In 1998, the Passionist Community of Canada decided to provide a new legacy for St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin, a Roman Catholic parish in North York (the northern half of Toronto, Ontario) that it has served for over 53 years. This legacy constitutes the construction of a church that includes a 750-seat worship space, a generously proportioned narthex, offices, meeting rooms, and other support facilities for its ongoing ministries.  It has become the first church in Canada to receive Gold certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building Rating System.  LEED® was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and adapted for use in Canada by the Canada Green Building Council. Both organizations bring together industry leaders to promote high-performance sustainable buildings.

The new church replaces a 500-seat, deteriorating facility that had become prohibitively expensive to operate and maintain. “While reducing energy costs was one of the reasons for building a ‘green’ church,” says Fr. Paul Cusack, C.P., current Pastor at St. Gabriel’s, “Our primary motivation was to establish a link between the sacredness of the gathered community of Faith and the sacredness of the Earth.”  As such, the new church constitutes a dramatic departure in the design of sacred space.  Unlike most churches built to inspire a sense of other-worldliness, the new St. Gabriel’s is designed to emphasize that when we gather to worship; we do so within the greater context of creation. It has been conceived as an articulation of the eco-theology of Passionist, Father Thomas Berry, and his belief that we must work towards establishing a mutually-enhancing, human-earth relationship. 

It has long been apparent that we are facing an ecological crisis of alarming magnitude.  In our race to control and exploit the earth’s natural resources for the benefit of humankind, we have been blind to the fact that we are shutting down the very life supporting systems that we depend upon for our survival.

In response to this growing awareness, many theologians and scholars are realizing the need to revisit scripture and the many insights on humankind’s relationship to creation that exist within our church’s rich tradition.  On June 10, 2002, Pope John Paul II and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople signed a common declaration on environmental ethics in Rome and in Venice.  In it they called for a new relationship towards the earth: 

What is required is an act of repentance on our part and a renewed attitude to view ourselves, one another, and the world around us within the perspective of the divine design for creation.

This declaration suggests that creation is integral to God’s divine plan and that as humans, we need to be reconciled not just to each other, but to all of creation. 

The universe in all its wondrous modes of expression, both individually and collectively, is a celebration of its divine origin. Imagine what our liturgies would be like if the diversity of life on the planet was not there to provide us with inspiration?  Imagine for a moment how we would decorate our churches to reflect the liturgical seasons or how our scripture and prayers would have evolved if we lived all of our lives in a landscape that resembled the moon.  Any threat to the earth’s ability to function in all its glory and provide the essentials of life must also be understood as a threat to religion.  If the water is contaminated by pollution then it can’t be drunk or used in Baptism. Thomas Berry suggests that both in its physical reality and its religious symbolism, it becomes a source not of life, but death.

How do we weave ourselves back into the web of life? How do we become re-enchanted with the glory of creation?  As an architect who designs sacred space, how can I respond to the insights revealed by eco-theology? Once again, I would like to return to the work of Thomas Berry for the answers.  He believes that the real hope lies in our ability to re-establish an integrated sense of the whole, to redefine a cosmology based not upon an anthropocentric view of the human as primary but based instead upon a biocentric understanding of the earth as primary and the needs of the human as derivative.  In order to do this, he believes we need first to examine the inner intentionality of God’s universe as manifested by its three creative principles:  differentiation, subjectivity, and communion.

According to Thomas Berry, “differentiation” is the primordial expression of the universe.  Out of the fiery violence of the “Big Bang” came radiation and differentiated particles that through a certain sequence of events, found expression in an overwhelming variety of manifestations.  The universe is coded for an ever increasing, non-repeatable, biodiversity as exemplified by the incredible variety of life that has evolved on the earth. In reality, we cannot help but be creative because the universe is creative.  Our role as humans must now be to restore the earth’s ability to continue its growth towards complexity and differentiation.

The second primary creative principle of the universe as identified by Thomas Berry is that of increased “subjectivity.”  Together, every reality that makes up a part of the universe is not just a collection of objects but is a community of subjects.  As subjects, we all have an inner dimension, an interior reality which not only reflects the diversity that surrounds us but reflects the original bursting forth of energy at the beginning of time.  Our creativity as humans is informed by the diversity of subjectivity that is allowed to declare itself around us.  Thomas Berry in his The Dream of the Earth, quotes a passage from Thomas Aquinas’  Summa Theologica, to reflect this understanding:

Because the divine goodness ‘could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, He produced many diverse creatures, that what was wanting in one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform in creatures is manifold and divided; and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever.’

Thomas Berry’s third creative principle of the universe “is the communion of each reality of the universe with every other reality in the universe.”  As mentioned before, we are an inextricably related community of subjects.  This genetic interrelatedness of everything in the universe to everything else means that the universe is in dialogue with itself as a community. “Everything is intimately present to everything else.”  The original bursting forth of energy at the beginning of time contained all the elements necessary for the evolution of the universe up to and including human culture.  The potential for religion, liturgy, music, poetry, dance, art and architecture existed as part of that original expression.  This is why we are connected to the stars in the night sky and to all living and non-living realities on the planet, why they are deserving of our awe and reverence, and why we must celebrate them in our creativity.

As humans, the time has come for us to forfeit our role as exploitive dominators and to assume the more responsible role of participatory co-creators with God by realigning our sense of creativity with the creative principles of the universe and the planet.  Only then can we contribute to the healing of the Earth in all its life systems and achieve a relationship with the Earth that is mutually-enhancing.

This particular vision may seem quite grand however and the author of this post does not fully share Fr. Berry’s conviction. But what I do share with him and the growing academic community is that there is a new and emerging cosmology that is going to change the way we see and understand ourselves in relationship to all living things and to the universe at large.

The Catholic Church agrees with this position and as a result the Pontifical Academy of Sciences has held conferences to evaluate the emerging scientific and theological development of this new cosmology. In the 1991 address to the participants of a conference by the Vatican Observatory Pope John Paul II laments the rift between science and religion since the times of Galileo saying that: In principle the Church could not accept such a rift, convinced as she was that the truth of nature and the truth of revelation come from the same divine source. Pope John Paul II goes on to celebrate the theme of that particular conference declaring:

The theme you have chosen is a particularly significant one: The Quantum Creation of the Universe and the Origins of the Laws of Nature. It not only includes such fundamental concepts in the natural sciences as quantum physics, quantum gravity, cosmology and physical laws, but also such religious themes as creation, God and nature, the natural and the supernatural, miracles, and others. You have chosen a difficult task, but one which offers the promise of advancing the understanding of concepts essential to the meeting of religion and science.

Why would this be important for those of us who engage in social justice ministries? In his book titled “Cosmopolis” Stephen Toulmin suggests that the way we understand how the universe functions and develops has an impact on how we perceive our own idea of social relationships. He tells us that “Social and natural regularities alike are aspects of the same overall cosmos+polis – i.e. cosmopolis, the practical idea that human affairs are influenced by, and proceed in step with heavenly affairs.” Some of these social developments are intentional. Consider the fact that if you read Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” or John Lock’s treatises on government, both assert a position on the natural order as a fundamental reason for establishing their social economic or political systems.

A new cosmology is indeed emerging and the social implications of this will be enormous. Fr. Berry’s contribution was to address our spirituality so that the “truth of revelation” can be integrated with the “truth of nature.” Below I will briefly explain the emerging cosmology and present Fr. Berry’s recommendations for developing a “Christian cosmology”.  

A New Cosmology:

The social order that has governed our nations since World War II have been designed based on a Newtonian Universe. Newton’s and Galileo’s great revolution was to identify a universe that looked to be in a timeless and almost perfect order. The famous image we received was that the universe functioned like a well oiled machine (usually like a clock). Theologically God was understood as the “Prime Mover” or the clock winder who set the universe in motion and who then walked away leaving us to continue oiling the divine machine. An implication of this was to identify ourselves as cogs in a machine. We each had our individual duty. If we did it responsibly, we would keep the universe functioning well. Religion and faith became very individualized since our goal was to be individually in tune with the master designer. Our social structures served that same purpose. Politically we focused on governing the self-interest of the individual. Economically we also focused on serving the individual’s interest in the marketplace. The rebellion of communism did not alter the social cosmology. Instead it shifted the priority. Instead of focusing on the individual cogs, Communism created a political and economic system based on serving the social machine itself.

Throughout the 20^th century we have been introduced to a new cosmology. Albert Einstein has taken us on a journey towards getting to know a universe that is not stable and in orderly motion. Instead we are now aware of an expanding universe that is deeply interrelated. We have begun to identify the Universe as a constantly emergent cosmos of dynamic matter originating in time from a single source. The sciences of quantum mechanics show not an orderly but a very chaotic system of subatomic particles. String theory posits the possibility that matter may look chaotic but can again be interrelated and unified. Our expanding universe is causing us to be quite humble as we consider these mysterious aspects of nature. The implications for theology are amazing. God is no longer a separate being that wound a perfect clock and walked away. God is ever and always present with an ever changing universe. Might the essence of string theory even offer us a glimpse into the unifying divine plan?

To seek the implications of this cosmology for the social order we do not have to look too far. Since World War II we have begun to design social systems based on an interrelated reality that we believe cannot be ignored. While politically many of us still hide behind the façade of nationalism and national borders, economically almost none of us can deny the implication of living in a globalized world. Globalization itself is the birth of the first social concept that gives expression to this new cosmology.

Fr. Berry suggested that within our own theological field it is our responsibility to wrestle with the spiritual and theological implications of this new cosmology. In an article that he wrote called “Christian Cosmology” he makes the following recommendations regarding how the new cosmology intersects with our faith and spirituality:

1. The Universe is a sequence of irreversible transformations begun 13.7 billion years ago with four major stages (galactic, earth, life and human)
2. The evolutionary process has a psychic-spiritual as well as a material-physical aspect
3. Earth has a privileged role as a planet whereon life is known to exist. There is a unity of the earth process (what happened to on member affects the others.)
4. Through humanity the universe reflects and celebrates itself in conscious self awareness.
5. The ultimate measure of value is found in the full expression of the universe. The well being of humanity coincides with the well being of the earth.
6. The universe can be understood as the primary revelation of the divine.
7. Biblical revelation (incarnation and redemption) all takes place within the larger cosmological and historical context.

With these recommendations Fr. Berry is suggesting that by integrating  our emerging cosmology we will be developing a spirituality of deep and dynamic interrelationship between God, creation, and ourselves. Our former cosmology had us existing as a far more independent and isolated reality. The new emerging cosmology is depicting a far more symbiotic relationship within all of creation. Utilizing Christian language Fr. Berry sees all of creation existing in communion with God. He offers us this mantra to help us reorient our vision of ourselves with all of creation: “We are no longer a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects”.

He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Passionist spirituality is centered on the image and salvific purpose of the Cross throughout the development of humanity and creation. Beyond the vast letters and the diary that St. Paul of the Cross wrote the only booklet that we know he ever produced was an intense spiritual exercise based on the devotion to Christ’s passion which he called “Mystical Death”. In this work and in some of his letters St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionist (not to be confused with St. Paul the Apostle), centers much of his spiritual direction on a mystical transformation that we are all privy to and from which we grow ever deeper into our relationship with Christ. This mystical transformation occurs to us within our life journey when moments of great suffering happen to us. For St. Paul of the Cross all suffering has the capacity to bring us closer to the redemptive suffering of the Cross, this is the part of the journey that he calls “Mystical death”. It is not an actual death but in a sense it is a part of us that is dying. We let go of something that we have been used to or comfortable with. When we can allow this suffering to transform us and to be redefined by our suffering in way that will change our actions, behaviors and way of thinking  then we begin to participate in a “Divine Rebirth”. In our life journey major events like suffering will give us mini passion and resurrection moments that can transform us towards God and Christ if we allow ourselves to be transformed into a greater existence.

But Fr. Thomas Berry, CP also suggested that the “Wisdom of the Cross” as defined in Colossians challenges us to see the wisdom of suffering as it impacts creation as well. Since humans have the gift of consciousness then we are called to reflect on “a certain coherence between the grandeur of the universe and the majesty of the cross of Christ”.  In the following passage from his article titled “The Wisdom of the Cross” Fr. Berry applies the Passionist spiritually of “mystical death” and “divine rebirth” to the evolving universe.

This coordination can be understood quite clearly when we consider the central role of sacrifice in the redemption process and then observe the central role of sacrifice in the unfolding of the emergent universe. We might even say that the redemptive suffering of Christ lies in the line of creative transformation moments revealed to us in the universe throughout the entire course of its history.

Fr. Thomas Berry integrated the Christian principle of redemptive suffering to the contemporary situation of environmental devastation. In doing this he challenged us to see how we can transform our own relationship with creation. Our world is in the midst of suffering and we bear some responsibility for this suffering. Catholic social teaching has called us to reflect on these environmental issues and to transform our relationship with the earth in order to respond to this level of suffering that will have an impact on us all.

We are called to address the issue of toxic chemical pollutions:

Nor can the moral character of development exclude respect for the beings which constitute the natural world…. We all know that the direct or indirect result of industrialization is, ever more frequently, the pollution of the environment, with serious consequences for the health of the population.-  Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, #34

We are called to address the issues of global warming and climate change:

At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God’s creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both “the human environment” and the natural environment…. We seek to offer a word of caution and a plea for genuine dialogue as the United States and other nations face decisions about how best to respond to the challenges of global climate change. – USCCB, Global Climate Change, #3

We are called to halt environmental degradation like deforestation, desertification and mountaintop removal:

The way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa…. Every violation of solidarity and civic friendship harms the environment, just as environmental deterioration in turn upsets relations in society. Nature, especially in our time, is so integrated into the dynamics of society and culture that by now it hardly constitutes an independent variable. –Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, #51

We are also called to address the situation of water scarcity, a situation that is of particular concern for our own basic existence:

Similar attention also needs to be paid to the world-wide problem of water and to the global water cycle system, which is of prime importance for life on earth and whose stability could be seriously jeopardized by climate change…. The ecological problem must be dealt with not only because of the chilling prospects of environmental degradation on the horizon; the real motivation must be the quest for authentic world-wide solidarity inspired by the values of charity, justice and the common good. – Pope Benedict XVI, January 2010

The Passionist JPIC Office has developed a retreat program based on the redemptive spirituality of the Cross to move us towards a transformed relationship with the earth and each other. The program is called “Living Simply so others may Simply Live.” Towards the end of this program we promote an action program adapted from the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center that will give individuals some practical ideas for adopting a Christian lifestyle that is attentive to these ecological issues and that pursues a right relationship with oneself, the human community, and the environment.  Visit our Passionist JPIC Resource page to see if this program or the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center program is something that you parish or retreat center may want to explore.

The mainstream Christian Churches have not sat idly in the midst of this development and debate. Many churches including the Catholic Church have gone on to offer positions and to integrate these positions within the official teachings of the Church. In Catholic Social Teaching the principle of being good stewards of creation or promoting the integrity of creation has been developed as a foundation to base the Church’s stance on the environmental issues of our day. The Catholic Catechism has this to say on the topic of the moral imperative to respect the integrity of creation:  

The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Catechism #2415

While many Christian churches have turned to scripture to examine their position with regards to the environment the Catholic Church has the added benefit of having a tradition of natural theology. Early Catholic theologians have positioned that the natural world also reveals the moral principles and the Divine purpose of our lives. This of course is attributed to the fact that creation comes from God and that it serves the ultimate good. In the Eastern tradition St. Basil the Great tells us:

 I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that wherever you go, the least plant may bring you the clear remembrance of the Creator. …One blade of grass or one speck of dust is enough to occupy your entire mind in beholding the art with which it has been made. … The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, even our brothers, the animals, to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. …We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of pain. May we realize that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee and that they love the sweetness of life.

St. John of Damascus clarifies the object of our worship within our respect for creation:

The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God. … I do not worship matter. I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. Because of this I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with his grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me.

The Western Medieval tradition continued to accept this natural tradition. In the works of mystical spirituality we have the teaching of St. Hildegard of Bingen who boldly said:

Do not mock anything God has created. All creation is simple, plain and good. And God is present throughout his creation. Why do you ever consider things beneath your notice? God’s justice is to be found in every detail of what he has made. The human race alone is capable of injustice. Human beings alone are capable of disobeying God’s laws, because they try to be wiser than God.

Another mystic St. Bernard of Clairvaux offered us this powerful statement:

Believe an expert: you will find something far greater in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you cannot learn from the masters.

St. Bernard’s belief was by no means an isolated position when you place it next to a statement made by one of the great doctors of the Church, St. Augustine of Hippo, who in an earlier time (410 AD) stated:

Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?

When you consider some of the pioneering works of eco-theologians like Fr. Thomas Berry, CP or Sr. Miriam MacGillis, OP who suggest that we may benefit from developing a theology that is based on the revelation of creation as well as the revelation of scripture it would seem that they are not so unique in their thinking from this early tradition of our faith. After all, it was St. Paul the Apostle who wrote in the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans:

 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Fr. Thomas Berry, CP died last year. He was a Passionist priest and ecological scholar. His work on developing an ecological spirituality that is based on the emerging cosmology has caused some controversy because it is thought to be unique and outside of the recent tradition of our faith. But as we can see his work is not so much new and unique as much as it is reviving an older tradition which has been lost to us since the late 1800’s. A tradition that St. Paul of the Cross, the founder of the Passionist, believed in when he poetically said:

 Listen to the sermons of the flowers, the trees, the bushes, the heavens, the sun, and all the world. You will find they preach of love and praise of God, and invite you to magnify the greatness of the Sovereign Artist, who gave them being.

The Parliament of World Religions was held in Melbourne, Australia, December 3-9. It was an exciting and exotic experience. In addition, it was also inspiring.

This Parliament originated at the Chicago Exposition in 1896. It did not meet during the two World Wars. It has begun to meet every 5 years, more recently in Barcelona and in South Africa. The purpose is to stimulate inter-religious cooperation to deal with the issues facing the planet and the poor. The meetings, covering the first week of December, took place in the enormous Melbourne Exposition Center.

The Opening Ceremony was a kaleidoscope of colour, sound and music as 12 major religion groups presented their thoughts, prayers and blessing for the work of the Parliament all in their own style, costume; some by word, others, song  and/or movement. The framework was provided by the Victorian Philharmonic Orchestra and 150 strong chorus with music. The indigenous instrument the didgeridoo gave it a clear Australian  indigenous flavour.

We were “welcomed to country” in a beautiful ceremony by Aboriginal elder Professor June Murphy Wandin with her little granddaughter, in her role as the senior woman of the Wurundjeri people, the traditional owners of the land on which the cosmopolitan city of Melbourne now stands. We were prayed over by rabbis, bishops, priests and shamans, Hindu, Muslim, Shinto and Zoroastrian leaders and challenged by several Keynote addresses to seize the moment and take up our responsibility for the earth and its poor. As was pointed out several times in the next week, our generation is the first to be able to consciously shape the course of the development of the world, & this planet.

Up till now we have been passengers in the evolutionary process and in global development. But now we can take an active role in shaping the whole process and with that comes responsibility to all its creatures to assist the growth of all creatures and species to their fullness. This is the “Great Work” of which Passionist Ecologian Thomas Berry spoke and wrote so passionately. Several Panels and workshops focused on Berry’s message and significance at this time of global crisis as we struggle to become “a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects”.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) featured strongly in workshops and panels. In the year 2000 all member states of the UN pledged themselves to use these practical goals to break the hold of extreme poverty and want on the lives of billions of people. The target date for reaching these Goals is 2015. More than half way through the timeline, many of these goals look like not being met. So poverty, infant and maternal death, lack of opportunity for children to go to school, the continued spread of malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS, increasing environmental degradation and insufficient commitment to a global partnership to pay for and meet these goals. Religions and religious traditions were called by the Parliament to take a more active role in making it clear that poverty is not an accident, but is the result of faulty decisions based on greed and selfishness.  To learn more of the MDG http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals 

It was truly inspiring to see a vast array of diverse religious groups seriously working together in a cooperative and respectful manner for the good of the earth. Concerns about food and water scarcity, and the impact of climate change and extreme weather on brothers and sisters forced to live in poverty were made so explicit. There was a palpable concern and mutual respect for each other’s efforts. Seeing and hearing the world in all its colour and wonderful diversity was a powerful parable of how religion and spiritual belief can be a force for good in our troubled world.  

Throughout the duration of the Parliament groups of Buddhist Monks gathered all day in the foyer to sing, chant, drum or meditate. We were invited to drop in on them at any time– a reminder that there is interior work to be done.

As the fruit of the sharing, many resolutions to be brought to our governments and to the United Nations were forged from our shared religious convictions and our commitment to the Earth as our common heritage and our mother.

Catholic Social Teaching reminds us that we are called to be responsible stewards of God’s creation. Passionist spirituality places us in the midst of a suffering creation. Fr. Thomas Berry who passed away in May of this year devoted his religious ministry to the spirituality of a suffering earth and we continue the legacy of his tradition by raising issues of environmental concern.

Here in the United States the issue of Mountaintop removal as a way to have access to coal has raised serious ecological concerns especially to the communities that reside close to these vandalized mountains. Communities in West Virginia and Pennsylvania are victims of water and chemical pollution as a result of mountaintop removal. Religious investors are working with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility to address certain Coal companies that are complicit in this form of ecological degredation and the Passionist community is looking at engaging with at least one company over this issue.

Moira Reilly is a friend of the Passionist community and Campus minister at the St. John University Parish in Morgantown West Virginia. Recently she went to Pittsburgh to attend a hearing on Mountaintop removal and she share this article to us through the Lay Ecclesial Ministry Blog.     

Eden and Mountaintop Removal Mining by Moira Reilly

In the beginning, the story of Genesis says. In my own life as a Passionist, I especially remember two things that date all the way back to 1951. (I won’t tell you how old I was.) Fr. Coleman Haggerty was teaching us about evolution. This was so far back I don’t know whether he was for it or against it, but for some reason he made a point of the Greek translation of that phrase: “in the beginning” . . . en arche (ἐν ἀρχῇ). He noted that these were the same words with which St. John’s Gospel begins . . . because linking the two texts suggests a cosmic dimension of Christ. The words, then, gained what Thomas would call a “numinous” quality for me. The other thing I remember was that 1951 was also the year that Thomas’s teaching career at the Prep Seminary ended—in no small part because in that McCarthy era, he felt he could not teach college level European history without having the students read Karl Marx! This began my interest in his confident intellectual leadership. Today, it allows me to interpret, in terms of the new cosmology, our reading from Genesis when it says humans “have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground”. It would be better to think about Thomas’s quip: “Maybe opera is the degradation of the bullfrogs.”

Genesis speaks of God. Thomas spoke with a sense of mysticism about the Divine. His thoughts are particularly apt on this, the day before the Feast of the Trinity. “There exists in the Christian world” he said, “this sense that the inner life of the divine is community. To say that community is at the heart of the ultimate simplicity (we attribute to the Divine) is a challenging statement.” Barbara Reid, OP, a scripture scholar teaching at Catholic Theological Union, says: “Augustine liked to speak of the three persons as ‘Lover, Beloved, and Love.’ Hildegard of Bingen favored ‘Fire, Burning, and Flashing Forth.’ One might name them ‘Eternal Giver, Receiver and Outburst of Joy’. There is no limit to the ways we can speak of the profound mystery of the Three in One.” She further notes: “the saving activity of God is concrete and visible both in great moments and in the routines of everyday life.” (America Magazine. May 25, 2009)

Thomas would so agree with her that there is no limit to the ways we can speak of the profound mystery of the Three in One. He considered the model of differentiation, inner articulation, and communion— insights emerging from our scientific understanding of the universe—as another way. He thus offered a vast theological program to further articulate the numinous meaning of ἐν ἀρχῇ.

Our second reading is insisting we realize that Divine love is gifted to us; the gift is primary . . . our love of the Divine is secondary. The genius of the author of this epistle is that he gives us a practical guideline: “No one has ever seen God, yet if we love one another God dwells in us and God’s love is brought to perfection in us.” In the several beautiful and moving eulogies of Wednesday’s service in Greensboro, various members of Thomas’s family introduced us to the many ways this man of towering intellect also proved to be a man of outstanding heart. By St. John’s standard: “The person without love has known nothing of God, for God is love.” Thomas certainly proved himself to be in possession of profound knowledge of the Divine. That is what he meant in yet another quip: Resist Ecstasy!

But Thomas gave us a challenge in what he called the Third Mediation of the Divine. Succeeding the Christian mediation found in sisterly and brotherly love, but not dispensing with it, the Third Mediation of the Divine is discovered in the numinous universe. He said: “The basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through Earth. . . . Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture. (Dream of the Earth, 137)

Finally the Gospel for this Mass of the Resurrection deals with the counter intuitive Evangelical norm of “turning the other cheek” and learning to love those who would present themselves to us as enemies. Each person here, I am sure, could cite numerous examples of this altruistic behavior in Thomas’s life story that would surely make us expect that St. Luke’s sense of the exuberance of the Resurrected life applies to him: “Give and it shall be given to you . . . good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over.” However, I feel that St. Luke is also giving us the opportunity to contemplate a further aspect of the numinous cosmos. St. Luke’s sense of exuberance suggests what Thomas called the asymmetry—the wild disproportion—between the gift and response.” He cites the sacrifice parents make for their children. If the child responds with gratitude, the asymmetry is accomplished. Yet that too can demand sacrifice. Thomas said, further: “The thing that exists in our times and the root of the tragedy might be considered to be our unwillingness to make the return for what has been given us. . . . We did not choose to be here, the story (of the universe) selected us to be here. Once we are here, we must be willing to fulfill the destiny assigned to us; that is our grandeur, that is our blessedness, that is our joy, that is our peace. . . . We are not making the journey simply by ourselves. We are making it with the entire universe community, the human community, the life community, the earth community. . . . All the great enormous sacrifice.” He later names that sacrifice as “the entire industrial system” and describes that system as “taking beneficial resources and giving back poisonous products, rather than the return of gratitude.” (Befriending the Earth, 132- 133)

But the last note is not tragedy, but dance. Along with Thomas, we are aware that the story of the universe has “brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, (so) there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process.”

The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends. – Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, pg. xiv introduction

Fr. Thomas Berry, Passionist priest, internationally-recognized historian of cultures and “earth scholar,” passed away on June 1, 2009 at Well-Spring Retirement Community, Greensboro, North Carolina. He was 94.

Rev. Berry’s writings and lectures on the relation of humans with the cosmos and the earth have notably influenced the intellectual and spiritual history of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries. He was awarded seven honorary doctorates and was the author of a number of books, most notably: The Dream of the Earth, 1988, winner of the 1992 National Lannan Non-Fiction Award; The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Em, 1992, in collaboration with mathematical-cosmologist Brian Swimme; and The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future, 1999. Berry also authored eleven collections know as the Riverdale Papers.

“Thomas Berry will be remembered as one of the great religious environmental thinkers of our time. He was one of the first to suggest that the current environmental degradation comes from the loss of a sense of the Earth is a sacred community. He was truly a voice for the Earth,” said Fr. Joseph Mitchell, C.P., director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center located in Louisville.

Berry was a member of the Passionist Province of St. Paul of the Cross. His early career included teaching in China in 1948, but he left when Mao Tse Tung came to power in 1949. He continued his Asian studies in the U.S. at Seton Hall and Columbia Universities and also taught at the Asian Institute at St. John’s University (1961-1965). He was Associate Professor of Religion at Fordham University (1966-79) where he instituted the doctoral program in the History of Religions.

In 1970 Thomas inaugurated the Riverdale (NY) Center for Religious Research.  Annual conferences explored themes such as Energy: It’s Cosmic-Human Dimensions; The Future: Technological Society Man’s Covenant?; and The Ecological Age. Scholars from around the world came to the center to participate in rethinking their disciplines in light of newly-understood relations of humans to the earth. These activities culminated in the 1998 founding of the Thomas Berry Foundation, an integral part of the Harvard-based international Forum on Religious and Ecology (FORE).

Rev. Berry is survived by brothers Francis Xavier, Benedict Regis, Thomas Gabriel and Stephen Badin; a sister, Margaret, and many nieces and nephews.

Funeral services will be held in four places: St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, Greensboro, NC, June 3rd; Immaculate Conception Passionist Monastery Chapel, Jamaica, NY, 11 am, June 6^th; Mass and interment, Green Mountain Monastery, Greensboro, 11 am, June 8^th; and a public memorial service at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City, details to be arranged.

Donations honoring the deceased may be made to the Thomas Berry Foundation, c/o Professor Mary Evelyn Tucker, Department of Religious Studies, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837.

Please visit the official Thomas Berry Site.

Thoughts for your Consideration: by Fr. Phil Paxton, CP

One night this past week I was watching a TV program. It was entitled “2100,” and aired on ABC. It was basically a program that tried to shed light on what would happen to the world for the rest of this century, based on the choices made by individuals, communities, and nations. On the program there were many opinions and projections given by various scientists. But what I found most engaging was the approach used to tie all these forecasts together. The program used the form of a narrative, following the life of a fictional character named Lucy, born in 2009. Not surprisingly, there was no mention of God or faith or spirituality in Lucy’s story.

Is there a faith dimension when discussing ecological issues? Yes! In fact, there are many theologians and spiritual writers who have dedicated themselves to these very issues for many years. One of them is Tom berry, a passionist, who just recently died. He had written much on the Passion suffered by the world. As you may remember last month, there was an announcement about the U.S. Catholic Bishops encouraging people to take the “St. Francis Pledge” with regards to climate change and its effects on the world, especially the poor.

I am neither a scientific expert nor a theologian on ecology, but it seems to me that the mystery of the Trinity has much to say about these issues. When we think about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are led to the conclusion that God is a God of love and relationships. This is how God chose to reveal the Divine Self to us. When we look at our Scripture readings for today, we see that out of love, God chooses to be in relationship with us.

In our first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people of all that God has done for them, leading them out of slavery in Egypt. In our second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, St. Paul reminds his fellow Christians that in the Spirit they can cry out to God just as Jesus did: “Abba, Father!” He also tells them that they are children of God, “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” And in our Gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus sends out His disciples to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Jesus also promises them (and us) that he will be with them always, “until the end of the age,”

As one of my professors in the seminary said to us, if we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that we are made in the image and likeness of God, we are meant to live in community. He could have said that we are meant to live in relationship. In fact, we are created that way; created in relationship with God, with each other, and with all of creation. It is in recognizing our connectedness to God and to all of creation that we can be willing to make the necessary choices for peace and justice and the sustainability of our environment. And it is in the love of Christ for us that we can be willing to make the sacrifices necessary for the good of all. For sacrifices will need to be made.

The doctrine of the Trinity, like all the tenets of our faith, calls us outside of ourselves to love God and the world. As we recognize more and more our connectedness in Christ, we will find ourselves more and more willing to forego the ways of violence and exploitation. Instead, we will seek the ways of the Gospel: peace, justice, reconciliation and cooperation.

 
Questions for Reflection in your Faith Sharing Group:

• How do you see relationships that are “out of whack” or unhealthy in our global world?  
• What needs to be renewed?
• Paul in Romans reminds us that we are children of God and heirs with Jesus Christ.  What experience has helped you to realize that we are all children of God?  What experience has shown you that we still have things to do to make sure that everyone is treated as a child of God?
• How has God’s Spirit called you into being part of a community?  
• How does the Spirit of God help you to live in community with others?  
• How is your community called to connect to other communities?

The creativity of Catholic spirituality, and indeed Passionist spirituality, has to this point faltered somewhat in its attempts to expand its horizons to the “Passion of the Earth”.  The object of the desired com-passion feels distant from our emotional lives and cold in its impersonality.  Those who have been inspired by Berry’s insight have pursued scientific avenues of understanding human/earth relationships.   These findings are so new that they have barely emerged over the horizon established by age-old tradition.

Our solidarity with all life, from bacteria to trees to chimpanzees is beyond dispute scientifically, yet beyond the ability of our common sense to appreciate it.  Our solidarity with rock and lava, gas and water is beyond dispute scientifically and yet requires the vast expenditures of expert personnel and scholarly papers in international conferences to nudge our common sense even to acknowledge it.  Our solidarity with the sun, our home star, and all other stars and galaxies is beyond dispute scientifically, but rarely emerges in day-to-day consciousness except in the spiritual disciplines of those who pioneer the spirituality of human/earth relationships.

No wonder then that those who speak of “Gaia”, either as a scientific theory (that the Earth is best understood in the paradigm of a living organism), or as cultural icon (borrowing a kind of personhood, such as was attributed to the ancient Greek Goddess), are relegated to the significance of a sub-culture.

And all the while, the Earth endures progressively more intense suffering.  Even the very success of the spirituality of the “crucified ones”, intensified as it is within the Passionist Congregation in this new century, can be seen as paradoxically working against the emergence of reverence for the “Passion of the Earth”.  That is because our social reality, proceeding with a common sense that is deaf and blind to the scientific insights illuminating the human condition described above, proceeds on the assumption that human persons live, breathe, pray, mature and die as though none of it affects who they are and none of it need effect new behaviour.  But the suffering of the Earth eventually exposes this disconnect.  That is the importance of climate change to our culture and to our spirituality. In can be seen as the flip side of Gaia. More than any of its distinct dimensions: the pollution of water, the vehemence and unpredictability of violent weather patterns, the increase of toxins and diseases, the failure of traditional crops, the increase of desertification, the death of the seas, etc., climate change — understood as the whole complex of the altered physiology of the Earth — seems poised to break through the impasse. Climate change reveals Gaia.

As recently as March the 8^th, 2009, Thomas L. Friedman tried (quite successfully, I think), to break through to a new common sense about our “growth economy” when he wrote:

“We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese….

We can’t do this anymore.”   [Week in Review, p.12, New York Times]

But spirituality has an even bigger task.  Human suffering generated by such an economy is real, but ultimately “collateral damage” of an even deeper suffering.  A “flow-thru economy” could solve many of the human side effects of a non-sustainable economy, but it is a long way from realistic recognition of the “new human” (biologically, physically, cosmologically) required for what Berry calls a “mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship”.  That can only be initiated and sustained by a spirituality able to feel com-passion for the Passion of the Earth, which in turn can be expected to develop myriad creative responses toward its healing. 

Thomas L. Friedman quotes the Australian environmental business expert, Paul Gilding:  “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts.”   He remarks:

[Gilding] has a name for this moment – when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once – ‘The Great Disruption’.” 

Perhaps such an economic disruption, because it can lift the opaque curtain of current common sense about the limits of Earth’s compliance with our growth economy, can lead to further, deeper revelations about the web of life that knits our solidarity with the Earth.  However, it seems to be too late.  Fast on the heels of this Disruption is what might be described as the “Gaian Disruption”.  That is because, sadly, our spirituality, detatched as it is from our earthling identity, is building up the Passion of the Earth just as feverishly as the “productivity” patterns of our economy portrayed by Friedman. 

It may well take this Gaian Disruption to open our eyes, finally enabling us to extend our com-passion. Passionists can join the vanguard of those who are beginning to discern this “turn to the Earth”.  We may even be able to bring some leadership to what is already a most difficult era of Earth history, progressing inevitably to more suffering and death.  Every expression of positive creativity we can manage because of our spiritual solidarity with the Earth will contribute to the productivity of the whole Earth community and its healing.

Healing — we have already passed the possibility of restoring the Earth.  Too many species have been extinguished.  Too much interference has crippled the Seas, too much poison has toxified the atmosphere.  It may be within the creativity of the Earth to generate another Cenozoic age, but for the foreseeable human future, we will be at the mercy of the spiritual and ethical wisdom we can acquire in what Berry terms an Ecozoic Age.  Everything else will be an untrammeled Gaian Disruption. A Passionist spirituality open to the Passion of the Earth enables a specific hope.  Within that solidarity we can establish “mutually enhancing relationships”.