Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
I am sitting in my office, listening to the sounds of my family moving about the house at the beginning of this day. Looking out the window, it is still a bit windy; the trees are swaying. This day seems significant. There seems to be a pause, a stillness in time. It is a day in-between. The Church is making her preparations for the season of Lent, a time of fasting, penance and contemplation of the suffering Christ. Tomorrow, as a community and as the Church, we will together be marked with ashes to signify our solemnity. But there is another transition that marks this day in the life of the Church. Yesterday, most of us heard the shocking news that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI was resigning as the Holy See of Rome. We will witness the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the Church as a new servant is chosen as pope.
It is appropriate that we are met today by the first account of Creation from the Book of Genesis. It is a reminder that we are in no uncertain times. Instead we are urged on by the creative and redemptive activity of God in both history and the natural world. In this story we find the miracle of life bound by God’s provision. The entire natural world (ourselves included!) is not only created by the Word and movement of God, but is also provided for and sustained by His care.
“’See, I give you every seed-bearing plant all over the earth
and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food;
and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air,
and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground,
I give all the green plants for food.’
And so it happened.”
For Saint Maximus the Confessor in the 7th Century, the Creation of the world itself bears the light of Revelation. We know that God is both present and good by the order, beauty and sustenance we see in the natural world around us. “Consider the sparrows”, we are told by Christ, for they neither sew nor reap and yet are provided for. Over and over, continually there is the radical story being told in the history of the Natural world that God provides. By what grace are we afforded the gift of provision?
As we encounter a new liturgical season for the Church, a time of fasting and penance, we are encouraged to contemplate the God who provides for the creation He loves deeply. God not only gives our sustenance, in His goodness and care He has begun and will bring to completion His work of reconciliation. May we begin our fasting and times of sacrifice with this in mind: God is reconciling all things to Himself in the work of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. All things are being made new, Creation is still happening. Tomorrow, as the people of God, may we be mindful of this work being done in our midst.
-Tyler DeLong