Everything about our Catholic faith derives from one simple fact about God that God has revealed to us in every aspect of His self-communication with humanity. This can be summed up in the proclamation: God is love.

God has revealed to the human person that there is so much love within God that God cannot exist as a single person. The love which exists within God’s self has been revealed to us by Jesus as a love that exists between the three persons of the Holy Trinity:  the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Holy Trinity have so much love within them that from them, out of nothing, has come forth all of creation. While it is not expressed directly in the Bible, I like to think that the force of the love which exists within God was responsible for the “Big Bang” which brought forth creation. Creation is a sort of explosion of God’s love which brings forth out of nothing the entire created world. As science tells us that the universe is actually continuously growing and expanding, it seems that God’s love continues to grow and expand. There is nothing that can contain it. All of creation sings of the glory of God and His love.

This Sunday’s readings speak of God’s act of creation with specific reference to the human person. One of the things that the Bible tells us is that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God. We do not often stop to think what this “made in the image and likeness of God” means. For me, it means that the human person, made by God who is love, is made for love. Just as the Trinity is the reality of God’s love, so the human person has been made for love. Everything about us is made for relationship. Life can be the search for the desire for love, a search which ultimately leads us back to God, where at the end in Heaven our search for love will be satisfied for all eternity.

The longing which the human person has for love is spoken of in today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis. Longing to relate in a life-giving manner with the rest of creation in which he has been placed, we hear how every type of possible companion was brought to the first human. None of these satisfied the longing for love and relationship within the human person. It was not until God created an equal partner for the first human that the human person found satisfaction. The companionship that the man and the woman enter into is one of equality where the two are in some way fused together and become one. As the three persons of the Holy Trinity make up the one God, so the man and woman fused together in relationship with God become one. Love binds them together and they live in harmony with one another.

As we hear in today’s Gospel, from the beginning, it was God’s plan that love should fuse man and women together in love. God intended them to be equal and to share His life with one another. However, as Jesus mentions, because the human heart was hardened by sin, humans were not able to give themselves to the life that God had intended for them. Because of sin, husband and wife often used the other or treated the other as a means of pleasure— as an object. Husband and wife were intended for a life lived in mutual respect and a covenant of love. Sadly, selfish motivations, jealously, fear, pride and violence entered into a relationship that God had intended to be the highest form of love that could exist in His created world. God never intended a man and a woman to break the covenant of love that they had entered into in His name. God never intended one person to use another or any human being to be thrown away. God intended marriage as an expression of His love in which every person was treasured as God treasures us and loved by one human person as though they were loving that individual for God. This is what the Catholic sacrament of marriage assumes— that husband and wife take each other to love them as Christ would love the other. This is why they pledge to love one another in sickness and in health in good times and bad times, until death do them part. We believe that when a person dies, he or she goes to God to be loved directly by God. For this reason, they no longer require the love of husband or wife to show them this love. However, while on earth the job of each person’s husband or wife is to show God’s love for the other. This is why the Church speaks of the sacredness of marriage and its indissolubility. Marriage is to reflect the love which God has for each person.

Now as perfect as this Sunday’s readings are for a homily on marriage, I would actually like to suggest that these readings and marriage suggest a great deal about the way in which the human person is intended to treat all of creation. Marriage is a covenant by which a man and a women pledge to love the other on God’s behalf. In it the person is to be cared for and respected as a marvellous creation of God. No person is to be used or thrown away in marriage. In his recent encyclical called “Laudato si,” Pope Francis has written about the profound covenant that exists between humanity and the earth— or creation. As a man and a woman are a gift to one another from God through which the two are to find life, so too all of creation is a gift to the human person through which life is to be found and given. As Pope Francis points out so beautifully, the world is to care for humanity and humanity is to care for the world as a gift from God. The created world is not to be used as an object for consumption and raped of all its goods. It is a sign of God’s love and in some ways is to be treated as a “sister or brother creature.” Pope Francis draws on the Bible to show that the earth and the created world is a sign of God’s love given for all generations. As Christ speaks this Sunday of the importance of welcoming children in His name, Pope Francis speaks of the reality that part of how we welcome children is by welcoming them into a world that can be passed on to them. It is not to be used by our generation and passed on as an empty wasteland to the children and generations who will follow us.

Pope Francis holds out St. Francis, whose feast day is actually today (October 4th), as an example of the way in which we are all called to treasure the earth as part of God’s creation. St. Francis had a great respect for the created world. He saw it as a gift from God expressing God’s love for all. The world is a place to be cared for and properly respected as a gift for all generations. It is not just for us to take as much as we can from it. It is not a thing to be simply used and thrown out. If our attitude of the world is such, perhaps Jesus’ words about marriage can as easily be applied to the way our culture regards creation: “In the beginning it was not so, but the hardness of human hearts”— hearts broken by sin has made it so. In the beginning, the human person was very much aware of the fact that he and she lived in a world created by God and which was full of His presence. It was this that allowed the human person to be so aware that God was in the Garden of Eden with them through His created works. It was sin that blinded humanity to God’s presence in creation. St. Francis and Pope Francis give us examples of how we can see God present in creation and how we are called to live in it and recognize creation as an expression of God’s love for all people. And yet, as he does so, Pope Francis also points out some other extremes that need to be avoided. Creation is a gift from God, it cannot be mistaken for God. It is a sign that points us to the God we are called to live with for all eternity. We cannot mistake the reality of its origin with the idea that it is our true origin or that it represents God. It is a sign of God’s love, to be treasured on our journey towards God and to be shared and cared for by all generations. It is our common home, until we reach our true home with God in Heaven.

Just as there could never be a homily or talk that would deal with every marriage, so too there could never be a document or homily that could deal with the manner in which we are all called to change our attitudes toward creation and the environment. This will be a lifelong journey for all of us— as marriage is a lifelong endeavour. It is important, however, that all of us begin this process of conversion. An important beginning for all of us might be to attempt to read Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato si.” It can be purchased online from any bookstore or at all Catholic bookstores. It will call us to a new way of seeing and relating to God’s creation. For those for whom that might be too ambitious, perhaps I could simply recommend praying on this feast of St. Francis his beautiful Canticle of Creatures and while doing so praying for the gift of seeing all of God’s creation as yet another expression of His great love for all of us:

The Canticle of Creatures — St. Francis of Assisi

O Most High, all-powerful, good Lord God,

to you belong praise, glory,

honour and all blessing.

Be praised, my Lord, for all your creation

and especially for our Brother Sun,

who brings us the day and the light;

he is strong and shines magnificently.

O Lord, we think of you when we look at him.

Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Moon,

and for the stars

which you have set shining and lovely

in the heavens.

Be praised, my Lord,

for our Brothers Wind and Air

and every kind of weather

by which you, Lord,

uphold life in all your creatures.

Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Water,

who is very useful to us,

and humble and precious and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire,

through whom you give us light in the darkness:

he is bright and lively and strong.

Be praised, my Lord,

for Sister Earth, our Mother,

who nourishes us and sustains us,

bringing forth

fruits and vegetables of many kinds

and flowers of many colours.

Be praised, my Lord,

for those who forgive for love of you;

and for those

who bear sickness and weakness

in peace and patience

– you will grant them a crown.

Be praised, my Lord, for our Sister Death,

whom we must all face.

I praise and bless you, Lord,

and I give thanks to you,

and I will serve you in all humility.

Fr. Michael McGourty – Pastor, St. Peter’s Church