The Garden of God: Toward A Human Ecology

Creation, with All of Its Gifts, Aspires Above and Beyond Itself

7 creation & nature Creation, with All of Its Gifts, Aspires Above and Beyond Itself From Homily for the Holy Mass and Eucharistic Procession on the Solemnity of the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ, Saint John Lateran, June 15, 2006 On the eve of his Passion, during the Passover meal, the Lord took the bread in his hands—as we heard a short time ago in the Gospel passage—and, having blessed it, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying: “Take this, this is my body.” He then took the chalice, gave thanks, and passed it to them and they all drank from it. He said: “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, to be poured out on behalf of many” (Mk 14:22–24). The entire history of God with humanity is recapitulated in these words. The past alone is not only referred to and interpreted , but the future is anticipated—the coming of the Kingdom of God into the world. What Jesus says are not simply words. What he says is an event, the central event of the history of the world and of our personal lives. These words are inexhaustible. In this hour, I would like to meditate with you on just one aspect. Jesus, as a sign of his presence , chose bread and wine. With each one of the two signs he gives himself completely, not only in part. The Risen One is not divided. He is a person who, through signs, comes near to us and unites himself to us. Each sign however, represents in its own way a particular aspect of his mystery and through its respective manifestation, 8 creation & nature wishes to speak to us so that we learn to understand the mystery of Jesus Christ a little better. During the procession and in adoration we look at the consecrated Host, the most simple type of bread and nourishment, made only of a little flour and water. In this way, it appears as the food of the poor, those to whom the Lord made himself closest in the first place. The prayer with which the Church, during the liturgy of the Mass, consigns this bread to the Lord, qualifies it as fruit of the earth and the work of humans. It involves human labor, the daily work of those who till the soil, sow and harvest [the wheat], and, finally, prepare the bread. However, bread is not purely and simply what we produce, something made by us; it is fruit of the earth and therefore is also gift. We cannot take credit for the fact that the earth produces fruit; the Creator alone could have made it fertile. And now we too can expand a little on this prayer of the Church, saying: the bread is fruit of heaven and earth together. It implies the synergy of the forces of earth and the gifts from above, that is, of the sun and the rain. And water too, which we need to prepare the bread, cannot be produced by us. In a period in which desertification is spoken of and where we hear time and again the warning that man and beast risk dying of thirst in these waterless regions—in such a period we realize once again how great is the gift of water and of how we are unable to produce it ourselves. And so, looking closely at this little piece of white Host, this bread of the poor, appears to us as a synthesis of creation. Heaven and earth, too, like the activity and spirit of man, cooperate. 9 creation & nature The synergy of the forces that make the mystery of life and the existence of man possible on our poor planet come to meet us in all of their majestic grandeur. In this way we begin to understand why the Lord chooses this piece of bread to represent him. Creation, with all of its gifts, aspires above and beyond itself to something even greater. Over and above the synthesis of its own forces, above and beyond the synthesis also of nature and of spirit that, in some way, we detect in the piece of bread, creation is projected toward divinization , toward the holy wedding feast, toward unification with the Creator himself. And still, we have not yet explained in depth the message of this sign of bread. The Lord mentioned its deepest mystery...