Weekly Reflection 071402AD

July 14, 2002AD

15^th Sunday in Greentime

Eye Has Not Seen: Ear Has Not Heard…

It is always a humbling reality check to remind ourselves that human language about God, the Absolute, is ultimately going to be inadequate to express totally the Mystery. Even the Scriptures themselves, divinely inspired to be sure, are written in limping human language. The Absolute and our relationship to the Absolute defy adequate explanation through the human categories of language. As Father Anthony DeMillo, SJ, wrote many years ago, “the Scriptures are roadmarkers on our journey to God.”

It is also a humbling reality check to remind ourselves that only 20 centuries separate us from the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and Its ongoing effects. We are only at the start of the New Testament. When St Paul speaks in the eighth chapter of Romans, from which we hear this summer, he speaks in divinely-inspired, yet humanly-limited, language.

Two things which we can certainly decipher in today’s reading are 1) Paul’s realization that creation is still in process. 2) The human person is intimately involved with an expectant longing. “We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now…and we also groan within ourselves as we wait…”

Today, science has, indeed, shown us that the universe is still in the process of creation. However, even today, the evolution of the universe is still something that would not be self-evident to most. Yet, Paul took the evolution of the universe for granted.

In addition, speaking out of his Jewish tradition, he implies that the redeemed human person is the pinnacle of the created universe. An intimate relationship of the evolving human person and an evolving universe are givens for Paul.

Paul feels that creation was made subject to corruption (by God) so that the universe would share in the ultimate triumph of the human person as God’s plan. Negative experiences befall the universe or any human person. They can ultimately be transcended through redemption (by God).

The One through Whom God works the coming to fruition of the universe and the human person as the pinnacle of creation is Christ Jesus our Lord. However, His Sacred Name is not mentioned in today’s reading. Still, the fulfillment of all creation is the total victory of Jesus Christ, which has already occurred on Easter Sunday. We share in Christ’s victory even now, but not yet.

As Teilhard de Chardin wrote twenty centuries after St Paul, “Something is afoot in the universe.” Christians believe that it is the coming to birth of God’s creation of the universe through the redemption of the human family in Christ Jesus. Through the Gift of the Holy Spirit at Baptism and throughout the course of our lives, we believe that the closer we come to each other, the closer we come to the fulfillment of God’s plan,

Eyes have not seen; ears have not heard, what God has planned for those who love God. Human language, even divinely-inspired biblical language, cannot adequately describe God’s plan. How humbling, yet how encouraging. 071402 AD jfq