All Things Love God

"On Care For Our Common Home (Laudato Si)" is Pope Francis’ latest encyclical letter.  I hope it continues to raise awareness of the plight of our planet Earth.   It appears the Pope won’t let it fade from view.   He intends to keep it front and center, as he should and as he must.

Thomas Aquinas once said: “All things love God.  All things are united according to friendship to each other and to God.”  Now that’s wisdom!  Can we relate to it?  If we can subscribe to that belief, then we come closer to becoming Christian mystics with love for the earth and our bodies.

Helping us better understand this point is writer Matthew Fox who identified the Aquinas quote and built upon it.  He said in his 2011 book "Christian Mystics:" “Given the state of the world, it would seem this is a rather naïve teaching – that all things love another – from a brilliant but naïve pre-modern thinker [Aquinas].  Or is this the mystic’s way of recognizing what science today calls the interconnection of all things?  If all things are interconnected, isn’t there a wisdom in seeing all things as friends.  Isn’t friendship about interconnectivity?”

He asks, “Can we take today’s science and bathe it in graceful waters of mystical awareness to get at its deeper meanings?  Aquinas may be teaching us the meaning of what today’s science is rediscovering.”     

And, so is Francis.

Deacon David Pierce