Nature lessons

This morning, prompted by the excellent resource of Aleteia’s daily prayer, I meditated on a short passage from the Book of Job (12:7-10):

But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you;  ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.  Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?  In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

The phrase that remained with me was verse 10:

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.

Earlier in September I reflected on the work of Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and his remarkable piece of work entitled The Mass on the World.  I commented on his ConsistentEucharistic Thread in a number of posts in early September.  The Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, in Francis of Assisi: A Model for Human Liberation (Orbis, 2006), draws on Thomas of Celano’s Second Life to show how St Francis recognised creation as kin.

We are often inclined to grasp, use, dominate and discard the materials of Earth, yet Scripture and Francis invite us to see creatures as God’s work, held in his hand. We share genetic kinship with other creatures, though human beings stand above them in dignity as made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-28; LaudatoSi’ #90).

The theologian Sr Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, in Ask the Beasts (Bloomsbury, 2014), whose title comes from Job 12:7, uses the term ‘deep incarnation’, a phrase coined in 2001 by the Danish Lutheran Niels Henrik Gregersen. Fr Richard Rohr has drawn on her work in one of his recent daily mediations, Creation as kin, She writes:

The flesh that the Word of God became as a particular human being is part of the tree of evolving life on earth, which in turn is part of the vast body of the cosmos….

In John 1:14 (‘the Word became flesh’), God became one of us and, at the same time, in solidarity with the whole created order.  He assumed our nature (Catechismof the Catholic Church 464-469). In John 6:51-58, that same flesh given in the Eucharist unites us to Christ and to one another (CCC #1396). Pope Francis sees the Eucharist as ‘the living centre of the universe’ (Laudato Si’ #236).

If every living thing is held in God’s hand along with the breath of every human being, as Job says, how much more should we value unborn human life? Jesus says we are ‘of more value than many sparrows’ (Mt 10:29-31).  Concern for creation cannot be reconciled with justifying abortion (see also CCC#2270-2274).  In Laudato Si’ #120, the late Pope Francis reminds us that:

Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.

 

Gardening in God's valley

It has been a strange summer, preceded by a strange winter. Some of my vegetables did not turn out well due to heat stress and the challenges of keeping the garden watered from our well. As weather patterns become more unpredictable and we experience extended periods of drought interspersed with heavy downpours, the topic of care for creation comes increasingly to the fore.

In 1989, Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I of Constantinople established 1 September as a Day of Prayer for Creation, marking an important milestone in Christian awareness of the environment and our responsibilities towards it. Following the publication of his encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis instituted the annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, also celebrated on 1 September. More than ever, we are aware of our call to care for the earth, receiving it as God's gift and stewarding it wisely rather than treating it merely as a source of extraction.

In the name of all creation

 

All of creation is suffering serious harm because of human greed and disordered behaviour, greatly aggravated by wars, repression, and the misuse of the gifts God has entrusted to us (refer to Laudato Si). Creation is a gift, and we are part of it. If creation “groans” as Saint Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans (8:22), then we, too, “groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23). Our time on earth is limited, and the older we grow the closer we come to that moment when creation itself “will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (8:21).

The late Pope Francis captures the intimate bond between creation and the Eucharist in Laudato Si: