Yesterday morning the clocks went forwards an hour. Which sounds very dull, admittedly. But when you break down what is really happening, there’s something much more interesting going on.
Imagine if you didn’t understand our modern concept of time. If you understood time in terms of the natural rhythms of life, sunrise and sunset, full moon and new moon, birth and death. What would British summertime even mean? (and while we’re at it, what would British mean?)
It would mean that we all simultaneously agree to wake up one hour earlier/closer to sunrise, and move our schedules forwards an hour too. Incredibly, we all make this change at once, waking an hour earlier every day, so that we can enjoy one hour more of sunlight. Millions of people, most confessing that they are “not morning people”, all doing what they need to do to wake an hour earlier every single day.
It is astonishing that we think of it as losing an hour’s sleep and not as simply waking earlier every day. It says something about our separation from nature. For us, time has become something artificial, something primarily about other people’s rhythms, not the natural world’s. It has become something we create and define, a rhythm we dictate rather than dance to. In this note, thank God for the Church’s liturgical calendar, with its lumpy organic character, giving a bit of rhythm to the life of the soul. Thank God we don’t have a sterile religion, without feasts and seasons and God given rhythm.
We should also recognise the power of reframing our ideas. If we were all told to move our lives to be an hour earlier, we’d say no. If we asked those who wake up at 7 to suddenly start waking up at 6 each morning, they’d say it’s asking too much. But if we reframe it as just changing the clocks and missing one hour of sleep, we can all do that and we hardly even mention it (except for me, it seems). We have made a significant change consistently across a large population, just by a small change to our thinking, a slight shift to our frame of reference.
Yesterday, as I walked to campus, a ladybug flew straight towards me, and landed gently on my finger. I wouldn’t have even felt it if I hadn’t seen it. I decided to let it stay, and move my hands to give it more places to go. Sometimes it took up my offer, and sometimes it stayed still or turned around. Eventually, it took out its wings, geared up and left me to continue my walk in peace.
In that brief moment, we were not competitors, colleagues, or obstacles to each other. We were not threats or opportunities for gain. We were just two living things together, two simple creatures on a short journey, enjoying each other’s existence. We were playmates. We were equals. We served no greater good, but existed for our own sake. The goodness that we were was more than enough.
By our existence, by our play, we were giving glory to our common creator. Because we served nothing, not even ourselves, we served God.
Why would God, who is infinitely and definitively good, create? No quantity or quality of creation will ever increase the total amount of good that exists, since He is infinitely good already. Why should there be creation, if creation adds nothing to its creator?
Because of the nature of good itself. Truly, good is not like mere human desires and pleasure. It is not something to hoard, and seek for yourself. God’s goodness is not His being perpetually pleased with Himself. God is not the perfect drug.
Rather, it is in the nature of good to give itself. Goodness is inherently diffusive. At all times, the good desires to give itself, and to be united to others. Consider how a flower’s scent gives itself to those nearby, and is especially good as we are united with it by breathing it in, and how the flower advertises itself with beautiful colours, and invites in the butterfly, to drink of its sweet nectar, and so be even more perfectly united by nourishing the butterfly’s flesh.
Goodness entails a thing pouring itself out, into the other. Consider how the Sun doesn’t only illuminate itself, but all of creation. And consider how Brother Sun is actually destroying his own mass, at a rate of about 4 billion kilograms per second, to provide heat and light for the cosmos, and how the Earth receives this energy, and turns it to life! The Sun gives itself, and so is united with and internalised by Earth, and the Earth, filled with the Sun, leaps and hops and sings and rejoices!
So God did not create seeking goodness, but expressing and sharing and pouring out His goodness. And this gift is everything, because God created from nothing, ex nihilo, giving all things even their very being. God creates because He is good, not because He wants good. God made all creation, in order to share His goodness.
But God’s goodness is not content to stop at creation of the universe, but desires this universe to be bursting with God Himself. He is determined to share His very person, His very self, with us.
To this end, God sent His Son to us, as one of us. Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, that the eternal life in him who is the resurrection and the life, might fertilise even the dirt of death, that life may burst forth. The only begotten Son of God comes to us as the Bread of Life, giving himself completely in the Paschal sacrifice, to unite himself to us, to fill us with his own life, that we may live because of him, even as he lives because of the Father (Jn 6:57).
God created the whole world, that He could give Himself to it. God gathers the whole universe under Christ Jesus, the head of all things for the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all (Eph1:22-23). God’s plan is for all creation, in the fulness of time, to rejoice with the children of God, perfectly united with Him, and unveiled in the glory of the children of God (Ro 8:21-22, 1Jn 3:2).
What is this incredible, self-giving, diffusive, unifying good? It is none other than love.
‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’ 1 John 4:16
It is love that is good. Love is always in motion, always giving itself away. If God is love, and love is self-giving, what exactly is God giving? Doesn’t there have to be something existing itself before it can give itself? But God’s existence itself is not something passive, but His gift of Being. This is a great mystery, but I know, through and through, God is love. God is the ultimate giver, and all He asks is to be received!
We are to be thoroughly transformed by God’s love, through and through. We are to be full of God to overflowing, and we shall share in His glory, and rejoice with all creation, to all eternity.
‘God has placed you in this world not because he needs you in any way–you are altogether useless to him–but only to exercise his goodness in you by giving you his grace and glory.’ St. Francis de Sales
God bless you!
P.S. I just want to acknowledge that so much of this is informed by the wonderful book, ‘The Humility of God’ by Sr Ilia Delio. This book is quite incredible, and revealed a great deal to me, although there are parts I find myself disagreeing with still, and many times had to pause and check how what she wrote aligns with Church teaching, only to find she makes this clear on the next page. It was difficult but incredibly rewarding.
As A Little Child 