Creation is not just happenstance or coincidence. It is the work of the Creator. St. James tells us in the second reading today that: “It is all that is good, everything that is perfect, which is given us from above; it comes down from the Father of all light; with him there is no such thing as alteration, no shadow of a change.” God doesn’t do mediocre. So, the creation He has created is simply the best. And because He doesn’t change His mind, He is faithful to His creation. He sustains it. The psalms reassure us of this: “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples; it is He who set it on the seas, on the waters He made it firm”; elsewhere we hear that “in His hands are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are His, to Him belongs the sea for He made it and the dry land shaped by His Hands.”
God’s care for His own creation is therefore absolutely certain and true; this gives us confident hope that nothing can happen to it that he doesn’t either want or allow. But that is no reason for us to be complacent, because it is also true that He has entrusted the earth to us to till it and look after it. He expects us to let our hands be guided by His as we do so. He has made us co-responsible with Himself in leading the earth to its intended purpose, which is not only that it be our home but eventually that it become God’s own home. When Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary, the transformation of humanity, of the earth and of the entire universe into God’s dwelling place began its final stage. Heaven is no longer to be seen as some place other than the earth; no, it inhabits the earth, gradually transforming it by God’s glory and into God’s glory. The new heavens and the new earth will be when the glory of God already revealed in a hidden way on the Cross of Jesus will be revealed in its full splendour on the earth. As Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor, creation will be transfigured across the vast expanse of space and time. It will be transparent with God.
If there is decay and chaos in creation as we see today in global warming, rising oceans, the loss of species, drought, etc., we know this does not come from the God who only gives what is best. Creation does not contain the seed of death in itself; there is nothing that enters a human being which makes him or her unclean. It would be interesting to take the evil intentions which come out of a man, as listed by Jesus in the Gospel today, and consider how they damage the order and beauty of creation, starting with our own selves. The chaos in creation reflects the moral chaos of the human heart. It would also be instructive to take the virtuous opposites of those evil intentions and show how they contribute to the true healing and caring for both our planet and for the human race.
The first thing Christ therefore had to do to prepare the way for the earth to become the dwelling place of God was to destroy sin and thus death. For, in the end, it will not be political will and agreements, however grand, which will save the planet. Only the Saviour can save the planet, but He wants to do that in and through us, and He can only do that to the degree that we repent from sin, individually and collectively. He wants to replace solidarity in corruption and greed with a community of women and men who have solidarity in grace and truth, in holiness and life, in justice and peace. That’s not a solidarity of words or of websites; it’s not a solidarity of policies or politics. It’s the solidarity of hearts, minds and souls which choose to be free from sin.
But solidarity in Christ’s truth and grace is just another way of speaking of the Church in Her inner core. St. James says in that second reading that: “By his own choice God made us his children by the message of the truth so that we should be a sort of first-fruits of all that he had created.” By baptism and confirmation, we have the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and bodies, to free our spirits from sin and make our bodies capable of rising from the dead. God has created the Church to be the leaven in humanity and in creation which will bring the Gospel and the light of salvation to all the nations and to all creation.
God did not create the world as if it were somehow outside of Himself. All things were created and continue to exist and hold together in Christ. When sin and death first appeared, they did not just appear in humanity and in creation, but, because these exist in Christ, they somehow also affected Him. Indeed, that’s why he bore our sin and death on His Body on the Tree: so as to expel them from humanity, from creation and from His own incarnate self. Having expelled them, He made His own Risen Body available to us, first through baptism, by which we enter it, and then through the Eucharist, by which He unites our bodies, our hearts and our souls ever more closely to Himself. The renewal of creation, in other words, passes through the Redemption won for us on the Cross, and that Redemption passes through the Church. St. Paul puts it in this way: Christ is Head of the Church which is His Body, the fulness of Him who fills the whole creation. If all things exist in Christ, and if the Church is His Body, then there is a direct connection between the presence and mission of the Church and the redemption of the world and of creation. Creation itself will become the Church.
The Church’s concern for creation, then, is not just a social or political or even just ethical one, but is rooted in Christ’s redemption of the world and God’s plan to make creation share in His own glory. It is to prepare the world to be the final dwelling place of God when reality as we know it is transfigured by the revelation of the glory of God. Adam and Eve were commanded to till the earth and look after it. The Church is commanded to bring the Gospel and grace of salvation to the world in all its beautiful and tragic complexity and so bring it into Christ. It is the extinction of sin which will prevent the extinction of the planet. To embrace the Cross of Christ is to embrace the healing of our own hearts first and thence the healing and renewal of creation. For “God wanted all things in heaven and on earth to be reconciled in Christ who made peace through his death on the Cross.”