Quotes on Ecology by Catholic Saints and Blesseds
Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
GOD DESIRES that all the world be pure in his sight. The earth should not be injured. The earth should not be destroyed… As often as the elements, the elements of the world are violated, by ill-treatment, so God will cleanse them. God will cleanse them thru the sufferings, thru the hardships of humankind.
+ From an article by Mary Morrel, Creation Trembles in the Grasp of Selfishness, 1/18/03
THE TRIUNE GOD “created all things by His will, created them so that His Name would be known and glorified, showing in them not just the things that are visible and temporal, but also the things that are invisible and eternal.”GOD “marvelously by His will created every creature and marvelously by His will set it in its place.”
O ETERNAL STRENGTH, You ordered all things within your heart. All things were created through your Word, just as you wished.
GOD IS THE FOUNDATION for everything
This God undertakes, God gives.
Such that nothing that is necessary for life is lacking.
Now humankind needs a body that at all times honors and praises God.This body is supported in every way through the earth.
Thus the earth glorifies the power of God.
NOW HERE IS THE IMAGE of the power of God…
I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew that caused the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good….God’s majesty is glorified in the manifestations of every manner of nature’s fruitfulness.
This is possible, possible through the right and holy utilization of the earth, the earth in which humankind has its source.
The sum total of heaven and earth, everything in nature, is thus won to use and purpose.
It becomes a temple and altar for the service of God.
THE EARTH is at the same time mother, she is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human,
She is mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God’s son.
THE HIGH, THE LOW, all of creation, God gives humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God’s justice permits creation to punish humanity.
HOLY PERSONS draw to themselves all that is earthly.
ALL OF CREATION is a symphony of joy and jubilation.
HOLY SPIRIT,
making life alive,
moving in all things,
root of all created being,
cleansing the cosmos
of every impurity,
effacing guilt,
anointing wounds.
You are lustrous
and praiseworthy life,
You waken and re-awaken
everything that is.
WE SHALL AWAKEN from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper we will respond to its endangerment with passion.
O ETERNAL VIGOR, all of creation is arranged and in order in your very heart. Through your Word, all things are created just as you wish.
AND IT IS WRITTEN: “The Spirit of the Lord fills the Earth.” This means that no creature, whether visible or invisible, lacks a spiritual life. And those creatures that human beings do not perceive seek their understanding until humans do perceive them. For it is from the power of the seed that the buds sprout. And it is from the buds that the fruit of the tree springs forth. The clouds too have their course to run. The moon and the stars flame in fire. The trees shoot forth buds because of the power in their seeds. Water has a delicacy and lightness of motion like the wind. This is why it springs up from the Earth and pours itself into running brooks. Even the Earth has moisture and mist.
O MOVING FORCE of Wisdom,
encircling the wheel of the cosmos,
Encompassing all that is,
all that has life,
in one vast circle.
You have three wings: The first
unfurls aloft in the highest heights.
The second dips its way
dripping sweat on the Earth.
Over, under,
and through all things whirls the third.
Praise to you, O Wisdom,
worthy of praise!
PRAYER IS nothing but the inhaling and exhaling of the one breath of the universe.
+ From music/hymn called A Feather On The Breath Of God
WITHOUT THE WORD of God no creature has being.
God’s Word is in all creation, visible and invisible.
The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity.
All creation is awakened, called, by the resounding melody,
God’s invocation of the Word.
O MOST NOBLE GREENNESS,
rooted in the sun,
shining forth in streaming splendor
upon the wheel of Earth.
You are encircled
by the very arms
of Divine mysteries.
You are radiant like the red of dawn!
You glow like the incandescence of the sun!
I, THE FIERY LIFE of the divine substance, blaze in the beauty of the fields, shine in the waters, and burn in the sun, moon, and stars. And as the all-sustaining invisible force of the aerial wind, I bring all things to life… I am also Reason, having the wind of the sounding Word by which all things were created, and I breathe in them all, so that none may die, because I am Life. [said of the Holy Spirit}
+ Excerpts are from Hildegard’s Book of Divine Works (trans. Robert Cunningham), Letters (trans. Ronald Miller), and Songs (trans. Brendan Doyle).
AS THE CREATOR loves his creation
so creation loves the Creator.Creation, of course, was fashioned
to be adorned, to be showered,
to be gifted with the love of the Creator.
The entire world has been embraced by this kiss.
+ Quoted in The Greening of the Church, Sean McDonagh, 1990, Maryknoll: Orbis Books
Saint Bernard (1090-1153)
YOU WILL FIND something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
+ Epistle 106
LIKE A TREE in spring the cross has burst into flower… the cross on which the Lord of glory hung.
+ A Companion to Bernard of Clairvoux, edited by Brian Patrick McGuire, 2011
Saint Francis of Assisi’s “Sermon to the Birds” (Circa 1220)
MY LITTLE SISTERS, the birds, much bounden are you unto God, your creator, and always in every place ought you to praise him, for that he has given you liberty to fly about everywhere, and has also given you double and triple rainment; moreover he preserved your seed in the ark of Noah, that your race might not perish out of the world; still more are you beholden to him for the element of the air which he has appointed for you; beyond all this, you sow not, neither do you reap; and God feeds you, and gives you the streams and fountains for your drink; the mountains and valleys for your refuge and the high trees whereon to make your nests; and because you know not how to spin or sow, God clothes you, you and your children; wherefore your creator loves you much, seeing that he has bestowed on you so many benefits; and therefore, my little sisters, beware of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to give praises unto God.
Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231)
MY BROTHERS THE FISHES, you are bound, as much as is in your power, to return thanks to your Creator, who has given you so noble an element for your dwelling; for you have at your choice both sweet water and salt; you have many places of refuge from the tempest; you have likewise a pure and transparent element for your nourishment. God, your bountiful and kind Creator, when he made you, ordered you to increase and multiply, and gave you his blessing. In the universal deluge, all other creatures perished; you alone did God preserve from all harm. He has given you fins to enable you to go where you will. To you was it granted, according to the commandment of God, to keep the prophet Jonas, and after three days to throw him safe and sound on dry land. You it was who gave the tribute-money to our Savior Jesus Christ, when, through his poverty, he had not wherewith to pay. By a singular mystery you were the nourishment of the eternal King, Jesus Christ, before and after his resurrection. Because of all these things you are bound to praise and bless the Lord, who has given you blessings so many and so much greater than to other creatures.
BLESSED BE the eternal God; for the fishes of the sea honor him more than men without faith, and animals without reason listen to his word with greater attention than sinful heretics.
+ LITTLE FLOWERS OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Saint Bonaventure (1217-1274)
THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE creation, the wisdom of God shines forth from Him and in Him, as in a mirror containing the beauty of all forms and lights and as in a book in which all things are written according to the deep secrets of God… Truly, whoever reads this book will find life and will draw salvation from the Lord.
WHOEVER IS NOT enlightened by the splendor of created things is blind; whoever is not aroused by the sound of their voice is deaf; whoever does not praise God for all these creatures is mute.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
ANY ERROR about creation also leads to an error about God.
GOD BROUGHT THINGS into being in order that the divine goodness might be communicated to creatures and be represented by them. And because the divine goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting in one in the representation of divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifest and divided. Thus the whole universe together participates in divine goodness more perfectly and represents it better than any single creature whatever.
GOD IS ABOVE all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as the cause of the being of all things.
BUT IN ALL creatures there is found the trace of the Trinity, inasmuch as in every creature are found some things which are necessarily reduced to the divine Persons as to their cause.
+ Summa Theologiae
Blessed Julian of Norwich (1343-1423)
THE DAY OF my spiritual awakening
was the day I saw
and knew I saw
God in all things
and all things in God.
HE ALSO SHOWED ME a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand. It was as round as a ball, as it seemed to me. I looked at it with the eyes of my understanding and thought, “What can this be?” My question was answered in general terms in this fashion: “It is everything that is made.” I marveled at how this could be, for it seemed to me that it might suddenly fall into nothingness, it was so small. An answer for this was given to my understanding: “It lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. And in this fashion all things have their being by the grace of God… It is necessary for us to know the littleness of creatures in order to reduce them to nothingness in our judgment, so that we may love and have the uncreated God. The reason we are not fully at ease in heart and soul is because we seek rest within them, and pay no attention to our God, who is Almighty, All-wise, All-good and the only real rest.”
+ Revelations of Divine Love, trans. with an intro. by M.L. del Mastro. 1977.
FOR IN MAN IS GOD, and God is in all. And I hope by the grace of God he that beholdeth it thus shall be truly taught and mightily comforted… (Chapter 9)
THAT SHEWED HE in the high, marvellous words where He said: I it am that is highest; I it am that is lowest; I it am that is all. (Chapter 72)
AND AFTER THIS I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in mine understanding, — by which sight I saw that He is in all things. (Chapter 11)
+ Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. Ed. Grace Warrack
Saint Theodore the Studite (759-826)
How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return.This was the tree on which Christ, like a king on a chariot, destroyed the devil, the Lord of death, and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord, like a brave warrior wounded in his hands, feet and side, healed the wounds of sin that the evil serpent had inflicted on our nature. A tree once caused our death, but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree. What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality, that shame should become glory! Well might the holy Apostle exclaim: Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world! The supreme wisdom that flowered on the cross has shown the folly of worldly wisdom’s pride. The knowledge of all good, which is the fruit of the cross, has cut away the shoots of wickedness.The wonders accomplished through this tree were foreshadowed clearly even by the mere types and figures that existed in the past. Meditate on these, if you are eager to learn. Was it not the wood of a tree that enabled Noah, at God’s command, to escape the destruction of the flood together with his sons, his wife, his sons’ wives and every kind of animal? And surely the rod of Moses prefigured the cross when it changed water into blood, swallowed up the false serpents of Pharaoh’s magicians, divided the sea at one stroke and then restored the waters to their normal course, drowning the enemy and saving God’s own people? Aaron’s rod, which blossomed in one day in proof of his true priesthood, was another figure of the cross, and did not Abraham foreshadow the cross when he bound his son Isaac and placed him on the pile of wood?By the cross death was slain and Adam was restored to life. The cross is the glory of all the apostles, the crown of the martyrs, the sanctification of the saints. By the cross we put on Christ and cast aside our former self. By the cross we, the sheep of Christ, have been gathered into one flock, destined for the sheepfolds of heaven.
Saint Boniface (c. 675 – June 5, 754)
In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life’s different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship but to keep her on her course.
+ Letters of Saint Boniface