Children of the World [Devotional]

There is a growing sense that ‘our’ world – which of course, actually belongs to God - has its place in the final scheme of things. This should be a source of joy to us. For much of Christian history, matter has been suspect, and the stress has been on the encasement of an immortal soul within an earthbound body. The healthier Hebrew sense of the unity of the person was eclipsed, and so we were taught that in death the ‘separated soul’ enjoys the beatific vision in heaven, while the resurrected body is added in only at the last day.

Now, however, the transformation of matter by the Incarnation is emphasised, the unity of the human person is acknowledged, and resurrection is understood as the rising of the total person to life with God. This brings into focus the final transformation of the cosmos. We are ‘children of this world’ in Rahner’s term, and through the Incarnation God has become forever part of the material universe.

Our cosmos is being transformed through his presence, most obviously through the Eucharist, when the most ordinary things – bread and wine – become Christ’s own body. This invests our ecological concerns with grace and hope. We rightly struggle to save our little planet and to provide it with a sustaining diet instead of poisonous pollutants. We grieve at the destruction of rain forests and of innumerable species, small and large. All this loss could lead us into depression. We feel that what we have wilfully destroyed will never be restored to us.But God, who by a single commanding word created our cosmos with its vast array, can with another word restore what is disfigured and decayed, and make all bloom again. Christian hope is given us for the long haul. Not only are we precious to God, but our world is also, and both will be made glorious in God’s good time.

from the Jesuit website Sacred Space