Quotes on Ecology by Catholic Saints and Blesseds
Pope Saint Clement
The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (Circa 97)
The heavens, revolving under His government, are subject to Him in peace. Day and night run the course appointed by Him, in no wise hindering each other. The sun and moon, with the companies of the stars, roll on in harmony according to His command, within their prescribed limits, and without any deviation. The fruitful earth, according to His will, brings forth food in abundance, at the proper seasons, for man and beast and all the living beings upon it, never hesitating, nor changing any of the ordinances which He has fixed. The unsearchable places of abysses, and the indescribable arrangements of the lower world, are restrained by the same laws. The vast unmeasurable sea, gathered together by His working into various basins, never passes beyond the bounds placed around it, but does as He has commanded. For He said, “Thus far shalt thou come, and thy waves shall be broken within thee.” The ocean, impassible to man, and the worlds beyond it, are regulated by the same enactments of the Lord. The seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, peacefully give place to one another. The winds in their several quarters fulfill, at the proper time, their service without hindrance. The ever-flowing fountains, formed both for enjoyment and health, furnish without fail their breasts for the life of men. The very smallest of living beings meet together in peace and concord. All these the great Creator and Lord of all has appointed to exist in peace and harmony; while He does good to all, but most abundantly to us who have fled for refuge to His compassions through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and majesty for ever and ever. Amen.
+ Chapter XX. The Peace and Harmony of the Universe
Saint Ignatius of Antioch (Circa 107)
IF ANYONE confesses the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and praises the creation, but calls the Incarnation merely an appearance, and is ashamed of the Passion, such a one has denied the faith.
LET ME BE food for wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am Jesus Christ’s wheat. I must therefore be ground and broken by the teeth of wild beasts that I may become His pure and spotless bread.
Saint Justin (Circa 100 – 165)
GOD DELAYS causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world…because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature.
+ The Second Apology of Justin, Chapter VII
THE GOD OF the Christians is not circumscribed by place; but being invisible, fills heaven and earth, and everywhere is worshipped and glorified by the faithful.
Saint Irenaeus (Circa 129 – 203)
FOR EVEN CREATION reveals Him who formed it, and the very work made suggests Him Who made it, and the world manifests Him Who ordered it. The Universal Church, moreover, through the whole world, has received this understanding from the Apostles themselves.
FOR THE CREATOR of the world is truly the Word of God: and this is our Lord, who in the last times was made man, existing in this world, and who in an invisible manner contains all things created, and is inherent in the entire creation, since the Word of God governs and arranges all things; and therefore He came to His own in a visible manner, and was made flesh, and hung upon the tree, that He might sum up all things in Himself.
WE ARE ALSO NOURISHED by means of the creation (and He Himself grants the creation to us, for He causes His sun to rise, and sends rain when He wills). He has acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as His own blood, from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has established as His own body, from which He gives increase to our bodies.
GOD HAS created the world with his two hands, the Son and the Spirit.
THE GLORY OF GOD gives life; those who see God receive life. Men will therefore see God if they are to live; through the vision of God they become immortal and attain to God himself.God is the source of all activity throughout creation. He cannot be seen or described in his own nature and in all his greatness by any of his creatures. Yet he is certainly not unknown. Through his Word the whole creation learns that there is one God the Father, who holds all things together and gives them their being. As it is written in the Gospel, “No man has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has revealed him.”From the beginning the Son is the one who teaches us about the Father; he is with the Father from the beginning.The Word revealed God to men and presented men to God. Life in man is the glory of God; the life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation gives life to all who live upon the earth, much more does the manifestation of the Father through the Word give life to those who see God.
+ Against the Heresies, circa 180-185
BUT SINCE CREATED THINGS are various and numerous, they are indeed well fitted and adapted to the whole creation; yet, when viewed individually, are mutually opposite and inharmonious, just as the sound of the lyre, which consists of many and opposite notes, gives rise to one unbroken melody, through means of the interval which separates each one from the others. The lover of truth therefore ought not to be deceived by the interval between each note, nor should he imagine that one was due to one artist and author, and another to another, nor that one person fitted the treble, another the bass, and yet another the tenor strings; but he should hold that one and the same person [formed the whole], so as to prove the judgement, goodness, and skill exhibited in the whole work and [specimen of] wisdom. Those, too, who listen to the melody, ought to praise and extol the artist, to admire the tension of some notes, to attend to the softness of others, to catch the sound of others between both these extremes, and to consider the special character of others, so as to inquire at what each one aims, and what is the cause of their variety, never failing to apply our rule, neither giving up the artist, nor casting off faith in the one God who formed all things, nor blaspheming our Creator.
+ Against the Heresies, Book II
Saint Hermas (Circa 160)
He showed me again many trees, some budding, and others withered. And he said to me, “Do you see these trees? ” “I see, sir,” I replied, “some putting forth buds, and others withered.” “Those,” he said, “which are budding are the righteous who are to live in the world to come; for the coming world is the summer of the righteous, but the winter of sinners.”+ Pastor of Hermas
Saint Theophilus of Antioch (Circa 115 – 168-181)
HE IS LORD, because He rules over the universe; Father, because he is before all things; Fashioner and Maker, because He is creator and maker of the universe; the Highest, because of His being above all; and Almighty, because He Himself rules and embraces all. For the heights of heaven, and the depths of the abysses, and the ends of the earth, are in His hand, and there is no place of His rest. For the heavens are His work, the earth is His creation, the sea is His handiwork; man is His formation and His image; sun, moon, and stars are His elements, made for…seasons, and days, and years, that they may serve and be slaves to man; and all things God has made out of things that were not into things that are, in order that through His works His greatness may be known and understood.
CONSIDER HIS WORKS, the timely rotation of the seasons, and the changes of temperature; the regular march of the stars; the well-ordered course of days and nights, and months, and years; the various beauty of seeds, and plants, and fruits; and the divers species of quadrupeds, and birds, and reptiles, and fishes, both of the rivers and of the sea; or consider the instinct implanted in these animals to beget and rear offspring, not for their own profit, but for the use of man; and the providence with which God provides nourishment for all flesh, or the subjection in which He has ordained that all things subserve mankind. Consider, too, the flowing of sweet fountains and never-failing rivers, and the seasonable supply of dews, and showers, and rains; the manifold movement of the heavenly bodies, the morning star rising and heralding the approach of the perfect luminary; and the constellation of Pleiades, and Orion, and Arcturus, and the orbit of the other stars that circle through the heavens, all of which the manifold wisdom of God has called by names of their own. He is God alone who made light out of darkness, and brought forth light from His treasures…”
Clement of Alexandria (Circa 153 – 193-217)
HUMAN ART produces houses, and ships, and cities, and pictures. But how shall I tell what God makes? Behold the whole universe; it is His work: and the heaven, and the sun, and angels, and men, are the works of His fingers. How great is the power of God! His bare volition was the creation of the universe. For God alone made it, because He alone is truly God. By the bare exercise of volition He creates; His mere willing was followed by the springing into being of what He willed. Consequently the choir of philosophers are in error, who indeed most nobly confess that man was made for the contemplation of the heavens, but who worship the objects that appear in the heavens and are apprehended by sight. For if the heavenly bodies are not the works of men, they were certainly created for man. Let none of you worship the sun, but set his desires on the Maker of the sun; nor deify the universe, but seek after the Creator of the universe. The only refuge, then, which remains for him who would reach the portals of salvation is divine wisdom.
FOR IF WE HAVE as our teacher Him that filled the universe with His holy energies in creation, salvation, beneficence, legislation, prophecy, teaching, we have the Teacher from whom all instruction comes; and the whole world…has already become the domain of the Word.
THE DELIGHT derived from flowers, and the benefit derived from ointments and perfumes, are not to be overlooked.
Saint Anthony of Egypt, Father of Monasticism (Circa 251 – 356)
MY BOOK, philosopher, is the nature of created things, and as often as I have a mind to read the works of God, it is at my hands.
+ Quoted in The Greening of the Church, Sean McDonagh, 1990, Maryknoll: Orbis Books
Saint Athanasius (296 – 373)
THE FIRMAMENT, through its magnificence, beauty and order, is a prestigious preacher of its author, whose eloquence fills the universe. (PG 27, 124)
THE CREATURES are like letters proclaiming in loud voices to their Divine Master and Creator the harmony and order of things.
THE FATHER creates and renews everything through the Word in the Spirit…. All creation participates in the Word in the Spirit.
+ Letter to Serpion
IT IS, THEN, proper for us to begin…by speaking of the creation of the Universe, and of God its Artificer, that so it may be duly perceived that the renewal of Creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning.
DIVERSITY of bodies and parts argues a creating intellect.
THE WORD, then, visited that earth in which He was yet always present; and saw all these evils. He takes a body of our Nature, and that of a spotless Virgin, in whose womb He makes it His own, wherein to reveal Himself, conquer death, and restore life. For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, although he was not far from us before. For no part of Creation is left void of Him: He has filled all things everywhere, remaining present with His own Father. But He comes in condescension to show loving-kindness upon us, and to visit us.
FOR THOUGH man was created in grace, God, foreseeing his forgetfulness, provided also the works of Creation to remind man of Him… For whereas the grace of the Divine Image was in itself sufficient to make known God the Word, and through Him the Father; still God, knowing the weakness of man, made provision even for their carelessness: so that if they cared not to know God of themselves, they might be enabled through the works of Creation to avoid ignorance of the Maker.
SO IT WAS open to them, by looking into the height of heaven, and perceiving the harmony of Creation, to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Who, by His own Providence over all things, makes known the Father to all, and to this end moves all things, that through Him all may know God.
MAN, UNMOVED by Nature, was to be taught to know God by that sacred Manhood, Whose deity all Nature confessed, especially in His Death. But all this it seemed well for the Savior to do; that since men had failed to know His Providence revealed in the Universe, and had failed to perceive His Godhead shown in Creation, they might at any rate from the works of His body recover their sight, and through Him receive an idea of the knowledge of the Father, inferring, as I said before, from particular cases His Providence over the whole.
+ ON THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD
THE CROSS has been not a disaster, but a healing of Creation.
FOR THOUGH THE body has eyes so as to see Creation, and by its entirely harmonious construction to recognize the Creator; and ears to listen to the divine oracles and the laws of God; and hands both to perform works of necessity and to raise to God in prayer; yet the soul, departing from the contemplation of what is good and from moving in its sphere, wanders away and moves toward its contraries… And so, instead of beholding the Creation, she turns the eye to lusts, showing that she has this power too; and thinking that by the mere fact of moving she is maintaining her own dignity, and is doing no sin in doing as she pleases; not knowing that she is made not merely to move, but to move in the right direction… Evil, then, consists essentially in the choice of what is lower in preference to what is higher.
+ AGAINST THE HEATHEN
Saint Ephraim the Syrian (Ephrem, Ephraem) (died 373)
Hymn XIII
THIRTY YEARS He [Jesus] went in poverty upon the earth! The sounds of praise in all their measures let us twine, my brethren, to the years of the Lord, as thirty crowns to the thirty years. Blessed be His Birth!
In the first year, that is chieftain over the treasures and Dispenser of abundant blessings, let the Cherubim who bare up the Son in glory, praise Him with us!…
In the fourth year, let the whole earth praise Him with us. It is but small for the Son, and it marveled because it saw that it entertained Him in its bed that is so very mean. He filled the bed, and filled the Heaven. To Him be Majesty!…
In the fifth year, the Sun shone unto the earth. With its breath let it praise our Sun Who brought His breadth down low, and humbled His mightiness, that the subtle eye of the unseen soul might be able to look upon Him. Blessed be His brightness!…
In the sixth year again, let the whole air praise Him with us, in whose wide space it is that all things are made glorious, which saw its mighty Lord that had become a little Child in a little bosom. Blessed be His dignity!
In the seventh year, the clouds and winds rejoiced with us and sprinkled the dews over the flowers, for they saw the Son who enslaved His brightness and received disgrace and foul spitting. Blessed be His Redemption!
In the year also that is eighth, let the fields give praise, that suckle their fruits from His fountains. They worshipped because they saw the Son in arms and the pure One sucking pure milk. Blessed be His good pleasure!
In the ninth year, let the earth glorify the might of her Creator, Who laid seed in her in the beginning that she might bring forth all her produce; for it saw Mary, a thirsty land, who yielded the fruit of a Child that was a wonder, yea, a marvel. [Then] it praised Him more exceedingly, for that He was a great Sea of all good things. To Him be exaltation!
In the tenth year, let the mount Sinai glorify Him, it which trembled before its Lord. It saw that they took up stones against its Lord; He received stones, Who should build His Church upon a Stone. Blessed be His building!
In the eleventh year, let the great sea praise the fists of the Son that measured it, and it was astonished and saw that He came down, was baptized in a small water, and cleansed the creatures. Blessed be His noble act!…
In the sixteenth year, let the wheat praise by its type that Husbandman, Who sowed His Body in the barren earth, since it covers all, spreads itself out and yields new Bread. Blessed be the Pure One!…
In the year that is thirtieth, let the dead praise Him with us, because they are quickened, and the living, because they have turned to repentance, because height and depth were set at one by Him. Blessed be He and His Father!
Hymn III
FOR SEE HOW, when He was wholly hanging upon the Cross, His Power was yet making all creatures move! For He darkened the sun and made the earth quake; He rent the graves and brought forth the dead! See how when He was wholly on the Cross, yet again He was wholly everywhere!
Thus was He entirely in the womb, while He was again wholly in everything!… For while His Power was dwelling in the womb, He was fashioning infants in the womb! His Power compassed her, that compassed Him. For if He drew in His Power, all things would fall; His Power upholds all things; while He was within the womb, He left not His hold of all. He in His own Person shaped an Image in the womb, and was shaping in all wombs all countenances.
Whilst He was increasing in stature among the poor, from an abundant treasury He was nourishing all! While she that anointed Him was anointing Him, with His dew and His rain He was anointing all!
The Magi brought myrrh and gold, while in Him was hidden a treasure of riches. The myrrh and spices which He had prepared and created, did the Magi bring Him of His own.
It was by Power from Him that Mary was able to bear in Her bosom Him that bears up all things! It was from the great storehouse of all creatures, Mary gave Him all which she did give Him! She gave Him milk from Himself that prepared it, she gave Him food from Himself that made it!…
The sea when it bore Him was still and calmed, and how came the lap of Joseph to bear Him? For every creature whether above or below obtains each his measure of knowledge; He the Lord of all gives all to us…
He made the water wine as Maker: and yet he drank of it as a poor man…
By power from Him did Simeon carry Him; he that presented Him, was by Him presented [to God]. He gave imposition of hands to Moses in the Mount, and received it in the midst of the river from John. In the power of His gifts John was enabled to baptize, though earthy, the heavenly. By power from Him the earth supported Him: it was nigh to being dissolved, and His might strengthened it. Martha gave Him to eat: viands which He had created she placed before Him. Of His own all that give have made their vows: of His own treasures they placed upon His table.
LONG YE FOR my Well-beloved, that He may dwell in you; and ye also that are impure that He may sanctify you! ye Churches also, that the Son of the Creator Who came to renew all creatures, may adorn you! He received the foolish who worshiped and served all the stars; He renewed the earth which was worn out through Adam, who sinned and waxed old. The new formation was the creature of its Renewer, and the all-sufficient One repaired the bodies along with their wills.
THE WHOLE CREATION became for Him as one mouth and cried out concerning Him.
+ NINETEEN HYMNS ON THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST IN THE FLESH.
Dorothy Day, Servant of God (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980)
We lived a carefree lifestyle living off the land and sea — gardening, fishing, and claming. I thought that we would be contributing to the misery of the world if we failed to rejoice in the sun, the moon, and the stars, in the rivers which surrounded the island, in the rivers which surrounded the island on which we lived and in the cool breezes of the bay. I began to believe that the world would be saved by beauty. It was this beautiful, natural world that slowly led me back to God. “How can there be no God,” I asked, “when there are all these beautiful things?”
– From the Catholic Worker
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (315 – 386)
AND WHY DID he call the grace of the Spirit water? Because by water all things subsist; because water brings forth grass and living things; because the water of the showers comes down from heaven; because it comes down one in form, but works in many forms. For one fountain watereth the whole of Paradise, and one and the same rain comes down upon all the world, yet it becomes white in the lily, and red in the rose, and purple in violets and hyacinths, and different and varied in each several kind… Thus also the Holy Ghost, being one, and of one nature, and indivisible, divides to each his grace, according as he will: and as the dry tree, after partaking of water, puts forth shoots, so also the soul in sin, when it has been through repentance made worthy of the Holy Ghost, brings forth clusters of righteousness.
+ Lecture XVI, as found on Christian Classic Ethereal Library server at Wheaton College
BUT HE WAS crucified not for sins of His own, but that we might be delivered from our sins. And though as Man He was at that time despised of men, and was buffeted, yet He was acknowledged by the Creation as God: for when the sun saw his Lord dishonored, he grew dim and trembled, not enduring the sight.
+ LECTURE IV, ON THE TEN POINTS OF DOCTRINE.
THE DIVINE NATURE then it is impossible to see with eyes of flesh: but from the works, which are Divine, it is possible to attain to some conception of His power, according to Solomon, who says, For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionally the Maker of them is seen. He said not that from the creatures the Maker is seen, but added proportionally. For God appears the greater to every man in proportion as he has grasped a larger survey of the creatures: and when his heart is uplifted by that larger survey, he gains withal a greater conception of God.
+ LECTURE IX. ON THE WORDS, MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, AND OF ALL THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE.
AT WHAT SEASON does the Savior rise? Is it the season of summer, or some other?… The winter is past, the rain is past and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the pruning is come. Is not then the earth full of flowers now, and are they not pruning the vines?… It is already spring… This is the season of the creation of the world: for then God said, Let the earth bring forth herbage of grass, yielding seed after his kind and after his likeness. And now, as thou seest, already every herb is yielding seed. And as at that time God made the sun and moon and gave them courses of equal day (and night), so also a few days since was the season of the equinox. At that time God said, Let us make man after our image and after our likeness. And the image he received, but the likeness through his disobedience he obscured. At the same season then in which he lost this the restoration also took place. At the same season as the created man through disobedience was cast out of Paradise, he who believed was through obedience brought in. Our Salvation then took place at the same season as the Fall: when the flowers appeared, and the pruning was come. A garden was the place of His Burial, and a vine that which was planted there: and He hath said, I am the vine! He was planted therefore in the earth in order that the curse which came because of Adam might be rooted out. The earth was condemned to thorns and thistles: the true Vine sprang up out of the earth, that the saying might be fulfilled, Truth sprang up out of the earth, and righteousness looked down from heaven.
+ LECTURE XIV.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen (328 – 389)
YOU, [FATHER], have created the universe, giving each thing its corresponding place and sustaining it by the power of your providence… Your Word is God the Son. He is, in fact, consubstantial with the Father, equal to him in honor. He has reconciled the universe harmoniously, to rule over all things. Embracing all things, the Holy Spirit, God, cares for and protects all things. I will proclaim you, living Trinity, the one and only monarch…the unshakable force that rules the heavens, whose face is inaccessible to the eye but who contemplates the whole universe and knows all the secret depths of the earth down to its abysses. O Father, be kind to me…may I find mercy and grace, because to you are glory and grace forever.
+ Carme 31, in Poesie/1, Rome, 1994, p. 65-66
Saint Patrick (c. AD 385–461)
At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it has,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along the path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the Earth with its starkness;
All these I place
By God’s almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of Darkness.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven,
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today,
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of creation.
Saint Martin de Porres (1579-1639)
At age 11, Saint Martin de Porres took a job as a servant in the Dominican priory and performed the work with such devotion that he was called “the saint of the broom.” Everything – sweeping, weeding a garden, caring for the sick – could be a prayer if offered to God.