84.
Our insistence that each human being is an image ofGod should not make us overlook the fact
that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of
God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water,mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of
God. The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an
intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much
good. Anyonewho has grown up in the hills or used to sit by the spring to drink, or played outdoors in
the neighbourhood square; going back to these places is a chance to recover something of their true
selves.
85.
God has written a precious book, “whose letters are the multitude of created things present in
the universe”.
54
The Canadian bishops rightly pointed out that no creature is excluded from this
manifestation of God: “From panoramic vistas to the tiniest living form, nature is a constant source of
wonder and awe. It is also a continuing revelation of the divine”.
55
The bishops of Japan, for their
part, made a thought-provoking
observation: “To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence
is to live joyfully in God’s love and hope”.
56
This contemplation of creation allows us to discover in
each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us, since “for the believer, to contemplate
creation is to hear amessage, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice”.
57
We can say that “alongside
revelation properly so-called, contained in sacred Scripture, there is a divinemanifestation in the blaze
of the sun and the fall of night”.
58
Paying attention to this manifestation, we learn to see ourselves in
relation to all other creatures: “I express myself in expressing the world; in my effort to decipher the
sacredness of theworld, I exploremyown”.
59
86.
The universe as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, shows forth the inexhaustible riches
ofGod. Saint Thomas Aquinas wisely noted that multiplicity and variety “come from the intention of
the first agent” who willed that “what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness
54
JOHNPAUL II,
Catechesis
(30 January2002),6:
Insegnamenti
25/1 (2002), 140.
55
CANADIANCONFERENCEOFCATHOLICBISHOPS, SOCIALAFFAIRSCOMMISSION, Pastoral Letter
You Love
All thatExists…All ThingsareYours,God, Loverof Life”
(4October 2003), 1.
56
CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF JAPAN,
Reverence for Life. A Message for the Twenty-First Century
(1
January2000), 89.
57
JOHNPAUL II,
Catechesis
(26 January2000), 5:
Insegnamenti
23/1 (2000), 123.
58
ID.,
Catechesis
(2August 2000), 3:
Insegnamenti
23/2 (2000), 112.
59
PAULRICOEUR,
Philosophie de laVolonté, t. II: FinitudeetCulpabilité
, Paris, 2009, 216.
