Here is the first Lenten sermon Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, gave Friday at the Vatican in the presence of Benedict XVI and the Curia.
* * *
"All Creation Has Been Groaning and Suffering in
Labor Pains" (Romans 8:22)
The Holy Spirit in the Creation and Transformation of
the Cosmos
1. The world in a state of anticipation
During Advent St. Paul introduced us to the knowledge
and love of Christ. Now during Lent the Apostle will
serve as our guide in knowing and loving the Holy
Spirit. For this purpose I have chosen Chapter 8 of the
Letter to the Romans, because it contains the most
complete and profound treatise on the Holy Spirit among
all the Pauline writing and the entire New Testament.
We would like to reflect on the following verse:
"In my estimation, all that we suffer in the present
time is nothing in comparison with the glory which is
destined to be disclosed for us, for the whole creation
is waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be
revealed. It was not for its own purposes that creation
had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of
him who imposed it
— with the intention that the whole creation
itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and
brought into the same glorious freedom as the children
of God. We are well aware that the whole creation, until
this time, has been groaning in labor pains" (Romans
8:18-22).
One of the exegetical topics that has long been debated
with regards to this text is meaning of the Greek word
for creation, ktisis. In using the work creation, ktisis,
St. Paul sometimes refers to the world in its entirety,
that is humanity and cosmos together; other times he is
referring to God’s act of creating the world, or the new
creation that comes from Christ's Passion and
Resurrection.
Augustine[1], and even some modern authors[2], believes
that the term refers to the human world. Therefore no
cosmic prospective, in reference to matter, should be
attributed to the text. The distinction between "the
entire creation" and "we who possess the first fruits of
the Spirit," would be a distinction only made within the
human world and would be the same as the distinction
between humanity that is not redeemed and humanity that
is redeemed by Christ.
Nevertheless, the almost unanimous opinion nowadays is
that the word ktisis refers to creation as a whole,
which is both the material world and the world of
humanity. The statement that creation is subject to
vanity "through no fault of its own," would be
meaningless unless it refers precisely to material
creation.
The Apostle sees this creation as permeated by a sense
of anticipation, in a "state of internal tension." The
object of this anticipation is the revelation of the
glory of God's children. "In its seemingly closed and
immobile existence, creation… impatiently awaits the
glorified man, for whom it will be the 'world,' and
therefore will it also be glorified."[3]
This state of suffering anticipation is caused by the
fact that creation, through no fault of its own, has
been dragged into a state of godlessness that the
Apostle describes in the beginning of his letter (ref.
Romans 1:18 and following). There he defines this state
as an "injustice" and a "lie." Here he uses the words
"vanity" (mataiotes) and corruption (phthora) which mean
the same thing: "a loss of meaning, unreal, lack of
strength, splendor, the Spirit and life."
This state is not closed or definitive. There is hope
for creation! Not because creation, as such, is capable
of subjectively hoping, but rather because God intends
to rescue it. This hope is tied to the redeemed man, the
"son of God." In an action opposed to Adam's, someday he
will definitively raise up the cosmos in its own state
of freedom and glory.
This is the basis for Christian's deepest responsibility
with regards to the world: beginning now, to display the
signs of the freedom and glory to which the entire
universe is called; to suffer with hope, knowing that
"the sufferings of the present moment are nothing
compared to the future glory that will be manifested in
us."
In the final verse the Apostle sets this vision of faith
on a burning and dramatic image: The entire creation is
compared to a woman who suffers and moans in labor pain.
Within human experience, this is a suffering that is
always mixed with joy, very different from the world's
silent and hopeless tears, which Virgil spoke of in the
Aeneid: "sunt lacrimae rerum," these are tears for
things.[4]
2. The thesis of "Intelligent design." Is it "Science or
Faith"?
The Apostle's prophetic and faith filled vision offers
us the chance to touch upon a topic that today is
heavily debated regarding the presence, or lack there
of, of a divine project internal to creation. At the
same time we don't want to place too great of a
scientific or philosophical burden on the Pauline text,
which it is evident it doesn't have. The 200th
anniversary of Darwin's birth (Feb. 12, 1809) makes this
type of reflection even more opportune and needed.
In Paul's view God is at the beginning and end of the
world's history. He mysteriously guides it toward a
purpose, making even the excesses of human liberty serve
this purpose. The material world serves man and man
serves God. It is not just Paul's idea. The theme of the
final liberation of matter and its participation in the
glory of God's children finds a parallel in the themes
of the "new heavens and new earth" of the Second Letter
of Peter (3:13) and Revelation (21:1).
The first great novelty of this vision is that it speaks
to us about liberation of matter, not about liberation
from matter, as happened among almost all the old
concepts of salvation: Platonism, Gnosticism, Docetism,
Manichaeism, and Catharism. St. Irenaeus spent his
entire life countering the Gnostic belief according to
which "matter is incapable of salvation."[5]
The problem is presented in different terms within the
current dialogue between science and faith, but the
substance is the same. It is about knowing whether the
cosmos was thought of and willed by someone, or if it is
the result of "chance and necessity"; if its path
displays signs of an intelligence and moves toward a
precise purpose, or if it evolves blindly, so to speak,
obeying only its own laws and biological mechanisms.
The thesis of believers in this respect has come to be
referred to in English as Intelligent design, (it's
understood that the design belongs to the Creator). In
my opinion what has created so much discussion and
argument about this idea has been the fact that no clear
distinction is made between intelligent design as a
scientific theory and intelligent design as a truth of
faith.
As a scientific theory, the thesis of "intelligent
design" states that it is possible to prove that the
world has an external author, based on the very analysis
of creation, and therefore scientifically, and that it
displays signs of an organizing intelligence. This is
the statement that the majority of scientists intend to
question (and the only one they can question!), not the
statement about faith, which the believer receives from
revelation and which even his intelligence feels to be
intimately true and needed.
If, as many scientists believe (not all!), it is
pseudo-science to make "Intelligent Design" a scientific
conclusion, it is just as much pseudo-science to
discount the existence of "Intelligent Design" based on
the results of science. Science could posit this pretext
if it could explain all things by itself: thus not only
the "how" of the world, but also the "what" and the
"why." Science well knows that it is not within its
purview to do this. Even the person that removes the
idea of god from his perspective, cannot also remove the
mystery at the same time. There is always an unanswered
questions: Why is there being and not nothingness? Even
the very nothingness is perhaps less inscrutable of a
mystery to us than being, and chance an enigma that is
less unexplainable than God?
I've read this significant acknowledgement in a
scientific book written by an nonbeliever: If we go back
over the story of the world, as you would flip through a
book from the last page toward the first, when we
finished we would realize that the first page was
missing, the "incipit." We know everything about the
world, except why and how it began. The believer is
convinced that the Bible provides us just this first
page that is missing. Just as in every book, this is the
page where the name, author and title of the book are
written!
An analogy can help us reconcile our faith in the
existence of God's intelligent design for the world with
the apparent fortuity and unpredictability highlighted
by Darwin and current science. It deals with the
relationship between grace and freedom. As in the
spiritual field grace leaves space to the
unpredictability of human freedom and even works through
it, so also in the physical and biological world
everything is based on the play of the second causes
(the fight for survival of species according to Darwin,
chance and necessity according to Monod); Even if this
very play is contemplated and assumed by God's
providence. In both cases, as the saying goes, God
"writes straight with crooked lines."
3. The evolution and the Trinity
The debate between creationism and evolutionism tends to
take place in dialogue with the contrary thesis, one of
a materialistic and atheistic nature. So it is
necessarily a dialogue conducted in apologetic terms. In
a reflection conducted between believers and for
believers, as we are doing, we cannot stop at this
point. Stopping here would imply remaining prisoners of
a "deist" vision of the problem, and not yet
Trinitarian, and therefore not specifically Christian.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is the one who opened the
conversation on evolutionism to a Trinitarian dimension.
This scholar's contribution to the discussion on
evolution essentially consists of having introduced the
person of Christ into conversation, of making it a
Christological problem as well.[6]
His biblical starting point is Paul's statement,
according to which "all things were created through him
and for him" (Colossians 1:16). Christ appears in this
vision as the Omega Point, that is, as the meaning and
final destination of cosmic and human evolution. We can
debate the method and the arguments through which this
Jesuit scholar arrives to his conclusion, but not the
conclusion itself. Maurice Blondel explains the reason
well in a note written in defense of Teilhard de Chardin:
"Faced with the grandiose horizons of nature and
humanity, without betraying Catholicism, we cannot rely
on mediocre explanations and ways of seeing things that
are limited, which make Christ a historic incident,
which isolate him in the cosmos as a minor episode, or
seem to make him an intruder or a lost soul within the
overpowering and hostile immensity of the Universe."[7]
What is still missing, for a completely Trinitarian
vision of the problem, is an understanding of the role
of the Holy Spirit in the creation and evolution of the
cosmos. This is required by the basic principle of
Trinitarian theology according to which the works ad
extra of God are shared by all three of the persons of
the Trinity, each of which participates in them with
their own characteristics.
The Pauline text we are meditating on allows us to fill
this gap. The allusion to creation's labor pains is made
within the context of Paul's discourse on the different
workings of the Holy Spirit. He sees continuity between
the creation's groaning and the Christian's which is
openly placed in relationship with the Spirit: "It (the
material world) is not the only one, but we also, who
posses the first fruits of the Spirit, moan internally."
The Holy Spirit is the mysterious strength that pushes
creation toward its fulfillment. Speaking about the
evolution of the social order, the Second Vatican
Council states, "God's Spirit which, with admirable
providence, directs the course of the times and renews
the face of the earth, is present in such an
evolution."[8]
He who is "the beginning of the creation of things"[9],
is also the beginning of its evolution in time. In fact,
this is nothing other than the creation that continues
on. The Holy Father Benedict XVI highlighted this
concept during the address given Oct. 31, 2008, to the
participants in the symposium on evolution, promoted by
the Pontifical Academy of the sciences: "As I said,
stating that the foundation of the cosmos and its
development is the wisdom provided by the Creator is not
to say that creation only deals with the beginning of
the history of the world and of life. Rather, this
implies that the Creator establishes these developments
and sustains them, he appoints them and constantly
maintains them."
What specific and "personal" thing does the Spirit
contribute to creation? That depends, as always, on the
relationships within the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is not
at the beginning, but so to say, at the end of creation,
just as it is not at the beginning, but rather the end
of the Trinitarian process. St. Basil writes that in
creation, the Father is the principle cause, he from
whom all things are; the Son is the efficient cause, he
through whom all things are made; the Holy Spirit is the
perfecting cause.[10]
The creating action of the Spirit is, therefore, the
origin of the perfection of creation. We would say that
he is not so much the one who makes the world go from
the nothing to being, but rather he who makes the world
go from being formless to being formed and perfected. In
other words, the Holy Spirit is the one who makes
creation go from chaos to cosmos, who makes something
beautiful, ordered and clean from creation: precisely a
“mundus” (world)" according to the original meaning of
the Latin word. St. Ambrose observes:
"When the Spirit began to gently blow on it, creation
did not yet have any beauty. Instead, when creation
received the working of the Spirit, it obtained all the
splendor of beauty which made it shine as 'world.'"[11]
It is not that the creative action of the Father was
"chaotic" and needing correction, but rather the Father
himself, as St. Basil notes in the text referenced,
wants to make all things exist through the Son and wants
to bring all things to perfection through the Spirit.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was formless and deserted and darkness covered
the abyss and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters"
(Genesis 1:1-2). The Bible itself, as can be seen,
alludes to the universe's passing from a formless and
chaotic state to a state on the path of progressive
formation and differentiation of creatures and mentions
the Spirit of God as the principle of this passage or
evolution. This passage is presented in the Bible as
sudden and immediate. Science has revealed that it
extended over millions of years and is still in action.
But this should not create any problems, once we know
the purpose and literary genre of the biblical account.
Based on the sense of analogous expressions presented in
the Babylonian cosmological poems, today the expression
"spirit of god" (ruach 'elohim) from Genesis' chapters 1
and 2 tends to be attributed a purely naturalistic sense
of strong wind. It is seen as an element of the
primordial chaos, on par with the abyss and darkness,
thus tying it to what came earlier, not to what follows
in the story of creation.[12]
But the image of "God's breath" returns in the next
chapter of Genesis (God "blew a breath of life into the
nose of man and man became a living being") with a
"theological" sense and certainly not a naturalistic
sense.
To exclude every reference in the text to the divine
reality of the Holy Spirit, no matter how nascent,
attributing the creative activity exclusively to the
word of God, would mean reading the text only in light
of what comes before it and not in light of what comes
after it in the Bible; in the light of the influences it
has undergone and not also the influence it has
exercised, contrary to what the most recent biblical
hermeneutics suggest. (Isn't the surest way to establish
the nature of an unknown seed to see what type of plant
comes from it?)
Reflecting on the unfolding of the revelation, we find
little by little signs that are ever more explicit of
the creative activity of the breath of God, in close
connection with that of his Word. "By the word (dabar)
of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by
the breath (ruach) of his mouth" (Psalm 33:6; cf. also
Isaiah 11:4: "He shall smite the earth with the rod of
his mouth, and with the breath of his lips He shall slay
the wicked"). Spirit and breath certainly do not
indicate, in these texts, the natural wind. Another
Psalm refers to that same text, stating: "When thou
sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou
renewest the face of the ground" (Psalm 104:30). Hence,
no matter what interpretation one wishes to give Genesis
1:2, it is a fact that the rest of the Bible attributes
to the Spirit of God an active role in creation.
This line of development becomes very clear in the New
Testament which describes the intervention of the Holy
Spirit in the new creation, making use precisely of the
images of breath and wind that are read in regard to the
origin of the world (cf. John 20:22 with Genesis 2:7).
The idea of the creative ruach cannot be born from
nothing. In the same commentary or edition of the Bible,
one cannot translate Genesis 1:2 with "a wind of God
breathed over the waters" and then refer to that same
text to explain the dove in Jesus' baptism![13]
Hence, it is not incorrect to continue to refer to
Genesis 1:2 and to other subsequent testimonies, to find
a biblical foundation for the creative role of the Holy
Spirit, as the Fathers did. "If you adopt this
explanation," said St. Basil, followed in this by
Luther, "it will bring great profit."[14] And it is
true: To perceive in the "Spirit of God" that moved
across the waters a first embryonic reference to the
creative action of the Spirit opens up the understanding
to so many subsequent passages of the Bible, the origin
of which otherwise could not be explained.
4. Easter, Passage from Old Age to Youth
Let us now identify some practical consequences that the
biblical vision of the role of the Holy Spirit can have
for our theology and for our spiritual life. As regards
the theological applications, I remember only one: the
participation of Christians in the obligation to respect
and safeguard creation. For the believing Christian,
ecology is not only a practical necessity of survival or
a political or economic problem; it has a theological
foundation. Creation is the work of the Holy Spirit!
Paul speaks to us of a creation that "groans and suffers
in the pangs of birth." To this, his cry of birth, is
mixed in a cry of agony and death. Nature is subjected
once again "without its will," to a vanity and
pollution, different from those of the spiritual order
intended by Paul, but derived from the same source that
is sin and man's egoism.
The Pauline text that we are meditating might inspire
more than one consideration on the problem of ecology:
Are we, who have received the first fruits of the
Spirit, hastening "the full liberation of the cosmos and
its participation to the glory of the children of God,"
or are we retarding it, as are all the others?
But lets come to a more personal application. We say
that man is a microcosm; to him, therefore, as
individual, is applied all that we have said in general
of the cosmos. The Holy Spirit is he who makes each one
of us pass from chaos to the cosmos: From disorder, from
confusion and from dispersion, to order, unity and
beauty, that beauty which consists of being conformed to
the will of God and in the image of Christ, in passing
from the old man to the new man.
With a veiled autobiographic reference, the Apostle
wrote to the Corinthians: "Though our outer nature is
wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every
day" (2 Corinthians 4:16). The evolution of man's spirit
does not take place in a parallel manner to that of his
body, but in the opposite sense.
In recent days, given the three Oscars and the fame of
the actor, there has been much talk of a film entitled
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a story by writer
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. It is the story of a man
who is born old, with the monstrous features of an
80-year-old and, growing, he is reinvigorated to the
point of dying as a real baby. The story is of course
paradoxical, but there could be an all-together more
real application if transferred to the spiritual plane.
We are born "old men" and we must become "new men." The
whole of life, not just adolescence, is a "an
evolutionary age!"
According to the Gospel, one is not born a child but
becomes a child! St. Maximus of Turin, a Father of the
Church, describes Easter as a passage "from sins to
holiness, from vices to virtues, from old age to youth:
a youth understood not of age but of simplicity. We were
in fact fallen by the old age of sins, but by the
Resurrection of Christ we were renewed in the innocence
of children."[15]
Lent is the ideal time to apply oneself to this
reinvigoration. A preface of this time states: "You have
established for your children a time of spiritual
renewal, so that they may convert to you with their
whole heart, and free from the ferment of sin live the
vicissitudes of this world, always oriented toward
eternal goods." A prayer, stemming from the Gelasian
Sacramentary of the 7th century is still in use in the
Easter Vigil; it proclaims solemnly: "Let the whole
world see and recognize that all that is destroyed is
reconstructed, all that is old is renewed, and
everything returns to its integrity, through Christ who
is the principle of all things."
The Holy Spirit is the soul of this renewal and
rejuvenation. Let us begin our day by saying, with the
first verse of the hymn in his honor: Come Creator
Spirit, renew in my life the prodigy of the first
creation, blow over the void, the darkness and the chaos
of my heart, and guide me toward the full realization of
the "intelligent design" of God on my life.
* * *
[1] Cf. St. Agustine, Exp. on the Letter to the
Romans, 45 (PL 35, 2074 s.).
[2] A. Giglioli, L’uomo o il creato? Ktisis in S. Paolo,
Edizioni Dehoniane, Bologna. 1994.
[3] H. Schlier, Letter to the Romans, Paideia Brescia
1982, p. 429.
[4] Virgil, Aeneid, I, 462.
[5] Cf. St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V 1,2: V 3,3.
[6] Cf. C. F. Mooney, Teilhard de Chardin et le mystère
du Christ, Aubier, Paris 1966.
[7] M. Blondel – A. Valensin, Correspondance, Aubier,
Paris. 1965
[8] Gaudium et Spes, 26
[9] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, 20, n.
3570 (Marietti, Torino 1961, vol. 3, p. 286)
[10] St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, XVI, 38 (PG 32, 136)
[11] St. Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit, II, 32.
[12] Thus G. von Rad, in Genesi. Translation and
commment by G. von Rad, Paideia, Brescia 1978, pp.
56-57; it should nevertheless be noted that in Enuma
Elish wind appears as and ally of God the creator, not a
hostile element that is apposed ot him. Ref. R. J.
Clifford-R. E. Murphy, in The New Jerome Biblical
Commentary, 1990, p. 8-9.
[13] This is how the "Jerusalem Bible" states it: cf.
note to Genesis 1:2 and Matthew 3:16 and in The New
Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, 1990, pp. 10
and 638.
[14] St. Basil, Exaemeron, II, 6 (SCh 26, p. 168);
Luther, On Genesis (WA 42, p. 8).
[15] St. Maximus of Turin, Sermon of Holy Easter, 54, 1
(CC 23, p. 218).
[Translation by ZENIT]