The transubstantiation of the whole created world

…the cosmic dimension of Christian liturgy [is] important for [Cardinal] Ratzinger, where we see that in the Church’s liturgy there is an anticipation of the eschatological transubstantiation of the whole created world. — Krzysztof Porosło

I would like to make a theological argument for turning off the screens and going outdoors more. Immerse yourself in the experience the wild kingdom of God that is the world God created, and is redeeming at every moment in and through us.

The Church is not just people or a building, it is the transformation of all of creation by God-in-Christ regathering us, his exiled “priests of nature,” whose call from the beginning was to tend the garden of earth and give voice to creation’s latent praise of the Creator — rightly orienting the cosmos toward its Source and End. Our sin disoriented us, but our repentance has reoriented us toward the eternal Orient.

Interesting to note that Jesus, the Alpha and Omega of creation, promised to draw not “all people” but “all things” to himself in his redeeming crucifixion and resurrection:

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things [pantas] to myself.

The liturgy, which lavishly employs through sacraments all of the elements of the natural order, is the divine-human labor of reorienting creation, of “doing the world” with God as God would have the world done. In other words, the liturgy is Christ enacted. This vision of man as liturgical laborer cultivating and restoring creation is the brilliance of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, which grounds environmental ethics in a Christian theological worldview.

This liturgical sense of creation is the deep meaning of the song of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in Daniel 3:57-88 that we often sing on great feasts and the Lord’s Day in the Liturgy of the Hours:

Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord.
Praise and exalt him above all forever.
Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord.
You heavens, bless the Lord.
All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord.
All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord.
Sun and moon, bless the Lord.
Stars of heaven, bless the Lord.
Every shower and dew, bless the Lord.
All you winds, bless the Lord.
Fire and heat, bless the Lord.
Cold and chill, bless the Lord.
Dew and rain, bless the Lord.
Frost and chill, bless the Lord.
Ice and snow, bless the Lord.
Nights and days, bless the Lord.
Light and darkness, bless the Lord.
Lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord…

I had an Old Testament professor who once told us in class, “Don’t allow yourself to ever get tired of this Canticle when you are commanded by Mother Church [in the Divine Office] to pray it. Why? Well, it enacts your noblest duty as God’s image in this world, to give voice to the whole of creation in praise to God. The universe labored for over 12 billion years to have you in place to sing its grateful praise. Don’t complain! Don’t blow it! Sing for her!

Again, Ratzinger lends strength to this point:

The church not only encompasses humankind but, as Body of the cosmic Christ, it also encompasses the human world and the cosmos itself.

The late Jesuit theologian, Avery Cardinal Dulles, came from a devout Presbyterian family legacy. A very gifted intellectual, in high school he became an agnostic, but while he was in college at Harvard, he became fascinated with the work of Thomas Aquinas and began to open himself up to the possibility of faith. It was in 1939, on one grey February afternoon in Harvard’s Widener Library, as he felt drawn to go outdoors, that he suddenly felt the gift of faith enter him. He said of that day:

I was irresistibly prompted to go out into the open air. The slush of melting snow formed a deep mud along the banks of the River Charles, which I followed down toward Boston. As I wandered aimlessly, something impelled me to look contemplatively at a young tree. On its frail, supple branches were young buds. While my eye rested on them, the thought came to me suddenly, with all the strength and novelty of a revelation, that these little buds in their innocence and meekness followed a rule, a law of which I as yet knew nothing. That night, for the first time in years, I prayed.

So, go out into the open air as often as you can to pray, answering creation’s ceaseless invitation to voice her praise. And next time you leave Mass, school of Paradise Gardening, look out at the world you see in the parking lot and beyond and sing your own canticle of creation.