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the book of nature

teaching to read creation

reading the book of nature

nature is an outward sign of God’s presence, a sacrament.

WHY LEARN ABOUT THE BOOK OF NATURE?

St. Bonaventure wrote that the first two stages of the ascent to God are by contemplating Him through God’s “vestiges” in creation, and by contemplating God in His vestiges through our senses. St. Bonaventure recommended to pray and ask for God’s help to develop this contemplative outlook. Nature expresses a design of love and truth. It is prior to us, and it has been given to us by God as the setting for our life. Nature speaks to us of the Creator (Rom 1:20).

St. Augustine wrote that Christians can read the “Book of Nature” (the creation) equally as well as the sacred scriptures to find illumination about the order, goodness, beauty and love of God. The whole world was created for man: very little of it for his use, and all of it for his instruction, said St. Francis of Assisi.

Learn music from Angels – 11th century

Knowing Nature gives a more accurate understanding of the Trinity, Incarnation, Redemption, Mystical Body, the Church, Mary, and Man

All creatures are united in the depths of their being by the fact of being creatures.

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Angelic Order

The duties of angels “whom God appointed to their several posts, to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world”.

Book of Nature – nature and humanity’s nature in its supernatural context and historical-social situation

Screenshot 2022 04 17 at 00 31 43 Pope Francis Leads Good Friday Service in Rome LIVE YouTube
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participate in divine vitality

St. Francis’s preaching to the birds and the wolf of Gubbio is grounded in one insight: all creatures are united in the depths of their being by the fact of being creatures.

Each creature possess its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the six days it is said: And God saw that it was good. Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment. (catechism 339). As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, something is called bad only if it lacks what is proper to it, as a man is called bad insofar as he lacks virtue.

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 invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. (Romans 1:19-20)

Justin Martyr states that the “host of good angels” are to be held in the greatest veneration, and his contemporary, Athenagoras, refers to the duties of angels “whom God appointed to their several posts, to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world”.

The source of one’s being is not in oneself. There is no intrinsic reason for one’s being at all. The human person has no more claim to ”being” than a plant, an animal, a star or a stone. The unique role which the human person plays is in light of the Incarnation. That role is one of extraordinary dignity.

The hierarchy of creatures is expressed by the order of the six days, from the less perfect to the more perfect. God loves all his creatures and takes care of each one, even the sparrow. Nevertheless, Jesus said: You are of more value than many sparrows, or again: Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! (ccc 342)

Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures.(ccc 343)

Faith and knowledge of the order of creation are necessary to understand the world, as well as a range of subject areas such as arts and science, the economy and politics

In antiquity, people thought that the world had always existed, or that the world was an emanation from God, rather than a creation by God. This is a pantheistic belief that the world is a part of God.

Francis of Assisi’s brotherhood and sisterhood of all creatures is a sacramental vision and understanding that every creature, including oneself, is a sacrament of the love of God. The recognition of the other as a creature and, therefore; that which exists because it is loved by God cannot occur where the other is regarded as “it.”

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