Nazareth
Adoration 02/2000
12 February 2000
"GOD
HAS MADE NOTHING INCOMPLETE" |
|
THE
GLORY OF THE TRINITY IN CREATION 2. We can see in the light of Revelation how the creative act is appropriated in the first place to the "Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (Jas 1: 17). He shines resplendently over the whole horizon, as the Psalmist sings: "O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth! You have exalted your majesty above the heavens" (Ps 8: 2). God "has made the world firm, not to be moved" (Ps 96: 10), and as he faces nothingness, symbolized by the chaotic waters which lift up their voice, the Creator arises, giving firmness and safety: "The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring. Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty" (Ps 93: 3-4). 3. In Sacred Scripture creation is also often linked to the divine Word which breaks in and acts: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.... He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth.... He sends forth his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly" (Ps 33: 6, 9; 147: 15). In the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament it is divine Wisdom personified that brings forth the universe, carrying out the plan God has in mind (cf. Prv 8: 22-31). It has been said that in God's Word and Wisdom John and Paul saw the foretelling of the action of Christ "from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (1 Cor 8: 6), because it is "through [Christ] also [that God] created the world" (Heb 1: 2). 4.
At other times Scripture stresses the role of God's
Spirit in the act of creation: "When you send forth
your Spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of
the earth" (Ps 104: 30). The same Spirit is
symbolically described as the breath of God's mouth. He
gives life and consciousness to man (cf. Gn 2: 7),
and brings him back to life in the resurrection, as the
prophet Ezekiel announces in an evocative passage where
the Spirit is at work breathing life into dry bones (cf.
37: 1-14). This same breath subdues the waters of the sea
at Israel's exodus from Egypt (cf. Ex 15: 8, 10).
Again the Spirit regenerates the human creature, as Jesus
will say in his night-time conversation with Nicodemus:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of
water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which
is born of the Spirit is spirit" (Jn 3: 5-6).
Nature
thus becomes a gospel which speaks to us of God: "from
the greatness and beauty of created things comes a
corresponding perception of their Creator" (Wis
13: 5). Paul teaches us that "ever since the
creation of the world his [God's] invisible nature,
namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly
perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom
1: 20). But this capacity for contemplation and
knowledge, this discovery of a transcendent presence in
created things must lead us also to rediscover our
kinship with the earth, to which we have been linked
since our own creation (cf. Gn 2: 7). This is
precisely the goal which the Old Testament wished for the
Hebrew Jubilee, when the land was at rest and man ate
what the fields spontaneously gave him (cf. Lv 25: 11-12).
If nature is not violated and degraded, it once again
becomes man's sister. |
"Undeterred
by elephants: |