment for their refusal to practice idolatry. Normally, suffering leads to discouragement and frustration, but in this case, the three young men, who were rescued from the flames, were filled with a sense of awe and wonder.
They realized that all of creation, including the flames around them and even those other things which we would tend to judge as negative, could praise God. And so, they raised a hymn of praise, much as the small children in Psalm 8 who recognize God as the Creator of all. We also see this in the Book of Revelation, where twenty-four elders (representing twelve patriarchs of the Old Testament and twelve apostles of the New Testament, thus salvation history) and the four creatures (representing the best and brightest of creation) fall down in worship and praise the Lord. Salvation history, and creation serve God by revealing God’s love for us.
The Canticle begins with a call upon everything in the heavens, then things which exist upon the earth, and finally, human beings to praise God. The hymn reminds us that although we have been given dominion over all of creation, we are not to treat it with disrespect. Creation is not to be manipulated and exploited to serve our pleasures; it is to be treated as part of our family. Together, we form a choir whose voice extends to the very bounds of the universe. Our dominion over creation is not to be its slave master, but rather to be the conductor of this symphony of praise.
Finally, the fact that this hymn was written while the young men were being punished for refusing to participate in idolatry reminds us that we should never allow the things around us to become our idols by making them the center of our lives. Rather, we should celebrate creation as bearing the marks of its Creator and lovingly and gently join in its chorus of praise to God who made all that exists a sign of God’s love.
