Alliance for Catholic Education
Reflection by Fr. Geoffrey Mooney, CSC
Parochial Vicar, Christ the King Catholic Church, South Bend, Indiana
ACE 16, Pensacola
My running shoes travel with me wherever I go. Every place I live or work or visit — these are all prime opportunities to experience the beauty of the world on foot. I’ve run in the Arizona desert just as the sun is rising. I’ve run in the Colorado Rockies in the shadow of Pikes Peak. I’ve run along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, the Natchez Trace in Mississippi, and the Westmount Summit overlooking Montreal, right in the backyard of Saint Joseph’s Oratory. A few years back, my shoes finally made it across the Atlantic, logging a run through the neighborhoods of Le Mans, the birthplace of the Congregation of Holy Cross in France.
I love the outdoors, and running is a kind of sacramental encounter with the natural wonders of God’s love. No matter the weather, no matter the terrain — God is alive in his creation! Rivers and rain showers recall our baptism, refreshing us in God’s grace. Summer breezes and cold winter gusts fill our lungs with the breath of God, sometimes even sweeping us up from behind. An ocean expanse or the prominence of a mountain remind us of the immensity of God’s power, infinite in its capacity to hold the entire universe together in one embrace of mercy. Tree-lined paths, stripped of their leaves in late fall, explode into full bloom in springtime, reflecting the joy of new life, the joy of resurrection.
As a runner, I enter this panoply of creation nearly every day. Letting my feet fall across flatlands, woodlands, wetlands, badlands… Sinking into sandy shorelines, climbing up rocky inclines, gazing out at city skylines, and even waiting at busy stop signs… All of this God intertwines in a single network that shouts his praises and delights in his artistry. “Splendor and power go before him; power and grandeur are in his holy place,” Psalm 96 proclaims. “Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them. Then let all the trees of the forest rejoice before the Lord who comes.” Yes, our Lord comes with might, with magnificence, with glorious majesty.
Yet at the same time, our Lord comes in lowliness, in humble obscurity, in a crudely crafted manger in the tiny town of Bethlehem. He takes on our human flesh to inhabit the very world he himself designed. He comes to be intertwined with us and with all of creation. As Christians, our celebration of Jesus’ birth spurs us toward thanksgiving for God’s presence, his intimate dwelling in our time and space. It rouses our gratitude for the wonders of his love spread across land, sea, and sky, both in the heavens above and on the earth below, and it invites our generosity to return our love and protect what God freely unfurls for us.
In his encyclical Laudato Si’ (#220), Pope Francis highlights an essential recognition that our world exists as “God’s loving gift.” Acknowledging this gift “entails a loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion,” and as a result, “we do not look at the world from without but from within, conscious of the bonds with which the Father has linked us to all beings.” For me, my daily run helps me to behold God’s beauty from within. I’m enfolded within the plants, the air, the ground, the moisture, the dryness, the heat, the chill, all of it exultant in praise. Everything is connected by the Father’s hand, and through the Incarnation, everything is redeemed as the Son joins our world. Heaven inhabits nature. The earth receives her King.
This Christmas, Christian churches across the globe will sing Isaac Watts’s hymn “Joy to the World.” Let women and men their songs employ! But as we sing, we sing not as isolated individuals, nor as a Church turned in on itself. We sing with the whole of creation while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy. We sing to express joy that our Savior reigns among us, that the Lord is come to rule all things with truth and grace. And we sing to unite all earth’s nations that together we will prove the glories of his righteousness and the wonders of his love. Yes, the wonders of his love, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly—joy to the world!