"He sprinkles snow like birds alighting" (Eccl 43:18). Whenever I read these words that rejoice in the Glory of God to be found in his Creation, I am reminded of a winter's evening in early January.
Along with a group of Tanzanian students, I emerged from a university building into a snowfall. Having never seen snow before, they were ecstatic. They began to act like small children. Laughing and rejoicing, they caught snowflakes in their hands, marvelling at the lightness and delicacy of each snowflake and how quickly it melted away. They turned their faces to the sky so that the flakes could touch their faces and melt. Finally, inevitably, a snowball fight commenced. Their joy reminded me of the grandeur of God and the wonder of Creation and brought home the rhythm of the seasons and the way Nature renews itself in accordance with God's creative genius.
Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si emphasises that creative genius. The first social encyclical in the Catholic Church to address care for the environment and environmental justice in a direct and specific way, it complements Catholic Social Teaching that our responsibility as good stewards of creation is to care for our world and not ‘steal’ resources from future generations. Francis calls us to an ecological conversion, and invites us to praise God for the gifts of creation.
He encourages us to contemplate the beauty, complexity and interconnectivity of Creation; to see ourselves as in it and of it. Drawing on his Jesuit/ Ignatian spirituality background and the spirituality of St. Francis, the Pope invites us to open our eyes and hearts to discover in Creation the loving presence and self-gift of God. He is convinced, as was Ignatius, that we will then find our hearts stirred with grateful love.
He writes, "The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person's face. The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things. Saint Bonaventure teaches us that contemplation deepens the more we feel the working of God's grace within our hearts and the better we learn to encounter God in creatures outside ourselves "(223)...
This passage resonates well with Ignatian spirituality: that God is at work everywhere - in work, relationships, culture, the arts, creation itself. God's presence is in the everyday activities of ordinary life. God is an active God, always at work, inviting us to an ever-deeper relationship. As Ignatius said, "All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully."
Pope Francis says the problem is of concern to all, but Christianity has something special to offer in its understanding that nature is a tremendous gift of a personal Creator, to be conserved and developed for the purposes God has ordained. He describes how everything fits together; and explains what this ought to mean for our attitudes, goals and actions:
"We have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
The changing of the seasons prompted me to reflect on God who is always present in the world, continuously supporting what He has created, working to sustain what He has created in order that it continue. Yet somehow, He transcends our understanding of the natural world, as the Prologue to John's Gospel so beautifully illustrates. The Jesuit poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins expressed it:
"He Fathers-forth whose beauty is past change. Praise Him!"