“Sublime Communion”: The Theology of the Natural World in Laudato Si’

The Value of Nonhuman Creatures in Themselves

One of the crucial questions for any ecological theology concerns the meaning and value of nonhuman creatures. Do they receive their meaning and value only from their usefulness to human beings? Or do they have meaning and value in themselves? The Catholic tradition has tended to see the rest of the creation as ordered to the human and as existing simply for human use. Even the Second Vatican Council, in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, strikes a clearly anthropocentric note. ⁶ But does not more need to be said, above all in the age of the Anthropocene? ⁷ Laudato Si’ does say far more, and in doing so offers a new development in Catholic teaching in the clarity of its claim that nonhuman creatures have value in themselves. This teaching, of course, is not new to ecological theology, but its incorporation into Catholic social teaching is an important new development.

This new position makes its first appearance in the opening chapter of Laudato Si’, where Pope Francis discusses the loss of biodiversity. He points out that the current extinction of species which is due to human actions may mean the loss of valuable resources for human beings in food and medicines, now and far into the future. But he goes on to say that it is not enough to think of these species as resources for human beings, “while overlooking the fact that they have value in themselves” (LS 33). Clearly Francis recognizes that species of plants and animals, and also reptiles, insects, and microorganisms, may have enormous value to humans, but he insists that we must also recognize that they have intrinsic value. They have value before God their Creator, and they give glory to God by being what they are. Francis laments that because of human actions, “thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us” (LS 33).

In his reflection on the biblical accounts of creation, Francis completely opposes the interpretation of the “dominion” text (Gen 1:28) as supporting unbridled exploitation. He recognizes that Christians may have contributed to such a false view by incorrectly interpreting the Scriptures, and he insists that “nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and being given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures” (LS 67). The dominion text needs to be read, he says, in its context and with an appropriate hermeneutic, which includes reading it in the context of Gen 2:15, where we are told to “till” and “keep” (RSV) the garden of the world. Francis proposes that tilling and keeping can be understood as involving a mutual relationship between human beings and other creatures, where humans receive from other creatures what they need for their sustenance, and humans in turn protect and care for their fellow creatures. Francis points to biblical texts that speak of our responsibilities to a donkey, an ox, or a bird’s nest (Exod 23:13; Deut 22:4–6), and insists that “the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures” (LS 68).

In this biblical context, Francis returns to the notion of intrinsic value: “we are called to recognize that other living beings have a value of their own in God’s eyes” (LS 69). He goes on immediately to quote the Catholic Catechism, which says of other creatures that “by their existence they bless him and give him glory,” ⁸ and Psalm 104 which sings, “the Lord rejoices in all his works” (Ps 104:31). Building on the Scriptures and on the Catechism, Francis seems to acknowledge that he is saying something new with his emphasis on creatures having value in themselves:

In our time, the Church does not simply state that other creatures are completely subordinate to the good of human beings as if they had no worth in themselves and can be treated as we wish. The German bishops have taught that, where other creatures are concerned, “we can speak of the priority of being over being useful.” (LS 69)

Other creatures have value, then, because they are God’s creatures and give praise to God by their very existence. Francis comes back to the idea of creatures having value in themselves and, in this instance, speaks explicitly of their “intrinsic value,” when he considers the way we are called to respect and protect ecosystems:

We take these systems into account not only to determine how best to use them, but also because they have an intrinsic value independent of their usefulness. Each organism, as a creature of God, is good and admirable in itself; the same is true of the harmonious ensemble of organisms existing in a defined space and functioning as a system. (LS 140)

The traditional idea of human use of other creatures is not denied in Laudato Si’ but embraced within a theology that sees them as having their own God-given meaning and value, and so as demanding respect, protection, and, as I will show below, love, from human beings.

What is the basis for this claim that other creatures have intrinsic value? A careful reading reveals that Francis sees three reasons as supporting this claim. The first is the traditional theological concept that other creatures are “the locus” of divine presence (LS 88). In these creatures, Francis points out, we encounter God’s Holy Spirit. He says that “the Spirit of life dwells in them,” and in our encounter with them we are invited into relationship with this indwelling and life-giving Spirit of God (LS 88). Later in the encyclical Francis writes, “The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face” (LS 233). This means, Francis says, that we are called to find God in all things, to be open to discover the divine presence in all the creatures we encounter. At this point Francis quotes from Bonaventure, who says that “contemplation deepens the more we feel the working of God’s grace within our hearts, and the better we learn to encounter God in creatures outside ourselves” (LS 233).

A second reason offered to support the claim that other creatures have value in themselves, a reason that seems characteristic of Francis, and one that is not often expressed in theology or church teaching, is that God loves each of them. Francis speaks of creation as springing from “God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance” and as “a reality illuminated by the love which calls us together into universal communion” (LS 76). In a particularly rich section of the encyclical, Francis points out that the creation springs not from arbitrary omnipotence or self-assertion but from the divine freedom, as an act of love:

Creation is in the order of love. God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all created things: “For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it” (Wis 11:24). Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection. (LS 77)

Every sparrow, every frog, the members of every threatened species—each is “the object of the Father’s tenderness,” and each is enfolded with God’s affection. It is this divine love for each creature that teaches our hearts to be open to love these same creatures, to be moved by their plight, to feel for them, and where needed to act on their behalf. In the “prayer for our earth” at the end of encyclical Francis brings together these two themes, the presence of God and God’s tender love for all creatures, which can be seen as foundational for the theology of intrinsic value that appears throughout the encyclical:

All powerful God,

you are present in the whole universe,

and in the smallest of your creatures.

You embrace with tenderness all that exists.

Pour out upon us the power of your love,

that we might protect life and beauty. (LS 246)

Francis presents a third argument for this intrinsic value in the Christian vision of the risen Christ. He sees the whole creation as destined to participate in the fullness of God already attained by the risen Jesus. This means that “the ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us.” Rather, Francis writes, “all other creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things” (LS 83). Francis’s eschatology involves the idea that all other creatures will, in their own way, participate in the transformation of all things in Christ. This theology of hope for other creatures takes us beyond the medieval picture that could embrace the resurrection of humans and the transformation of the universe, but which saw no real future for animal and plant life. Of course, we have no adequate imaginative picture or conceptual understanding of our own future in God, let alone that of the wider creation. What we have is the promise of God in the resurrection. Francis argues from the idea that all creatures have a future in God to their value in themselves. Both of these ideas involve a change from positions that have long been taken for granted in much general Catholic theology.

Other Creatures as Revelatory of God

The unambiguous clarity of Francis’s teaching on the intrinsic value of other creatures, while based on insights found in the Scriptures, the Christian tradition, and at times in the Catholic Catechism, and in agreement with aspects of recent ecological theology, is to be seen, in my view, as a real development in church teaching. What I take up now, the idea that other creatures can be revelatory of God, that they can be said to constitute a book of nature alongside the book of the Bible, is not so much a development, as a return to a traditional view, one that has often been ignored. It is a view found, among others, in Augustine, Aquinas, and particularly in Bonaventure. In this second theological thread of Laudato Si’, the emphasis is no longer on the meaning of creatures in themselves, but on their revelatory meaning for human beings. Francis sees the whole universe of creatures as speaking words of love to us:

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. Anyone who 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. (LS 84)

Francis insists that each creature has its own particular word to speak. None is superfluous. Each can become a caress of God for us. Taking up words of Pope John Paul II, Francis says of the book of creation, “God has written a precious book, ‘whose letters are the multitude of created things present in the universe’” (LS 85). He then turns to the Canadian bishops who, he says, rightly point out that “no creature is excluded from this manifestation of God.” He quotes their words, “From panoramic visions to the tiniest living form, nature is a constant source of wonder and awe. It is also a continuing revelation of the divine” (LS 85).

Building on this picture of creation as a book of God, Francis says that the contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing “a teaching” which God wishes to give to us. Again he refers to words of John Paul II, with two separate quotations: “for the believer, to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical, silent voice”; “alongside revelation properly so-called, contained in Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night” (LS 85).

It is worth noting the words used by Francis of our encounters with other creatures, and the words of others whom he quotes with approval: Other creatures “speak” to us of God’s love, are “a caress” of God, a “precious book” whose letters are the multitude of created things, a “manifestation” of God, a “continuing revelation” of the divine, a “teaching” that God wishes to give us, a “message” from God, and a “divine manifestation.” No doubt Francis agrees with Pope John Paul II, in the quotation above, in making a distinction between revelation properly so-called, in the Scriptures, and the manifestation of God in the natural world around us. Holding to this distinction, however, does not compromise the clear teaching that there is a fundamental revelation of God at work in creation itself.

The encyclical turns to an important text in Thomas Aquinas to point out that the manifestation of God in the natural world requires a multitude of diverse creatures (LS 86). Aquinas sees the diversity of creatures as springing directly from the divine intention, because divine goodness necessarily transcends the limits of any one creature. For this reason “what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another.” ⁹ It is the diversity of creatures, including great soaring trees, eagles, kangaroos, ants, and humans, that represent the abundance of divine goodness better than any one kind of creature might.

Francis returns to the theme of the book of creation in his brief treatment of the Trinity. He refers to Bonaventure’s conviction that originally the reflection of God the Trinity was easily recognizable in the creation, “when that book was open” to us human beings and our eyes had not yet been darkened. Bonaventure, Francis points out, teaches that “each creature bears in itself a specifically Trinitarian structure.” ¹⁰ We would readily be able to contemplate the Trinity in the creatures around us if our human gaze was not so partial, dark, and fragile (LS 239). We would find reflected in each of them the power, the wisdom and the goodness of God.

The teaching of Laudato Si’ on the book of creation is summed up succinctly by Francis when he writes that “nature is filled with words of love” (LS 225). But he insists, if we are to hear the words of love addressed to us, in birds, trees, flowers, mountains, beaches, and deserts, we need to cultivate a contemplative stance before God’s creation. He asks, how can we listen to the words spoken in the creatures around us if our lives are dominated by “constant noise, interminable and nerve-wracking distractions, and the cult of appearances?” (LS 225). We need to free ourselves from constant busyness, from always being in a hurry, we need to slow down and take time, if we are to find our Creator speaking a word of love in the creature before us.

The Sublime Communion of Creation

In this analysis it has been proposed that two threads of the theology of nature are developed in Laudato Si’: first, that nonhuman creatures have value in themselves and, second, that they can reveal something of God to us. Important as these two threads are, they do not yet represent what I see as the integrating center of the encyclical, Francis’s theology of the communion of creation.

This theme appears in various ways throughout the encyclical, and is developed explicitly in chapter 2. Even without the theological language of communion, it appears in the constant emphasis on relationships with other human beings, with other creatures, and with God. An example is when Francis says of the biblical creation texts, “They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour, and with the earth itself” (LS 66). This stance is already a challenge to much Christian literature and preaching which speaks only of relating to God and our fellow human beings.

Over and over again in Laudato Si’ we are told that everything is connected. I will highlight just two examples. Francis writes of our relationship with other living creatures, “Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another” (LS 42). Here the interconnection of creatures leads to an ecological stance. In the second example, Francis is concerned to show that care for creation and care for our fellow human beings belong together in a stance that he calls integral ecology: “Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society” (LS 91).

At one point in the encyclical, Francis makes the fundamental point that we humans ought not think of ourselves as relating to nature as if we were separate from it. We interrelate with other creatures in the natural world because we ourselves are a part of nature: “Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it” (LS 139). From the scientific point of view, of course, we know that we are completely dependent on the 13.8 billion-year history of the universe, since all the atoms that make up our bodies have been produced in the stars, and on the 3.7 billion-year history of evolution on Earth. For our continued existence, we depend not only on the climate, the atmosphere, the seas, the rivers, and the land itself, but also on the birds, the bees, the insects, the worms, and the millions of microbes that are at work in each of our bodies.

These interconnections are grounded for Francis in theological reality. When we think of nature as God’s creation, he says, we can see it as “a reality illuminated by the love that calls us together into universal communion” (LS 76). In theological discussions, the word communion usually points, first, to the divine life of the Trinity and, second, to what the Spirit brings about in the life of the church. Francis extends its use to embrace the whole creation drawn by divine love. The networks of relationships that science discovers at every level, from that of the atom, to molecules, cells, organisms, ecosystems, the planetary community, the Milky Way galaxy, and the universe, can now be seen in a new light, as creaturely participation in the divine communion that is the life of the triune God. Laudato Si’ links this concept of universal communion with Francis’s of Assisi’s theological conviction that we form one family with other creatures, that they are our kin, as common creatures before their Creator:

This is the basis for our conviction that, as part of the universe, called into being by the one Father, all of us are linked by unseen bonds and together form a kind of universal family, a sublime communion which fills us with a sacred, affectionate and humble respect. Here I would reiterate that “God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of species almost as a painful disfigurement.” (LS 89)

Before continuing to explore Francis’s theology of sublime communion, it is worth noting the place of human feelings in the above quotation. Here, and elsewhere in his writing, Francis gives a priority to feelings that is far from common in church teaching, and in theology, no doubt reflecting something of his own Ignatian tradition. The sense that we belong to one universal family, to one sublime communion, he says, fills us with a “sacred, affectionate, and humble respect.” Francis is clearly aware that such feelings can inspire an ecological lifestyle. The last sentence of the above quotation, taken from Evangelii Gaudium (LS 215), makes a profound link between our bond with other creatures, and the strong feelings that can be invoked in us by their destruction and loss, feelings that can lead to a renewed ecological praxis.

Francis goes on to insist that authentic communion with the natural world also necessarily involves us in feeling with suffering human beings: “A deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings” (LS 91). As he says again, in this context, “everything is connected” (LS 91). Or, as he said earlier in Laudato Si’, we need to realize that “an ecological approach always becomes a social approach” (LS 49). ¹¹ In words that were used earlier by Leonardo Boff, Francis insists on the integration of the issues of justice and the environment “so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (LS 49). ¹² This integration is a central idea of the encyclical that is taken up explicitly in its fourth chapter on “Integral Ecology.” ¹³

When our hearts are open to universal communion, Francis says, the sense of family “excludes nothing and no one” (LS 92). We “have only one heart” that feels for our fellow human beings and for other creatures who are brother and sister to us: “Everything is related and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth” (LS 92).

The concept of universal communion appears again in the final chapter of Laudato Si’ when Francis discusses the ecological conversion to which we are called. He sees this conversion as including a number of attitudes which together foster a “spirit of generous care, full of tenderness” (LS 220). Ecological conversion involves, he says, “a loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion” (LS 220). He calls upon all Christians to make the grace they have received evident in their relationships with other creatures: “In this way, we will help nurture that sublime fraternity with all creation which Saint Francis of Assisi so radiantly embodied” (LS 221). It is clear that the “sublime fraternity” of this text, to which we might add “divine sorority,” echoes and reinforces the “sublime communion” of LS 89, discussed above.

I have been proposing that the theology of the natural world that Francis offers us involves three threads: other creatures have intrinsic value, they are revelatory of God, and we and they form a sublime communion in God. What is it, theologically, that makes the interrelated creation a sublime communion? Clearly, fundamental to the answer of Laudato Si’ is the creation theology already discussed, that God loves each of God’s creatures in themselves, that each creature and the whole creation manifests the Creator, and that the love of the Creator draws all creatures into a communion of love. But Francis also points, briefly, to the christological and trinitarian depths of this communion.

The encyclical sees all creatures as bound up with the mystery of Christ—“All things have been created through him and for him” (Col 1:16). It speaks of the Word of God who became flesh, who “entered into the created cosmos, throwing in his lot with it, even to the cross” (LS 99). From the beginning, but above all in the incarnation, the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world. Several times, Laudato Si’ focuses on the risen Christ at work in the whole creation. In one example, after referring to Col 1:19–20 and 1 Cor 15:28, Francis writes,

Thus the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence. (LS 100)

As I have noted earlier, Francis understands the whole creation as being drawn to its fulfilment through the risen Christ, and he sees Christ as already present to all things, holding them in love, and in some mysterious way already filling them with his light. Later in the encyclical we read that “Christ has taken unto himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his affection and penetrating it with his light” (LS 221).

In discussing the sacraments, Francis offers a brief theology of incarnation in relation to ecology: “For Christians, all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation” (LS 235). In discussing the Eucharist, Francis writes that, when we gather to celebrate, this definitive transformation is already present in anticipation: “fullness is already achieved . . . Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God” (LS 236). In reflecting on the Sabbath, Francis points to Sunday as a time of rest, a time to be mindful of resurrection and new creation, when we are led to recognize that the risen humanity of Christ is already “the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality” (LS 237).

Francis takes the notion of universal communion to its most sublime level in his brief words on the Trinity. Building on Aquinas’s theology of the divine persons as subsistent relations, he sees the world of creatures as “a web of relationships” which is “created according to the divine model” (LS 240). He notes that here we human beings can see a key to our fulfilment: “The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others, and with all creatures” (LS 240). In relating to God, to other humans, and with God’s other creatures, we live the trinitarian dynamism imprinted on us in our creation—we are created to be relational beings in a universe of creatures in which everything is interconnected.

In his paragraph on Mary, Francis sees her as profoundly connected to the communion of creation. As she once mourned the death of Jesus, “so now she grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this world laid waste by human power” (LS 241). But she is completely transfigured, living with Jesus, as a sign of the promise to all creatures: “In her glorified body, together with the Risen Christ, part of creation has reached the fullness of its beauty” (LS 241). At the end of the encyclical Francis says that we can hope we will come to share in this transfigured existence with the risen Christ, with Mary, and with the all of God’s other creatures. Then we will be able to “read the mystery of the universe” which will be brought to its fullness in God (LS 243). He tells us that “eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and will have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all” (LS 243).

This vision of the communion of creation, immensely deepened by a theology of incarnation and resurrection, impels us to give ourselves to the care of our common home. God has taken Earth and its creatures to God’s self irrevocably in the incarnation. In words that echo Karl Rahner, Francis writes, “In the heart of this world, the Lord of life who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward” (245). ¹⁴

Conclusion

I have pointed out how Francis uses the word sublime of the communion of creation, and of the fraternity of all creatures. He uses it a third time in the encyclical and I think this usage gives a clue to the way he understands the word. It appears in a quotation from John of the Cross’s commentary on his poem The Spiritual Canticle. The verse on which John of the Cross is commenting is part of his description of the profound union of the human person with the Word of God, the Beloved. John of the Cross writes of this Beloved,

My Beloved is the mountains,

And lonely wooded valley,

Strange islands,

And resounding rivers,

The whistling of love-stirring breezes. ¹⁵

Francis does not quote the verse, but simply refers to the commentary on these lines, where John of the Cross says of the mountain, valleys, islands, rivers, and breezes that “in each of these sublime realities is God” (LS 234). The word “sublime” here indicates the experience of the natural world as suffused with the presence of God. In the poem John of the Cross says that the Beloved is the mountain while in the commentary he says that in each of these sublime realities, such as the mountain, is God. Francis comments, “This is not because the finite things of this world are really divine, but because the mystic experiences the intimate connection between God and all beings, and thus feels that ‘all things are God’” (LS 234). He goes on to say that when a person stands awestruck before a mountain, he or she cannot separate this experience from God, and comes to see that the interior awe being lived is to be entrusted to God. Francis points to the words of John of the Cross on lonely wooded valleys:

Lonely valleys are quiet, pleasant, cool, shady and flowing with fresh water; in the variety of their groves and in the sweet song of the birds, they afford abundant recreation and delight to the senses, and in their solitude and silence, they refresh and give rest. These valleys are what my Beloved is to me. (LS 234)

Mountains, valleys, islands, flowing streams, breezes, are sublime realities, because in them we can encounter the Beloved, because they give expression to the Beloved, and because they are, meaning they symbolize and express, what the Beloved is to the human lover.

In Laudato Si’, then, there is a rich concept of sublime communion that points to the mystical experience of finding God in all creatures. But there is a further resonance to this word that I find important in this context. In philosophical aesthetics, the word “sublime” is often understood in relation to the word “beautiful.” Often the word beautiful is used of something that fits with our notions of what is reasonable, what is rightly ordered, and what is pleasingly proportioned. Something can be spoken of as sublime when it throws our notions of reason, order, and proportion into utter confusion, when it points to what is totally beyond us, to the incomprehensible. The sublime can be shocking and disorienting.

This line of thought suggests that “sublime communion” could be developed to embrace what is not taken up in Laudato Si’, the pain, the deaths, the chaos, the randomness, the ugliness of so much of the natural world. It could include what cosmology tells us of the 13.8 billion-year history of the observable universe, the more than a hundred billion galaxies that make it up, and the possibility of multiverses. A theology of the sublime communion of creation could engage with the strange otherness and counterintuitive nature of what we have discovered about our world at the quantum level of reality. And it could embrace the costs of evolution as well as the beauty and rich diversity of life around us.

A theology of the natural world as sublime communion could recognize and accept aspects of our world that are not pleasant or beautiful to human eyes. It could recognize that without faith the world might seem highly ambiguous to us, as both beautiful and violent. A theology of the sublime communion of creation would be based not simply on observation of the natural world, but on the revelation given in Christ that, in spite of appearances, in spite of what can seem like the violent and dark side of nature, the emergent and evolving creation is the work of unthinkable and incomprehensible love.

A theology of the natural world as sublime communion necessarily involves, then, the recognition of our finitude and incomprehension. It would need to take seriously the words of God to Job from the whirlwind that begin, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:2). Above all, it would need to ponder the incarnation and the cross as God’s radical and deep identification with creation in its groaning. With Paul it would see Christ crucified as the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1: 24). But it would also recognize, with him, that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (1 Cor 1: 25). And so, along with proclaiming the incarnation and the cross as God’s identification with suffering creation, it would proclaim the resurrection of the crucified Jesus as the unbreakable promise of God to the whole creation.

This analysis of Laudato Si’ has proposed that the encyclical offers us the basis for a systematic theology of the natural world, in which other creatures have value in themselves, in which they can be seen as revealing God, and in which they, with us, form a sublime communion of creation in God. While the theology builds on the Scriptures and earlier Church teaching, it offers us something new, a Church teaching that demands of us a radically different way of thinking, feeling, and acting with regard to other creatures. It is a summons to ecological conversion for each person, for the Church, and for theology.