Raise the World

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:1-2).

In the First Reading today, we read the story of Genesis. The first part of Chapter One tells us the whole story of creation, which is a very beautiful story, very rich, and tells us many things. If a person were to only know the first line of Genesis and nothing else in the Bible, they would already know a lot.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now we know where the heavens and the earth have come from. We know the origin of all creation.

God made all these things out of nothing. He created them—that's what Creation means—to bring into life from absolutely nothing.

We know that the world had a beginning. There was a beginning. There is a God. And we have an idea of what He did.

We know, and we're told later, that God created the world out of love, because “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16). He created the world out of love to give Him glory.

In that, we have the purpose of our existence. The whole of creation was created to give God glory.

The vocation of the layperson in the middle of the world is to order all the temporal realities, all of them, so as to give more glory to God, from the biggest things in the world that you could think of, down to the smallest detail.

The more order there is in the world, in our lives, in everything, the more glory is given to God. We have to try and rectify our intention, put our intention right. Bring order to the world, which tends towards disorder.

From this phrase, we also know that the world did not evolve. We hear a lot about evolution in modern culture because people who don't believe in God have no other explanation for the origin of the world. But the doctrine of the Church tells us that the world cannot have evolved.

There are four ideas it's good to have clear. If anybody ever says they believe in evolution, you can ask them if they believe in the evolution of the world, the evolution of man's body, the evolution of man's soul, or the evolution of women. Just with that alone, you can set them thinking, because probably they've never thought about all those aspects.

But when you think about it, can the world have evolved? It's not very rational to think that the world evolved from nothing. There was nothing and then there was the world.

Where did that first particle come from? What was the force that made that evolution happen? To believe in the evolution of the world is not rational.

Also, it contradicts what we're told in the first line of Genesis, that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

The Church allows us to believe, if we want, in the evolution of man's body. That's usually what people believe in when they talk about evolution. We see the pictures of the monkeys, etc., etc.

But at the same time, it's good for us to realize that has never been proven. It's a theory. Whenever we talk about evolution, it's good to think of—to put that word before it—the “theory of evolution.” It's a hypothesis. Often people talk about it as though it was dogma.

The Church allows us to believe in the evolution of the body, as long as we believe that at a certain stage in that evolution, God infused a soul into that body. That particular being that was evolving became the man at that particular moment. There was a definite beginning to that.

In relation to the evolution of man's soul, we're not able to believe in the evolution of the soul because the soul is something spiritual. How can something spiritual come from something material?

We could look at this particular table for the next 10,000 years and no idea would come out of this table. Spiritual things do not come from material things.

To believe in the evolution of the soul, again, is not rational. We must believe that God created the soul.

As regards the evolution of women, it's very difficult also to believe that man was evolving, evolving, evolving, and then there was a left turn and then there was women.

We're bound to believe in the creation of woman from the side of man, as we're told in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 2:21-23). This line, these words, tell us many things, give us a great basis for our life.

Is the glory of God the motive of all my actions? Because that makes us fit in with the purpose of creation.

Notice that the question does not say: Is the glory of God the motive of “most of” my actions? Or “some of” my actions. But “of all of my actions.”

We are created to give God glory in everything we do, in every moment of our life. Every increment of time is an opportunity to give God glory. Deo omnis gloria.

We try to put our intention right, or we try to have a habitual intention, to do things for the glory of God.

That's one of the reasons why the Morning Offering can be such an important norm. We get our day going on the right thought. The first thought we have when we wake up in the morning, even before getting out of bed—we try and direct that thought to God. It's a great way to start every day of our life.

If you add up all those Morning Offerings and all those first thoughts, in the course of our life, that comes to be an awful lot of thoughts and an awful lot of Morning Offerings.

With this, we place a certain order. God created the world out of love, but He also created order. He meant it to be a certain order there.

“The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). Darkness is associated with a lack of order, without form, and void, and emptiness. Nothingness.

God came then to place an order, and that order in itself gave Him glory.

We try to place an order in creation. We cut the grass, we take up weeds out of the flower beds, we sweep the floors, we clean windows, we lay tables, we try to have clean clothes, we comb our hair, we wash it. An awful lot of the things we do every day are tied up in order—to place a little more order in the whole of creation, or at least in that part of creation that surrounds us.

We can't be worried or concerned about the whole of creation and the whole world, but we can be concerned about that piece of creation that God has entrusted to our care: my room, my cabinet, my bed, my shoes; all the little things that we have or use; or this particular drawer—because from time to time things tend to get a bit disordered—our papers or things we use.

Occasionally we try and stop what we're doing, and go back and put a bit more order in this particular drawer, or this room, or this attic, or whatever else it may be, because we see there's a good in order.

God is there. We order our thoughts towards Him. We order our time through our knowledge of our plan of life. We order our day in our Mass.

Even if we were to do nothing else in our whole day, and there may come a moment in our life when we won't be able to do anything else, that alone is already something wonderful. We're helping the whole world to give more glory to God.

Because God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them, then all those things speak to us. They speak a divine message.

Occasionally, Our Lord has told us in Scripture, “Look at the birds of the air” (Matt. 6:26). Look at the birds of the air. Look at creation.

In our schedule of our existence, in the Work, we have certain moments when we get greater opportunities to do that. In our retreat perhaps, we look at the grass or look at the trees or look at the sky.

Possibly in our normal working day, we don't get too much opportunity to do that, but in certain moments that becomes important. We look again at the order around us. We discover God in creation.

Or we have periods of rest. “God rested on the seventh day” (Gen. 2:2). St. Josemaría has spoken to us a lot about the importance of rest.

Rest is not just doing nothing; it's doing something different, it's a change. But it's also looking around us, at things in a different way, to find God in those things.

“There is something divine, hidden in the most ordinary human realities” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations, Point 114).

In discovering that something divine, we discover something beautiful—the singing of the birds, which can be beautiful. We see the beauty in creation, which is a reflection of the beauty of God.

All this helps us to lift up our souls, and to want to order every aspect of our being and our life a little bit more to God.

A lady told me once, a busy professional career person in another country, how one day, she was sitting in the garden, and she began to look at a rose. She'd seen a rose a million times in her life, but from this moment she was contemplating that rose more deeply.

She said, “The thought came to me that Man has been able to put men on the moon. But no man has made a rose like that.” When she spoke, you could see that God was speaking to her through the rose.

God speaks to each one of us through creation. She told me that looking at the rose, she decided to make a major change in her life. She was a busy professional career person, but she decided to stop all of that, and she became a sort of Mother Teresa in the city where she lived. She began to take care of all sorts of AIDS victims, helped them to die spiritually and materially well.

It was a very beautiful existence, and discovered in some way “the pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:45-46); something worth chasing after in this world. Other people. God in other people. She found great happiness and fulfillment in all of that.

Sometimes, God has great spiritual messages for us in and through the things He has created. That order speaks to us—speaks to us about love, speaks to us about beauty.

Pope Benedict liked to say that we have to promote the cult of beauty. Beauty leads people to God (Benedict XVI, Message, August 30, 2002; Pontifical Council for Culture, Via Pulchritudinis, 2006; Address, November 31, 2009; General Audience, August 31, 2011).

He said people find beauty irresistible. God is beautiful.

Part of our role in our work, in our existence, is to bring out the beauty that there is in creation and the beauty that there is in the world. Open people's eyes to beauty. Reflect beauty in all sorts of ways.

It's a wonderful apostolate. It's a Christian feminism very much tied up with the beauty of creation.

Often when we place order in things, whether it's laying a table, or mopping a floor, or dusting a cabinet, we're bringing out the beauty that is there in this particular thing. We're helping other people to find God in this material thing.

It's a great apostolate: the apostate of apostolates. Order leads to beauty. Beauty opens people's eyes and people's minds.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). We may not think of light too frequently. We could take light for granted every day of our life.

Yet those periods of rest, of less troubled interchange, as John Paul II liked to call it in a wonderful document he produced on “The Day of the Lord”—all about rest. The sacredness of rest, he talks about (John Paul II, Dies Domini, May 31, 1998).

In those moments, we come to think a little deeper about the daily realities that we encounter. Like light. When did we ever stop to think about the light? And yet where would we be without light? Natural light and also artificial light.

The first thing that God said was, “Let there be light.” All that was needed for light to happen, or for all the other things that happened, was for God to let this happen. His word was enough to make things happen.

There was light in the world—a light in the world but also a light in our mind, in our intelligence, in our intellect. Part of our formation helps us to develop that light.

When we read things, spiritual things but also cultural things, we get a greater light, a greater insight; a greater insight into great spiritual truths that are there as a basis for our existence in the world.

We learn to see the world in a different optical angle: the angle of truth, of beauty, of love. We love the world in the way that God loves it.

And because we love it, we want to order it to Him. This is the vocation of the layperson, to raise up the whole of the world, to order all the temporal realities. It's a wonderful vocation.

That’s the vocation to which we have been called in our work, in our apostolate, in the formation that we give, in all sorts of ways—to help people to see things from a different perspective, a supernatural perspective—with that, the perspective of truth that brings peace and joy.

And so, we're “sowers of peace and joy” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 59; Christ Is Passing By, Point 168) in and through the light and the truth that we spread.

“And God saw that the light was good” (Gen. 1:4). Flowing through the whole story, the beautiful poetic story of creation as written in Genesis, is this message that God saw things were good. The world is good.

We have a deep inherent faith in the truth and goodness of the world and in the goodness of every human person.

No matter how evil they might seem, or how evil the world might seem, we know there's a basic goodness there. It just needs to be ordered in the right way.

For that, partly we have the sacraments, which bring a great spiritual order, bring out the goodness in the person, tries to drown out the evil.

Pope Francis has recently mentioned, talked about, the spiritual emptiness of the world. What are we going to do about the spiritual emptiness of the world? We can try and fill it with a great spiritual fullness instead of worrying or lamenting or being sorrowful about all the bad things that are in the world.

Let's see what we can do about filling that spiritual emptiness with truth, with goodness, with beauty, with love, with order, with formation, with good ideas.

“And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (Gen. 1:4-5).

Little by little, an order begins to come. On this thing that was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, now there is light.

There's a whole new type of existence. There's a whole new ball game that opens up horizons for people.

When we try to give formation to young people, the apple of our eye, every soul, we're opening vast horizons for them of truth, of goodness, of love; of wanting to do great things in the world; of having great ideals. The world is worth those great ideals.

“And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day” (Gen. 1:6-8).

Things begin to happen. There's a great optimism contained in these words because the world is good and God is working in the world.

We may look around at other people's worlds and we see that they have made a god out of other things—power, success, money, or material things. But we know that's not the truth. That's not the reality.

They're going after a false god, or false gods, where we have the real God. We have the rational explanation, the Revelation, so many other things.

We come back to Our Father God present in the tabernacle.

Lord, help me to reflect the goodness of truth and beauty that you are, so that other people may be moved to leave those other false gods that they follow, all the things that shackle the heart, to come in with us in search of love.

The only real ideals that are worth happening are worth having. We pray. We talk to God about our friends about the ideas they have, about the things they're yearning for.

We try to infect them with all the good things God has given to us, so they might come to know the truth and beauty of creation, live with that great optimism that brings them joy.

At the moment we live in a world faced with young people who are very much in need of these ideas.

An elderly priest in Asia once told me that young people today are faced with a great pessimism. I was rather surprised by those words. I’ve never really thought about it that way before.

Pessimism, particularly in the area of sexual morality. ‘Don't struggle against your passions, don't fight, you can't win, you're beaten before you start.’

The world transmits a message of that type. Most organizations in the world transmit the same message. Governments everywhere. Confused by those ideas, pessimistic ideas.

But we've come to inject the youth of tomorrow with great optimism, with wonderful things to do, with great things to think about. We look to infinity because we have been created for infinity, for immortality, for eternity.

That's why we have to raise the world and raise ourselves to those great goals.

“We are capable of God.” St. Thomas Aquinas called this in Latin, capax Dei (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II. I. Question 113). We've been created for eternity to be lifted up to heaven, to enjoy God forever in heaven.

We have to try and open the eyes of the world to these realities, to the beauty that they contain.

God is infinitely worth looking at. It is infinitely worth knowing and understanding the things that He has done.

“And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together, He called Seas. And God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:9-10).

If ever we get the temptation to think that the world is bad, or that ‘I'm being treated badly,’ or this thing that has happened is bad, we have to try and remember Omnia in bonum–“All things turn out for the good for those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).

Behind this contradiction, or this difficulty, or this pain, or this piece of bad news, there is something good always. That's why we can always smile, we can always be cheerful and happy, infect other people with that cheerfulness.

“And God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day” (Gen. 1:11-13).

We can fill our lives with acts of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God for the beauty of creation. Thanksgiving to God for the fact that we were created.

Sometimes we might hear people saying, ‘I wish I was never born.’ We have every reason to thank God that He has wanted to make use of us in this whole process of creation so that we would participate in creation, and through the work that He has given us to do, with our talents, with our abilities, so that we see a great role and vocation in all of this.

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14).

One time I remember in Rome looking out a window. I was sick at the time and there was an elderly priest, Don José Louis Pastor, who was sort of the doctor looking after me.

We were looking out this window. It was September. It was a dark evening in September. The leaves were falling off the trees. It looked rather dreary. Autumn is not the most beautiful season of the year in Europe.

Suddenly, he said, Cada estación tiene sus bellezas. I think it's a saying in Spanish. Cada estación tiene sus bellezas. Every season of the year has its beauty.

I was rather struck by that, because the beauty of creation was not particularly evident on that particular autumn evening. And maybe, it was beginning to drizzle as well. But what a beautiful statement. So optimistic.

Every season has its beauties. That's a very useful phrase. Every country has its beauties. Every town, every village. Every place we are, every day of the week.

Even if it might seem to be the opposite, that this is a dreary place, or this is a forgotten place, or this is a dirty place—every season has its beauties.

Every day has its joys. It's a rather beautiful way to be looking at things and seeing things. Very optimistic, very positive.

We're not in a world where everything is dreary, and everything is a failure, and bad, and gloomy, and cloudy. No, no, there's a sun that shines in our life, and there's a moon that shines at night. We see things from that different perspective.

“And let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, and it was so. And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night” (Gen. 1:15-16a).

Light rules. There's an order there, and that order helps other people to do other things, to move around the place, to use their talents.

“He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day” (Genesis 1:16b-19).

Over the whole of creation, God is going to place His Mother, the Queen and Lady of all creation. Our Lady is there, dominating everything, watching out like a good mother, taking care of everything, not missing anything.

When we look to the beauty of creation, we also find Our Lady, whom God made so beautiful, so that in her also we might see the whole beauty of creation.

Mary, may you help me to look more frequently at the beautiful things around us that you’ve created, to see the hand of God behind them, so that thought and that idea might lead me to give Him more glory, to thank Him with my act of thanksgiving, to praise Him, to remind myself that it is for that that I have been created, to lift up my heart and soul in prayer in all the hours of the day. Hence, the first and last thought each day for God.

There is a big plaque in the gardens of Cavabianca with a big cock there, a multicolored cock. There is a phrase in Latin underneath that says, Ego sum primus qui laudat Deum. “I am the first to praise God (each day).”

I remember when I saw that I was rather impressed. I had never thought about it before, that God created one animal in the whole of creation to be the first animal to raise his voice in praise of God every day: the cock.

A regal idea that comes from St. Josemaría. I’ve never really thought about it before.

But then I went to live in Manila. In the Philippines, one of the very popular sports is cockfighting. Downtown Manila is full of cocks. When you wake up in the morning, you hear a million cocks crowing. Suddenly, that idea comes back to you with greater clarity.

We can ask Our Lady that we also might raise our thoughts and prayers in mind and heart to God each morning as we participate in the great story of Genesis, by giving glory to God like the whole of creation.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MML