Quotes on Ecology by Catholic Saints and Blesseds
Sister Thea Bowman, Servant of God (1937 – 1990)
I grew up with people who taught us how to respect and appreciate nature, to study nature’s secrets, to reverence the very soil beneath our feet. My people in the South were farmers and they learned patience. You can’t rush the seasons; you can’t call forth the rain.
They also learned not to waste! And that’s something we all need to pay more attention to today! It’s important not to take more than we need. Take your share and leave the rest for others. If we live cooperatively the Earth produces sufficiently to feed and shelter us all.
– “Thea Bowman, In My Own Words,” book that quotes from “Trusting the Prophetic Call,” Creation Magazine
We have to take time to listen to God in Scripture, in nature, in our own heart, in our feelings, passions, and dreams. We have to listen to each other… We have to take the time to listen and observe. We have to take the time to pray and dialogue together, no matter how poor, hurting, or weak we are. Then we can being to effect change here and now.
– “Thea Bowman, In My Own Words,” book that quotes from “Trusting the Prophetic Call,” Creation Magazine
I dream that by walking and talking and working and praying and playing together we can create a better world for all of us. I dream that we can form the kinds of families and churches and communities in which we share faith–faith in God, faith in ourselves, and faith in another, but also faith in hope and in joy and in love. I dream of a family, of a church, of a community in which we teach one another and we learn to respect one another and to help one another and that we find joy and meaning in helping and passing on the gifts that have been given to us. I dream of the kind of community in which we find our worth in sharing our gifts and really building up the body that is the body of Christ.
– Rita Rathburn, FSPA, interviewed Sister Thea in 1988 for FSPA Perspectives magazine
One of my favorite prayers these days is just to say, “Thank you, Lord.” To look out my window and see the beauty of a tree or the beauty of the sky and to realize all my life I’ve had food to eat, all my life I’ve had shelter, I have medical care, I have friends – that God has blessed me. I have been blessed beyond all imagining, and I just want to say, Thank you, Lord.”
– “Thea Bowman, In My Own Words,” book that quotes from Almost Home
Saint Hilary of Poitiers (315 – 368)
God is in His Creation
When I look at your heavens,
according to my own lights,
with these weak eyes of mine,
I am certain that they are your heavens
without any qualification whatever.
I note that the stars circle about them
and reappear year after year…each with a different function and service to fulfill.
And though I do not understand them,
I come to the realization that you, O God,
are in them.
Let us praise the Creator of heaven,
the might of the Maker,
the deeds of the Father,
and the thought of his heart.
As everlasting Lord,
he established of old the source of all wonders.
As all-holy Creator,
he spread the bright heavens,
a roof high above the children of man.
The King of mankind then created for mortals
the world in its beauty,
the earth spread beneath them –
The Lord everlasting and almighty God!
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century)
The Trinity is one God
who created and filled all things:
the heavens with heavenly beings,
the earth with creatures of earth,
the sea, the rivers and springs,
with creatures of the waters,
giving life to all things by his Spirit
that all creatures
might sing the praises of their wise Creator,
who alone gives life and sustains
all life in being.Above all others, let the creature who reasons
celebrate him always
as the great King and good Father.
Saint Proclus of Constantinople (died circa 446 or 447)
The Baptism of Our Lord – The Waters Are Made Holy
Christ appeared in the world, and, bringing beauty out of disarray, gave it luster and joy. He bore the world’s sin and crushed the world’s enemy. He sanctified the fountains of waters and enlightened the minds of men. Into the fabric of miracles he interwove ever greater miracles. For on this day land and sea share between them the grace of the Savior, and the whole world is filled with joy. Today’s feast of the Epiphany manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas. On the feast of the Savior’s birth, the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger; but on today’s feast of the Epiphany it is the sea that is glad and leaps for joy; the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of holiness in the river Jordan. At Christmas we saw a weak baby, giving proof of our weakness. In today’s feast, we see a perfect man, hinting at the perfect Son who proceeds from the all-perfect Father. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at Epiphany the very source enfolds and, as it were, clothes the river. Come then and see new and astounding miracles: the Sun of righteousness washing in the Jordan, fire immersed in water, God sanctified by the ministry of man. Today every creature shouts in resounding song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes in every age, for this is not his first coming. And who is he? Tell us more clearly, I beg you, blessed David: The Lord is God and has shone upon us. David is not alone in prophesying this; the apostle Paul adds his own witness, saying: The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all men, and instructing us. Not for some men, but for all. To Jews and Greeks alike God bestows salvation through baptism, offering baptism as a common grace for all. Come, consider this new and wonderful deluge, greater and more important than the flood of Noah’s day. Then the water of the flood destroyed the human race, but now the water of baptism has recalled the dead to life by the power of the one who was baptized. In the days of the flood the dove with an olive branch in its beak foreshadowed the fragrance of the good odor of Christ the Lord; now the Holy Spirit, coming in the likeness of a dove, reveals the Lord of mercy.
Saint John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890)
Christ’s suffering in cruelty to animals and children…
You will ask, how are we to learn to feel pain and anguish at the thought of Christ’s sufferings? I answer, by thinking of them, that is, by dwelling on the thought. This, through God’s mercy, is in the power of every one. No one who will but solemnly think over the history of those sufferings, as drawn out for us in the Gospels, but will gradually gain, through God’s grace, a sense of them, will in a measure realize them, will in a measure be as if he saw them, will feel towards them as being not merely a tale written in a book, but as a true history, as a series of events which took place. It is indeed a great mercy that this duty which I speak of; though so high, is notwithstanding so level with the powers of all classes of persons, learned and unlearned, if they wish to perform it. Any one can think of Christ’s sufferings, if he will; and knows well what to think about. “It is not in heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us? … but the word is very nigh unto thee;” very nigh, for it is in the four Gospels, which, at this day at least, are open to all men. All men may read or hear the Gospels, and in knowing them, they will know all that is necessary to be known in order to feel aright; they will know all that any one knows, all that has been told us, all that the greatest saints have ever had to make them full of love and sacred fear.
Now, then, let me make one or two reflections by way of stirring up your hearts and making you mourn over Christ’s sufferings, as you are called to do at this season.
1. First, as to these sufferings you will observe that our Lord is called a lamb in the text; that is, He was as defenseless, and as innocent, as a lamb is. Since then Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may without presumption or irreverence take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord’s sufferings should excite in us. I mean, consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on “brute animals.” Does it not sometimes make us shudder to hear tell of them, or to read them in some chance publication which we take up? At one time it is the wanton deed of barbarous and angry owners who ill-treat their cattle, or beasts of burden; and at another, it is the cold-blooded and calculating act of men of science, who make experiments on brute animals, perhaps merely from a sort of curiosity. I do not like to go into particulars, for many reasons; but one of those instances which we read of as happening in this day, and which seems more shocking than the rest, is, when the poor dumb victim is fastened against a wall, pierced, gashed, and so left to linger out its life. Now do you not see that I have a reason for saying this, and am not using these distressing words for nothing? For what was this but the very cruelty inflicted upon our Lord? He was gashed with the scourge, pierced through hands and feet, and so fastened to the Cross, and there left, and that as a spectacle. Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching. For instance, if they were dangerous animals, take the case of wild beasts at large, able not only to defend themselves, but even to attack us; much as we might dislike to hear of their wounds and agony, yet our feelings would be of a very different kind; but there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who never have harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it. Now this was just our Savior’s case: He had laid aside His glory, He had (as it were) disbanded His legions of Angels, He came on earth without arms, except the arms of truth, meekness, and righteousness, and committed Himself to the world in perfect innocence and sinlessness, and in utter helplessness, as the Lamb of God. In the words of St. Peter, “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” [1 Pet. ii. 22, 23.] Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty practiced upon brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s Cross and Passion ought to excite within you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any accounts you read of wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the inferior animals; let them remind you, as a picture, of Christ’s sufferings. He who is higher than the Angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation, as the Psalm says, “I am a worm, and no man; a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people.” [Ps. xxii. 6.]
2. Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more strikingly. How overpowered should we be, nay not at the sight only, but at the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why so? for the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable to defend itself. I do not like to go into the details of such cruelty, they would be so heart-rending. What if wicked men took and crucified a young child? What if they deliberately seized its poor little frame, and stretched out its arms, nailed them to a cross bar of wood, drove a stake through its two feet, and fastened them to a beam, and so left it to die? It is almost too shocking to say perhaps, you will actually say it is too shocking, and ought not to be said. O, my brethren, you feel the horror of this, and yet you can bear to read of Christ’s sufferings without horror; for what is that little child’s agony to His? and which deserved it more? which is the more innocent? which the holier? was He not gentler, sweeter, meeker, more tender, more loving, than any little child? Why are you shocked at the one, why are you not shocked at the other?… …fancy you see Jesus Christ on the cross, and say to Him with the penitent thief, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom;” that is, “Remember me, Lord, in mercy, remember not my sins, but Thine own cross; remember Thine own sufferings, remember that Thou sufferedst for me, a sinner; remember in the last day that I, during my lifetime, felt Thy sufferings, that I suffered on my cross by Thy side. Remember me then, and make me remember Thee now.”
+ Newman Reader — Works of John Henry NewmanCopyright © 2007 by The National Institute for Newman Studies. All rights reserved.
Saint Gianna Molla (1922 – 1962)
I AM SO HAPPY when I am in touch with nature, which is so beautiful that I would spend hours contemplating it.
Hugh of Saint Victor (1096 – 1144)
WE CRY OUT IN AWE and amazement with the psalmist: “How great are your works, 0 Lord! You have made them all in wisdom.”
YOU HAVE GIVEN ME delight in what you have made, and I shall exult over the works of your hands. How great are your works, 0 Lord! Your thoughts are exceeding deep. A foolish person will not know them, and a stupid person will not understand them.
+ The Three Days of Invisible Light
Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
LET ONLY YOUR WILL be done in me, and in all your creatures.
Sister Thea Bowman, Servant of God (1937 – 1990)
I grew up with people who taught us how to respect and appreciate nature, to study nature’s secrets, to reverence the very soil beneath our feet. My people in the South were farmers and they learned patience. You can’t rush the seasons; you can’t call forth the rain.
They also learned not to waste! And that’s something we all need to pay more attention to today! It’s important not to take more than we need. Take your share and leave the rest for others. If we live cooperatively the Earth produces sufficiently to feed and shelter us all.
– “Thea Bowman, In My Own Words,” book that quotes from “Trusting the Prophetic Call,” Creation Magazine
We have to take time to listen to God in Scripture, in nature, in our own heart, in our feelings, passions, and dreams. We have to listen to each other… We have to take the time to listen and observe. We have to take the time to pray and dialogue together, no matter how poor, hurting, or weak we are. Then we can being to effect change here and now.
– “Thea Bowman, In My Own Words,” book that quotes from “Trusting the Prophetic Call,” Creation Magazine
I dream that by walking and talking and working and praying and playing together we can create a better world for all of us. I dream that we can form the kinds of families and churches and communities in which we share faith–faith in God, faith in ourselves, and faith in another, but also faith in hope and in joy and in love. I dream of a family, of a church, of a community in which we teach one another and we learn to respect one another and to help one another and that we find joy and meaning in helping and passing on the gifts that have been given to us. I dream of the kind of community in which we find our worth in sharing our gifts and really building up the body that is the body of Christ.
– Rita Rathburn, FSPA, interviewed Sister Thea in 1988 for FSPA Perspectives magazine
One of my favorite prayers these days is just to say, “Thank you, Lord.” To look out my window and see the beauty of a tree or the beauty of the sky and to realize all my life I’ve had food to eat, all my life I’ve had shelter, I have medical care, I have friends – that God has blessed me. I have been blessed beyond all imagining, and I just want to say, Thank you, Lord.”
– “Thea Bowman, In My Own Words,” book that quotes from “Almost Home”
Saint Hilary of Poitiers (315 – 368)
God is in His Creation
When I look at your heavens,
according to my own lights,
with these weak eyes of mine,
I am certain that they are your heavens
without any qualification whatever.
I note that the stars circle about them
and reappear year after year…each with a different function and service to fulfill.
And though I do not understand them,
I come to the realization that you, O God,
are in them.
Let us praise the Creator of heaven,
the might of the Maker,
the deeds of the Father,
and the thought of his heart.
As everlasting Lord,
he established of old the source of all wonders.
As all-holy Creator,
he spread the bright heavens,
a roof high above the children of man.
The King of mankind then created for mortals
the world in its beauty,
the earth spread beneath them –
The Lord everlasting and almighty God!
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century)
The Trinity is one God
who created and filled all things:
the heavens with heavenly beings,
the earth with creatures of earth,
the sea, the rivers and springs,
with creatures of the waters,
giving life to all things by his Spirit
that all creatures
might sing the praises of their wise Creator,
who alone gives life and sustains
all life in being.Above all others, let the creature who reasons
celebrate him always
as the great King and good Father.
Saint Proclus of Constantinople (died circa 446 or 447)
The Baptism of Our Lord – The Waters Are Made Holy
Christ appeared in the world, and, bringing beauty out of disarray, gave it luster and joy. He bore the world’s sin and crushed the world’s enemy. He sanctified the fountains of waters and enlightened the minds of men. Into the fabric of miracles he interwove ever greater miracles. For on this day land and sea share between them the grace of the Savior, and the whole world is filled with joy. Today’s feast of the Epiphany manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas. On the feast of the Savior’s birth, the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger; but on today’s feast of the Epiphany it is the sea that is glad and leaps for joy; the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of holiness in the river Jordan. At Christmas we saw a weak baby, giving proof of our weakness. In today’s feast, we see a perfect man, hinting at the perfect Son who proceeds from the all-perfect Father. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at Epiphany the very source enfolds and, as it were, clothes the river. Come then and see new and astounding miracles: the Sun of righteousness washing in the Jordan, fire immersed in water, God sanctified by the ministry of man. Today every creature shouts in resounding song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes in every age, for this is not his first coming. And who is he? Tell us more clearly, I beg you, blessed David: The Lord is God and has shone upon us. David is not alone in prophesying this; the apostle Paul adds his own witness, saying: The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all men, and instructing us. Not for some men, but for all. To Jews and Greeks alike God bestows salvation through baptism, offering baptism as a common grace for all. Come, consider this new and wonderful deluge, greater and more important than the flood of Noah’s day. Then the water of the flood destroyed the human race, but now the water of baptism has recalled the dead to life by the power of the one who was baptized. In the days of the flood the dove with an olive branch in its beak foreshadowed the fragrance of the good odor of Christ the Lord; now the Holy Spirit, coming in the likeness of a dove, reveals the Lord of mercy.
Blessed John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890)
Christ’s suffering in cruelty to animals and children…
You will ask, how are we to learn to feel pain and anguish at the thought of Christ’s sufferings? I answer, by thinking of them, that is, by dwelling on the thought. This, through God’s mercy, is in the power of every one. No one who will but solemnly think over the history of those sufferings, as drawn out for us in the Gospels, but will gradually gain, through God’s grace, a sense of them, will in a measure realize them, will in a measure be as if he saw them, will feel towards them as being not merely a tale written in a book, but as a true history, as a series of events which took place. It is indeed a great mercy that this duty which I speak of; though so high, is notwithstanding so level with the powers of all classes of persons, learned and unlearned, if they wish to perform it. Any one can think of Christ’s sufferings, if he will; and knows well what to think about. “It is not in heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us? … but the word is very nigh unto thee;” very nigh, for it is in the four Gospels, which, at this day at least, are open to all men. All men may read or hear the Gospels, and in knowing them, they will know all that is necessary to be known in order to feel aright; they will know all that any one knows, all that has been told us, all that the greatest saints have ever had to make them full of love and sacred fear.
Now, then, let me make one or two reflections by way of stirring up your hearts and making you mourn over Christ’s sufferings, as you are called to do at this season.
1. First, as to these sufferings you will observe that our Lord is called a lamb in the text; that is, He was as defenseless, and as innocent, as a lamb is. Since then Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may without presumption or irreverence take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord’s sufferings should excite in us. I mean, consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on “brute animals.” Does it not sometimes make us shudder to hear tell of them, or to read them in some chance publication which we take up? At one time it is the wanton deed of barbarous and angry owners who ill-treat their cattle, or beasts of burden; and at another, it is the cold-blooded and calculating act of men of science, who make experiments on brute animals, perhaps merely from a sort of curiosity. I do not like to go into particulars, for many reasons; but one of those instances which we read of as happening in this day, and which seems more shocking than the rest, is, when the poor dumb victim is fastened against a wall, pierced, gashed, and so left to linger out its life. Now do you not see that I have a reason for saying this, and am not using these distressing words for nothing? For what was this but the very cruelty inflicted upon our Lord? He was gashed with the scourge, pierced through hands and feet, and so fastened to the Cross, and there left, and that as a spectacle. Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching. For instance, if they were dangerous animals, take the case of wild beasts at large, able not only to defend themselves, but even to attack us; much as we might dislike to hear of their wounds and agony, yet our feelings would be of a very different kind; but there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who never have harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it. Now this was just our Savior’s case: He had laid aside His glory, He had (as it were) disbanded His legions of Angels, He came on earth without arms, except the arms of truth, meekness, and righteousness, and committed Himself to the world in perfect innocence and sinlessness, and in utter helplessness, as the Lamb of God. In the words of St. Peter, “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” [1 Pet. ii. 22, 23.] Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty practiced upon brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s Cross and Passion ought to excite within you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any accounts you read of wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the inferior animals; let them remind you, as a picture, of Christ’s sufferings. He who is higher than the Angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation, as the Psalm says, “I am a worm, and no man; a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people.” [Ps. xxii. 6.]
2. Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more strikingly. How overpowered should we be, nay not at the sight only, but at the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why so? for the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable to defend itself. I do not like to go into the details of such cruelty, they would be so heart-rending. What if wicked men took and crucified a young child? What if they deliberately seized its poor little frame, and stretched out its arms, nailed them to a cross bar of wood, drove a stake through its two feet, and fastened them to a beam, and so left it to die? It is almost too shocking to say perhaps, you will actually say it is too shocking, and ought not to be said. O, my brethren, you feel the horror of this, and yet you can bear to read of Christ’s sufferings without horror; for what is that little child’s agony to His? and which deserved it more? which is the more innocent? which the holier? was He not gentler, sweeter, meeker, more tender, more loving, than any little child? Why are you shocked at the one, why are you not shocked at the other?… …fancy you see Jesus Christ on the cross, and say to Him with the penitent thief, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom;” that is, “Remember me, Lord, in mercy, remember not my sins, but Thine own cross; remember Thine own sufferings, remember that Thou sufferedst for me, a sinner; remember in the last day that I, during my lifetime, felt Thy sufferings, that I suffered on my cross by Thy side. Remember me then, and make me remember Thee now.”
+ Newman Reader — Works of John Henry NewmanCopyright © 2007 by The National Institute for Newman Studies. All rights reserved.
Saint Gianna Molla (1922 – 1962)
I AM SO HAPPY when I am in touch with nature, which is so beautiful that I would spend hours contemplating it.
Hugh of Saint Victor (1096 – 1144)
WE CRY OUT IN AWE and amazement with the psalmist: “How great are your works, 0 Lord! You have made them all in wisdom.”
YOU HAVE GIVEN ME delight in what you have made, and I shall exult over the works of your hands. How great are your works, 0 Lord! Your thoughts are exceeding deep. A foolish person will not know them, and a stupid person will not understand them.
+ The Three Days of Invisible Light
Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
LET ONLY YOUR WILL be done in me, and in all your creatures.