"At the tail end of winter, fuzzy nubs start to appear along the branches of pussy willows. These soft silver tufts—as well as the plant itself—are named for their resemblance to tiny cats’ paws, and they feel so much like fur that young children often wonder if they are animals instead of plants. What are those little nubs? Are they seeds? Fruits? And why are they fuzzy?
"They're actually flowers just before they fully bloom. The soft coating of hairs acts as insulation to protect these early bloomers from cold temperatures. The species most commonly called pussy willow in the Northeast, Salix discolor, is a small, shrubby species of willow that can be found dotting wetlands and moist woods throughout much of North America. Most other willows make similar flowers, and since they’re among the very first to bloom, they’re especially delightful—they signal the last throes of winter and the brink of spring."
Don't you love learning facts like that about a facet of Nature? Don't you feel sometimes that you could never, even in a lifetime, explore all the wonders of Nature around you? There are so many beautiful, intriguing, trees, flowers, vegetables and fruits, birds, fish, animals, and insects? How often do we gasp in awe as we stand on a mountaintop? How often do breathe a prayer of gratitude to God as we gaze at an especially lovely, vibrant sunset, or breathe in the luxuriant scent of a Spring lilac or Summer rose, or sigh in comfort as we stroke our warm, beloved pet? How often do we get excited as we experiment with a new spice in the entree we're creating?
On the other hand, isn't it more realistic to say that, most often, we take Nature for granted? Barely experience it except as a backdrop to our Real Life? Don't we really think of ourselves as separate from those "lower life forms"? Superior? Science has proven to us that all of life on this planet is interconnected and interdependent, that human beings need the rest of Nature to survive and thrive. But don't we still live under the mistaken assumption that Nature is there for WE HUMAN BEINGS, to do with as best serves US?
How often do we think of Nature, or Creation, as being Sacred, as being God's Home, a Home that God shares with every creature on earth as a magnificent Gift? How often do we realize that every wonderful facet of Nature gives us the gift of the Voice, the Beauty, the Goodness, the Power and Majesty, the Touch, the Scent of God? But it's true! Every creature of Earth carries the Divine DNA - who else's DNA would they carry? Everything created comes from the same Divine Source: God.
This is why Nature/Creation is considered to be the First Bible, the first tangible way in which God has revealed God's Self to us, to further and deepen our understanding of Who God is. Fr. Richard Rohr says "Creation is the first Bible, ... and it existed for 13.7 billion years before the second Bible was written. Natural things like animals, plants, rocks, and clouds give glory to God just by being themselves, just what God created them to be. It is only we humans who have been given the free will to choose not to be what God created us to be."
St. Francis understood this. In his encyclical "Laudato Si,'" Pope Francis, who took the name of the Saint, says
"What is more, Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. “Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker” (Wisdom 13:5); indeed, “his eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:20)."
If this is true, if Nature is sacred, carries God's DNA, and is God's Bible, can we understand that when we misuse, pollute, and destroy any facet of Nature, this is sinful?
The next great revelation of God to us comes through the Incarnation of God's Son. In the Incarnation, God comes near in a new and different way to all that God has created, and demonstrates once again that all is sacred. In the Incarnation, Jesus, the Divine Word through Whom the world was made, humbled himself and became human flesh, became fragile, vulnerable, perishable. In taking on human flesh, Jesus became physically connected to all human beings and also to the whole of creation, just as we are.
Science has taught us in the last few decades that human beings are part of an interconnected whole. We know today that the human species is "an intrinsic part of the evolutionary network of life on planet Earth, which in turn is a part of the solar system, which itself formed out of the dust and gas of ancient exploding stars. The landscape of our imagination expands when we realize that human connection to nature is so deep that we can no longer completely define human identity without including the great sweep of cosmic development and our shared biological ancestry with all organisms in the community of life." (Sr. Elizabeth Johnson in "Creation and the Cross.")
Think of how radically connected to all of nature Jesus, true human being, was and is:
"As a creature of earth, Jesus was a complex living unit of minerals and fluids, an item in the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles. The atoms comprising his body were once part of other creatures. The genetic structure of the cells in his body were kin to the flowers, fish, frogs, finches, foxes, the whole community of life that descended from common ancestors in the ancient seas. And by the nature of living things, he was going to die." (Johnson)
St. Bonaventure expressed this truth so beautifully. St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) taught that “Christ, as a human being, shares with all creatures; indeed he possesses being with rocks, lives among the plants, senses with animals, and understands with angels.”
In the mystery of the cross, once again God reveals God's interconnectedness with, first of all, human beings:
"The cross is a mysterious and profound sign that God enters into the darkest trials of human suffering, death, and near-despair. In solidarity with the human race, Jesus crucified and risen abides in intimate contact with all people who walk through the valley of the shadow of death. His presence in the Spirit can comfort, strengthen, and bring hope to everyone in their suffering and dying. So Christians have long believed." (Johnson)
But, "is the suffering solidarity of God in Christ limited to human beings? Or does it extend to the whole community of life of which human beings are a part? Deep Incarnation would seem to imply that God-in-Christ is with all flesh that suffers and dies, not just human beings....Deep Incarnation seems to say that God in Christ is with every field mouse caught and eaten by a hawk....
"Pain and death are woven into the very fabric of life's evolutionary history on earth. As some scholars would have it, nature is cruciform.
"Jesus' anguished death places him among this company of creatures of the flesh. Such a location allows divine solidarity to reach to all who are made of flesh and are perishing, not disdaining them in their distress....In their suffering and dying, they are never left alone.
"During his ministry Jesus taught that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God's knowing and caring. The cross now seems to bring vital divine presence even closer to every dead bird...The Creator of all flesh is silently present with creatures in their pain and dying. They remain connected to the God of Life despite what is happening; in fact, in the depths of what is happening." (Johnson)
But, if Christ dying on the cross is connected to all creation, what does that say about all creation being connected to the Resurrection?
"The risen Jesus Christ pledges a future for all the dead, not only the dead of the human species but of all species. In Jesus crucified and risen, God who graciously gives life to the dead and brings into being the things that do not exist will redeem the whole cosmos. As (St.) Ambrose of Milan in the fourth century preached, 'In Christ's resurrection the earth itself arose.'"(Johnson)
Johnson says that Pope Francis writes beautifully of this in "Laudato Si'":
"In the days of his flesh, 'the gaze of Jesus' looked on the natural world with an attention full of fondness and wonder. Now risen from the dead, Christ, who took unto himself this material world, is intimately present to each creature, 'surrounding it with his affection,' illuminating it and directing it towards fullness in God. Indeed, 'the very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired' are now imbued with his radiant presence. (LS 96 - 100.)
"Speaking oracles of promise like the prophets of old, Francis proposes a wonderful vision of where this is all going. 'At the end we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God.' Rather than enjoying this by ourselves, 'eternal life will be a shared experience of awe in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place. All creation 'will share with us in unending plenitude.' (243). The fullness of God will be our common home, 'our' referring here to humans and all species together, just as now in time our common home is the earth." (Johnson)
For a long time, we human beings have mis-read the Creation Story and the Christ Story. We have automatically figured that because we are the ones who can think for ourselves, act for ourselves, that our lives are separate from and superior to the rest of creation. We have chosen to believe the lie that our species is free to dominate, subjugate, and misuse every other species and life form without there being fatal and destructive consequences for all life. We have chosen to act as if our wants and desires are paramount and holy because we are "the chosen species." We think that because the Son of God came as a human being, that the significance of his life, death, and resurrection are for the human species only.
Because of this misguided notion of the "pre-eminence of human beings" we have lost track of the meaning of that great hymn in Colossians chapter one which speaks of Christ in these cosmic terms: "In him everything in heaven and on earth was created...all were created through him, and for him.....It pleased God to make absolute fullness reside in him and, by means of him, to reconcile everything in his person, both on earth and in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross."
If everyone and everything was created through Christ and for his delight, and if, through the blood of his cross, everyone and everything is reconciled and brought to fullness, then all creation is equally important to God. All is sacred; all is holy; all has infinite dignity. Science, teaching us of the physical interconnectedness and interdependence of all life, reinforces and illuminates this religious truth. Human beings are not superior, born to rule the earth. In fact, it is an illusion to think that we live separate from the rest of life on this planet. All life needs each other. The earth and all life are a gift to all. What does God want we who can think for ourselves, choose for ourselves, and act for ourselves, to give back to God and the rest of life? Because life isn't so much about what you're given, - or take for granted. It's about what YOU give.
Father Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, a theologian who has studied and written extensively about Laudato Si′, urges us to heed the warnings of both science and our conscience:
"Today, we could, and probably we should, understand this house as our common planetary home. It is this common home which is being despoiled and desecrated today. Significantly, our common home is also God’s own house, permeated by the Spirit of God from the dawn of creation, where the Son of God pitched his tent in the supreme event of the incarnation. It is in this common home that God co-dwells with humanity and of which we have been entrusted with stewardship, as we read in the book of Genesis [2:15]. The contemporary ecological crisis, in fact, lays bare precisely our incapacity to perceive the physical world as impregnated with divine presence. We have swapped the lofty vision of the physical world as God’s own abode, sanctified by the incarnation of the Son of God, with the one-dimensional mechanistic outlook of modernity. Accordingly, the physical world gets reduced to a mere storehouse of resources for human consumption, just real estate for market speculation. . . . Through pollution of the planet’s land, air, and waters, we have degraded our common home that is also God’s own home. We have turned this sacred abode into a marketplace.
"In a situation of planetary emergency like the collapse of our planetary abode, we need to be aflame once again with the zeal for our common home."
(Adapted from Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, The Ten Green Commandments of Laudato Si′ (Liturgical Press: 2019), 4, 211–212.)
Fr. Richard Rohr laments the rampant acts of human destruction of the planet that we can see all around us. But he also reminds us that human beings are capable of love, and sometimes that love manifests itself in what we humans choose NOT to do when we show restraint:
"Over these past several months I have witnessed many examples of this restraint, which (environmentalist and author) Bill McKibben calls love. While the lives of our elders, our vulnerable, and essential workers are at stake during the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of millions of us across the globe have been restraining ourselves at home, choosing not to do many things for many weeks in order to protect those we love (and those others love as well). Surely the earth is breathing a sigh of relief for our reduction in pollution and fossil fuel use. This “Great Pause,” as some are calling it, gives me hope that we will soon find it within ourselves to protect our shared home, not only for our own sake, but for our neighbors across the globe, and future generations."
Can we take the time now, during the Great Pause, to pause and REALLY look around us at the wonder of our planet which is God's First Bible, and God's Home and our Home? Can we allow ourselves to think and feel, deep down in our bones, that we are not separate from the trees, the grass, the air, the water, the insects, the animals, the fish, the birds of the air, but that we live in a fundamental physical AND spiritual connection, a true union, needing one another to survive?
Can we humbly recognize and admit Jesus the Christ did not become a human being in the Incarnation only to become one with us humans, but instead to become one with all species? That his death did not only free him to be one with human beings in their suffering and death, but to become one with all forms of life as they suffer and die? That through his resurrection, Jesus the Christ did not only bring human beings to the fullness of eternal life but brings all creation to the fullness of eternal life?
Once we recognize and admit, deep down in our bones, that ALL life is sacred, ALL life has dignity, ALL Life has Divine DNA, ALL Life is beloved of God, perhaps, God willing, All Life, and not just some life, will become a sacred responsibility for us to preserve, protect, prioritize, and truly love.