This past week, in the quotes posted to social media (Facebook, Instagram, X) I continued on the theme of Christian eco-spirituality for Earth Month, and I honoured Jacques Maritain, one of the biggest influences on me and on this blog, who died 51 years ago today:
As a spiritual work of mercy, care for our common home calls for a grateful contemplation of God’s world which allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us. As a corporal work of mercy, care for our common home requires simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness and makes itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world. — Pope Francis
If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation. The quest for peace by people of good will surely would become easier if all acknowledge the indivisible relationship between God, human beings and the whole of creation. In the light of divine Revelation and in fidelity to the Church’s Tradition, Christians have their own contribution to make. They contemplate the cosmos and its marvels in light of the creative work of the Father and the redemptive work of Christ, who by his death and resurrection has reconciled with God “all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Col 1:20). — Pope Benedict XVI
The contemplative is someone who has drunk the cup of joy and sorrow to the dregs. If we saw reality without its cloak of appearances (as we shall never be able to see it), no one would be able to say to a contemplative: ‘I’ve had more enjoyment than you have,’ or ‘I’ve suffered more than you have.’ You see, contemplatives have discovered the tenderness of the Father, and they see it in all its particulars, from things inside their own lives to external things, like stars, flowers, water, or the sun… But contemplation increases the pain of communion unattained, the pain of the injustice inflicted on the poor and the oppressed. It will increase your interior suffering. You will be more persecuted and misunderstood. — Arturo Paoli
As we stood there, we were often struck by the splendid colors of the rising sun. The horizon then glowed with the most divergent shades of golden yellow and vermilion which then shaded into a deep purple and a glorious ultramarine. Often in the morning we all witnessed incredibly beautiful skies. No painter, I believe, has such colours on his palette to reproduce such miracles of nature with his brush. Such a sublime natural spectacle was then able, for a few moments, to focus your thoughts on him, the Creator of the universe, whose power and majesty knows no bounds. — A fellow prisoner describes his time with Saint Titus Brandsma in the Dachau concentration camp
The human being here-below, in the night of his condition, is just as mysterious as the saints in the light of their glory; there are in him inexpressible treasures, constellations without end of suffering and beauty which must be recognized and which normally escape our poor, futile notice altogether.
Love can bring a remedy to all this. What is in play is a conquering of this futility and a serious undertaking of knowing and re-knowing this uncountable universe that our neighbour bears within himself. That’s the business of contemplative love and the kindness of its look. — Jacques Maritain
Contemplative in the Mud 