God’s House Is All of Creation An excerpt from Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis by Murray Bodo, OFM
A
s he looked out of his cave and down to Assisi from the heights of Mount Subasio,
it was as if the whole of creation were spread out beneath his cave, and God’s goodness rushed in upon him. He could only think of that pure Goodness and how God shares his life with us. Everything good and beautiful comes from God. God went so far as to give us one of the persons of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus the Christ, who came among us as Jesus, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. Jesus was one of us, and yet he
was more. He came to show us how to praise God, though only he could praise God perfectly. Only Jesus was the perfect lover of God outside the circle of the Blessed Trinity. Everything and everyone comes from the Trinity, including Jesus. And everything that is exists in Jesus Christ. This was beyond Francis’s thinking. These were thoughts too high for him, a merchant’s son who understood the give-and-take that is business. The world of business Francis knew, and he knew that God’s economy was different. All the supply was on God’s side. All we could give in return was praise through Jesus Christ, who alone can give back adequately what the Father gives eternally. Praise we can give. And care for and of all God has created outside the Trinity, beginning with Jesus himself who sums up and contains all of creation in his own divine nature. Francis knew the two stories of the beginnings of things in the book of Genesis. One story emphasizes human beings’
F r a nc isc anMedia.org
25
