Let All Creation Rejoice!
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“The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song. . . .
Here is your God,
God comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
God comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.”
What I notice in this Sunday’s reading from Isaiah is how joy does not just belong to people; God is so magnificent that everything rejoices, including the earth. Every bloom, every piece of land, every created being exults in God’s glory. The earth is like a person, and God cares for it just as God cares for people, especially the most vulnerable ones. Creation and people are intimately connected and delight in God together.
A lot of people have sort of lost that connection, haven’t we? As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it in his poem “God’s Grandeur,” “And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; / And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil / Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.” Even though humans have made our mark on creation, our shoes prevent us from walking barefoot upon the land. We have touched the earth with destruction, but we no longer allow the earth to touch us back. As we lose touch with the land, literally, we lose touch with the most vulnerable people too. Even the meager resources economically poor people once had in our country are being stripped away bit by bit.
How can we rejoice on this Gaudete Sunday, this day of joy, when the poor around us, and creation too, are being run over?
Because it’s not too late. We can do better, and God is with us, calling us to align ourselves with God in caring for people and creation.
This call is something my community has been talking about for a while. In the past few years, we’ve made an effort internationally, as sisters from Madagascar, Europe, and North and South America have discerned together about how to best respond to the needs of people and creation. That global connection is part of the gift of belonging to an international community. We’ve talked about the realities of our specific regions and the world in light of our Providence spirituality, which calls us to risk, to care for others like God cares for us, and to trust God. One call we’ve consistently heard is to be Providence for vulnerable people and creation. Like the writer of Isaiah, we too see creation as a person, as one with us. The most vulnerable people and creation are asking us to do better by them, and we respond with care and alliance, because we’re not separate, but one.
The call to care for the vulnerable is not just for my community, though. God is calling each of us to do that. People are in need and the earth is in need, and since the days of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, God has been calling us to care for each other. Together we can change what we have done to put the vulnerable in mourning. Together we can turn mourning into joy. We just need a little patience and the recognition that any good we do comes from God who is with us as we seek to do good.
You know, in Hopkins’s poem, nature is not personified but divinized; nature is part of God. No matter what people do to it, God is present in it, ever renewing it and giving us another chance every morning.
“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
God is part of creation, and creation is part of God. Despite people’s lack of care and even destruction of the earth, it is being renewed because God is merciful and because God’s love is infinite.
So, let’s rejoice. People all over the world are responding to the call to bring justice and peace to the earth and all of its inhabitants. Let’s lay our hands gently upon the land and remove our shoes to allow this holy ground to touch us back. Let’s rejoice because the reign of God is near and here, among us and within us and yet to come. Let’s allow ourselves to be moved by the beauty of the earth and to rejoice with it.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near” (Phil 4:4-5).
For Reflection
What is your relationship to creation? How much time do you spend in nature, and what effect does it have on you?
For what are you rejoicing right now? How is God with you in that rejoicing?
What’s God’s invitation for you as you live into this Third Week of Advent?
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By Sister Leslie Keener, CDP
Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, meaningful conversations, dancing, and poetry, especially “God’s Grandeur.”