Father Richard Rohr reflects on creation as sacred and alive with God’s presence:
Nature itself is the primary Bible. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, “What can be known about God is perfectly plain, for God has made it plain. Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity is there for the mind to see in all the things that God has created.” The world itself is the primary locus of the sacred and provides all the metaphors that the soul needs for its growth.
Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century theologian and Doctor of the Church, put it this way:
God brought things into being in order that God’s goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because God’s goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, God produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided. [1]
If we scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species, Homo sapiens, doesn’t appear until 11:59 PM on December 31. That means our written Bible and the church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can’t believe that God would have had nothing to say until the last nanosecond. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God’s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation. “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything is sacred!
Acknowledging the intrinsic value and beauty of creation, including the cosmos, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western and cultural Christians. In fact, we have often dismissed it by calling it animism or paganism. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species, and even then we didn’t have enough love to go around for all of humanity! God ended up looking quite miserly and inept, to be honest.
Listen instead to the Book of Wisdom, as I translate it:
How dull are all people who, from the things-that-are, have not been able to discover God-Who-Is, or by studying the good works have failed to recognize the Artist…. Through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author (13:1, 5)
All we have to do is walk outside and gaze at one leaf, long and lovingly, until we know, really know, that this leaf is a participation in the eternal being of God. It’s enough to create ecstasy! Our relationship to reality allows us to meet things center to center or subject to subject, inner dignity to inner dignity. For a true contemplative, a gratuitously falling green leaf will awaken awe and wonder just as much as a golden tabernacle in a cathedral.
Recognizing Grace
Contemplative author and artist Christine Valters Paintner expands how we understand sacramentality—not only as something we experience in church rituals, but also a way of perceiving the divine presence in all things:
One of the classic definitions of a sacrament is something that is an outward, visible sign of an inward, invisible grace. In the Christian church there are different rituals that are considered to be sacraments. The Catholic Church has seven sacraments, while other denominations count fewer among their number. However, this idea of sacramentality extends beyond the formal sacraments such as Baptism, Matrimony, Communion, and the Anointing of the Sick. This sense of sacramentality, rooted in the Incarnation, extends our vision out to the world so that everything can be a sacrament, meaning every person, creature, plant, and object can be an opportunity to encounter something of the Divine Presence in the world. Sacramentality is a quality present in creation that opens us up to the Sacred Presence in all things. Sacraments reveal grace.
When viewed through this expansive lens, we discover that the more we cultivate intimacy with the natural world, the more we discover about God’s presence. All of our interactions with nature can be sacramental, and all the ways nature extends herself to us are sacramental as well. Sacramentality breaks through our surface obsessions in the world and plunges us into the depth of the Sacred at every turn. It is a spontaneous reminder of God’s creative upwelling and expansive love, calling us to love beyond boundaries. St. Isaac the Syrian defines a charitable heart as one “which is burning with love for the whole creation, for [humans], for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons—for all creatures.” [1] (demons?)djr
A shift takes place when we see life in this way:
This discovery that every creature and every created thing can be a window of revelation into the divine nature is an invitation to fall more and more in love with the world. To see that teachers of grace exist everywhere means to bring a sense of reverence to the way we walk in the world. When we encounter nature as sacrament, we can no longer objectify it. We can instead create the circumstances that nurture and nourish this kind of vision…. Sacramental vision means not only that we grow in our love of God’s ways in the world but also that we grow in our sense of kinship with creation….
There is a sense of God’s incarnate presence in creation that shimmers forth to reveal the holiness of all things. Notice how your senses come alive when you walk out in the world aware of its sacramental nature. What do your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin each reveal to you about how God is alive in the world around you?
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| NOV 10, 2025. Skye Jethani Don’t Worship Like a Pagan |
| Almost every ancient creation myth says that humans were created to serve the gods. We were needed to build the gods’ temples, to provide food to the gods through our sacrifices, and to appease the gods’ anger with our prayers and worship. Pagan mythologies said our purpose was to be the gods’ slaves.This pagan vision of life and worship is turned upside down by what God reveals about himself in the Hebrew Scriptures. Unlike the gods of Babylon, Egypt, or Rome, the God of Israel did not need to be fed, clothed, or housed by people. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,” he said, “for the world and its fullness are mine” (Psalm 50:12). And the Bible is clear that God does not live in a temple built by people, but has made the whole universe his dwelling place (Isaiah 66:1). In other words, Israel’s God did not need us. He does not need your service, offerings, praise, prayers, or your Sunday morning. So if God did not create us to serve him, and if there is nothing we can properly offer to him, what is the point of our worship? Within this question, we discover the problem. Because of our consumer mindset, we assume that worship must have a concrete outcome; some practical purpose that measurably benefits either us or God. In this formulation—which is the hallmark of paganism—worship is a means to an end; it is a transaction in which we offer to the deity what he needs (praise, prayers, sacrifices) and in response, we expect to receive what we need (blessing, protection, wealth, etc.). Here’s a simple, but useful, example. Back in 2010, Steve Johnson was a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills. In an overtime playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Bills lost when Johnson dropped a pass in the end zone. After the game, Johnson tweeted: “I praise you 24/7!!! And this is how you do me!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How??? I’ll never forget this!! Ever!!” Johnson had a transactional understanding of worship. He offered God his praise 24/7, and in exchange, he expected divine help catching footballs. Steve Johnson had kept his end of the deal but felt God had failed to uphold his. This is not Christianity. It is paganism. And it is not biblical worship. It’s an attempt to control God with offerings and incantations.Properly understood, Christian worship is never transactional. God may delight in our praises, but he does not need them. And in worship, we may experience grace and illumination—but these are not guaranteed. Rather than seeing worship of God as a means to an end, Christian faith understands God to be an end in himself. As David declares: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.” We gather to worship for no more practical reason than to adore our Creator and Redeemer, and in the process, we discover something equally impractical—he adores us as well. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 27:1-4 PSALM 50:7-15 WEEKLY PRAYER From Desiderius Erasmus (1467 – 1536) Lord Jesus Christ, you said that you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Help us not to stray from you, for you are the Way; Nor to distrust you, for you are the Truth; Nor to rest on any other than you, as you are the Life. You have taught us what to believe, what to do, what to hope, and where to take our rest. Give us grace to follow you, the Way, to learn from you, the Truth, and live in you, the Life. Amen. |
