Ave Maria!
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost AD 2020
“Creation groans and travails ... we groan within ourselves, waiting for the
adoption as sons of God,
and the redemption of our body in Christ Jesus, our
Lord.”
Ordinary of
the Mass
Mass Text
- Latin
Mass Text -
English
Every Sunday morning, right around sunrise, the Church, in
Her Divine Office, recites a canticle from the Old Testament book of the Prophet
Daniel, known as the “Canticle of the Three Young Men in the Fiery Furnace.”
It is set in Babylon (modern day Iraq) where the Jews had been taken in
captivity, almost six hundred years before Christ. Specifically, it is
about three young men who refused to adore a golden idol which the Babylonian
king had erected, and who where thrown into a burning furnace, but were
miraculously preserved from the flames through the power of God. The
canticle is a hymn of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the fiery death
intended for them by the king’s men. It starts out by blessing God,
“the God of our fathers, praiseworthy and exalted above all ... bless His holy
and glorious name ... blessed is He in the temple of His glory ... on the throne
of His kingdom.” At the canticle’s end, the three young men call on
“the sons of men ... the nation of Israel ... the priests of the Lord ... the
servants of the Lord ... the spirits and souls of the just ... the holy and
humble of heart ... to bless the Lord: to praise and exalt him above all for
ever.”
But what is significant about the canticle for our purposes
today is the middle portion, in which the three young men call on all of the
creatures of nature: “The angels ... the waters above the heavens ...
the sun and the moon and the stars of heaven ... every shower and dew ... fire
and heat ... frost and cold ... ice and snow ... night and day ... light and
darkness ... lightnings and clouds, to bless the Lord: to praise and exalt him
above all for ever.”
They call upon “all the things that spring up in the earth
... fountains ... seas and rivers ... whales and water creatures ... all the
fowls of the air ... all the beasts wild and tame, bless the Lord: praise and
exalt him above all for ever.”
Saint Paul may be slightly less poetic in today’s
epistle, but he is saying something very similar. It is necessary for
mankind to see itself in relationship with all of the other creatures of God’s
creation—not in opposition to them. He is suggesting that all of
creation was somehow damaged by the fall of Adam and Eve, and that creation
groans as it awaits redemption and deliverance into the glory it will share with
the sons of God.
That idea may come as a surprise to us. We are used
to the concept that we learned from the Book of Genesis, that mankind has
dominion over nature. And, in fact, we are
used to the idea that our dominion over nature is often quite slippery or
tenuous—for sometimes the forces of nature are quite powerful and we have all
to do to survive them. But, as Paul points out, everything in nature has
been damaged by original sin—the things of nature that God brought into total
harmony in the Garden of Paradise, now act as independent, uncontrolled, and
sometimes destructive forces. Men and women who would have otherwise
enjoyed freedom from toil, travail, and corruption, must now earn their bread
through the sweat of their brow, and bring their children into the world in
sorrow.
Is there a remedy for this damage? Paul seems to be
talking about a remedy which will come at the end of the world, at the time of
the general resurrection of the bodies of mankind. Quite possibly, this is
the same thing referred to by Saint John in the Apocalypse: “I saw a new
heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone: and
the sea is now no more. The first heaven and the first earth was gone, being
changed, not as to their substance, but in their qualities.” And God
said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
That, of course, is fine. But for most of us, the end
of the world and the resurrection of the body are (hopefully) remote concepts.
There is reasonable likelihood that the sun will rise tomorrow, and we will once
again open our eyes, and we will once again have to cope with the world left to
us by Adam and Eve. Is there some more near-term solution to the problem
of living in a sometimes hostile world?
The Gospel hints at such a solution—at least in passing.
Jesus borrowed the boat of Simon-Peter, to use for a while as a speaking
platform. When He finished He returned the favor by working a miracle over
the forces of nature that had been so obstinate all night through. Saint
John records a similar miracle after the resurrection, when the Apostles toiled
all night catching nothing, but pulled in one hundred fifty three fish at the
command of our Lord.
(Coincidentally, or not, one hundred fifty three is the number of “Hail Marys”
in a complete Rosary.)
It is tempting to think that if we lived like the Apostles,
our Lord would also control the forces of nature on our behalf. But, of
course, it does not take too much reflection to recognize that the Apostles
still had to contend with the forces of nature as well as the forces of mankind.
Saint Paul, for example was shipwrecked three times, and was often exposed to
the perils of the wilderness and the sea.
All of the Apostles, except Saint John, died as martyrs—all lived lives of
extreme difficulty.
Certainly, though, life will be considerably less difficult
than it might otherwise be for those who live a life of keeping the Commandments
and doing God’s will. Many of the sufferings about which modern people
complain are due to self inflicted excesses. There are very few in our
society who wouldn’t benefit materially from a more spiritual approach
to life: a little less night-life, a little less noise and entertainment,
a little less eating and drinking, and a little less of all those other things
that we know to complicate our lives and diminish our health. Think of
what life would be like if everyone kept the Commandments! Even
with a few hurricanes a year, think of what we could do if we had no need of the
Army except to maintain the coastal bridges, and no police force except to
direct traffic outside of churches on Sunday. Anyone who seriously wants
to "defund," or otherwise abolish the police, had better have a total
commitment to keeping God's Cpmmandments!
Some of these things can be done because we, ourselves,
have control over them—some because God will, indeed, answer the prayers of
those faithful to Him, at least when their will is in conformity with His
will—some, of course, are mere wishful thinking and will never come to pass.
We are the children of Adam and Eve, so we must expect to have to put up with
the difficulties of life which go along with a disordered creation. But we
are also children of God, and we can say with Saint Paul that “the sufferings
of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come.”
Perhaps, while “creation groans and travails,” we must wait for “adoption
as sons of God, and the redemption of the body in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But we have the promise of God Himself of a “new heaven and a new earth,”
and “Behold” He will “make all things new.”
