Allegorical teaching uses a conventional situation to impart spiritual wisdom. Conventional situations focus on some aspects of physical and social life. Spiritual wisdom deals with the laws and operations of the spiritual dimension. Knowledge about conventional situations is more easily accessible than spiritual wisdom. People know about the physical and social reality through the five senses and available cultural information. Therefore, one path to spiritual wisdom is to use the knowledge about conventional situations to communicate spiritual wisdom. We have three such examples of this kind of teaching in the Scriptures for this Sunday. Isaiah uses rain, something we all know about, to teach us about the effectiveness of God’s Word. Jesus used a parable about a sower broadcasting seed to teach about being receptive to God’s Word.
St. Paul also uses this kind of teaching in today’s reading from the Letter to the Romans. Today we hear him yet again using the image of a woman in labor giving birth to a child as a way to enlighten us about the gift of our redemption.
St. Paul only knows about birth pangs by observing the pain that a woman goes through in delivering a child. However, Greek philosophers drew spiritual wisdom from this conventional situation to teach us about human history. Just as a woman suffers these pains in bringing forth a new life, each new era in human history seems to be preceded by a time of affliction or pain. St. Paul took that teaching from Greek philosophy and used it to explain the eschaton or Parousia, two fancy Greek words that basically mean the end of the world and the beginning of eternal life with God.
St. Paul and the Greek philosophers noticed that a woman usually puts the pain of childbirth behind her once she holds her baby. Many mothers have testified to this. The joy of seeing their child for the first time usually erases the experience of the pain. So St. Paul can write that the present suffering of the early Christian community will be surpassed by the glory that will be revealed to us. He goes on to say that this glory was God’s original intention in the act of creation but that the glory of creation was subjected to futility through sin, specifically the Original Sin of Adam and Eve.
Now all of creation knows the affliction that a woman experiences in birth. St. Paul speaks of creation groaning as it waits for the act that will bring about its redemption. Creation could not develop into the reality that God had intended and was subjugated by sin. Creation, of which we are a part, was enslaved by that sin. This particular view of creation is further explicated by the great St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio in his treatise “Itinerarium in Mentis Deum,” “The Mind’s Journey into God.” It is this explanation of creation that underlies the great encyclical of Pope Francis, “Laudato Si,” published five years ago.
That encyclical takes its title from the “Canticle of the Creatures” by St. Francis of Assisi. In that canticle, Francis refers to all the different elements of creation as brothers and sisters, not as things over which we have dominion. St. Francis lived at a time when creation was divided into the four so-called elements; earth, water, wind (or air), and fire. He sings with all creation in praising God, recognizing that he is one with all of creation.
St. Paul, St. Bonaventure, St. Francis of Assisi, and Pope Francis all ask us to remember that Christ’s redemptive act touches all of creation. All the elements of creation must remain in balance if the world in which we live is going to be preserved. While some apocalyptic literature speaks of the end of the world in terms of the destruction of the created world, St. Paul and St. Bonaventure speak of redemption extending to all of creation, not just the human beings.
We are currently going through a time of great affliction, both physical and social. Physically we are being subjected to a powerful virus that is claiming many lives. Socially we are also being afflicted by great unrest as people of color are deprived of justice. People keep asking when our world will return to “normal.” Many have suggested that returning to the old reality is not something we should be espousing. Rather, this time of suffering must give birth to a new reality wherein all of creation benefits from the experience of grace won for us through Jesus Christ.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator