S
TRENNA
2007
by Pascual Chávez Villanueva
LOVING LIFE
“I will never again curse the ground because of man … I establish my covenant with you and your descendants and with every living creature … I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Gen. 8,9 passim).
h
e
book of Genesis shows how God the lover of life overcomes chaos and
with his creative word shapes the cosmos. Everything he does cannot
but be a masterpiece, given the skill of the Artist. But already in
chapter 3 and what follows, the scenario is very different. The
original plan of God is overturned because of the sin that floods the
face of the earth as a result of man’s violence and depravity and
the world returns again to chaos. Nevertheless, evil with its innate
tendency to destruction and death cannot have the last word. So,
after the tsunami
of the flood, God establishes a covenant with man, pledging himself
never to allow this world that he created to be destroyed and become
a desert peopled by anger and despair. The sign of this covenant with
the human race is the rainbow: immediately after the rain it appears
in the sky and seems to embrace the heavens to remind the creature of
the promise of the Creator.
God biofilo does not love only human life, but the whole of life, including the vegetable and the animal, since all creation is the work of his love. As well as the value and the dignity of human life, from the first to the last page the Bible shows the loving care of God for nature, as expressed in the words of Gen. 1,31: «God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good ». Animals, plants, the heavens, the sun, the seas … everything is good, everything is valuable in itself, everything proclaims the glory of God, as Psalm 18 sings: “The heavens proclaim the glory of the Lord, and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands. Day unto day takes up the story and night unto night makes known the message.” All creatures, in fact, are invited to bless the Lord, as the Canticle of Daniel proclaims: O all you works of the Lord, O bless the Lord (angels, heavens, water, sun and moon, stars of the heavens, showers and rain, breezes and winds, fire and heat, cold and heat, showers and dew, frosts and cold, frost and snow, night-time and day, darkness and light, lightning and clouds, mountains and hills, all plants of the earth, fountains and springs, rivers and seas, creatures of the a sea, every bird in the sky, wild beasts and tame, children of men) (3,57-88).
But this acknowledgement is real only if and when in his turn man recognises the dignity of the place where he lives and determines to respect nature, to accept creatures and to welcome the wealth of their diversity. Only this practical acceptance of everything that exists, but especially living beings, leads to the affirmation of the value of creation and the rights of the one who has been placed as the guardian, and consequently to overcome exploitation and abuse, in order to achieve a development that respects the environment and establishes an harmonious cohabitation with other living creatures.
Nowadays, industrial society has fostered the production and the expansion of wealth, but too often it has gone too far in the exploitation of resources, leading to man being denied his humanity so that almost without realising it he has been reduced to a mere producer/consumer.
The culture of life leads us to a genuine ecological attitude: to a love for all human beings, but also for animals and plants; in other words to a love for all of creation and to the defence and the promotion of all signs of life against the mechanics of destruction and death.
In the face of the threats of a disordered exploitation, of the destruction of nature and of non-sustainable development, which are producing pollution, the greenhouse effect, de-forestation, desertification, the impoverishment of resources, the result of an insatiable greed and a lack of responsibility not only with regard to creation which God has given us as a home for everyone, but also with regard to future generations, it seems to me worth remembering the words of the great Indian chief Seattle: that which wounds the Earth wounds the sons and the daughters of the Earth.
God has pledged to preserve nature, but not without us: he has made us his collaborators, he has given us this responsibility. The Rainbow programme for safeguarding creation is the work of God, of everybody, of each one.
