Augustine Everything there is gives praise to God

Friday 29^th Week Ord. Time  Year II

Night Office

From a sermon by Saint Augustine of Hippo

(Enarr. in Ps 144, 13.15: CCL 40, 2098-2100)

Everything there is gives praise to God

The same God who has put everything in order is the God who made it. To some, he has given awareness and understanding and immortality, as he did to the angels; to others, awareness and understanding and mortality, as to us humans; to yet others, he gave bodily sense but not understanding nor immortality, like the beasts of the field; and to yet others still, neither awareness nor understanding nor immortality, like the plants, the trees, like stones. But even these, on their level, cannot fall short: so he has ordained creation at each step, from earth to sky, from visible to invisible, from mortal to immortal. This interweaving of creation, this most well-proportioned beauty and elegance, sealing the heights from the depths, plumbing the depths from the heights, never breaking off or going short indeed, yet ever harmonizing the variety. Everything there is gives praise to God.

And yet, what do we mean when we say that? It really means this: when you consider it all and see how beautiful it all is, in so doing you yourself are praising God in it, or through it. For the speechless earth has yet a voice of its own, its eloquent beauty. Take stock of its beauty, its abundance and strength, the way the seed germinates; so much commonly being brought forth that never was planted. You examine it all, marvelling as you do so at the great strength, the great beauty of it, the potency you find in it, realizing that all this could not have come of itself. And it strikes you, therefore, that it could only have got there from the Creator. What you have found there is the voice, just alluded to: this manifestation presenting itself in praise of the Creator. Does not the thought of all the beauty there is in the world lead you on to the point where the very beauty itself seems to proclaim with one voice: It was not I who made me, who put me here, but God?

Observe, then, the beauty of the world: the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, and the stars! Does not all this overawe the beholder? Does not the beauty itself strike the gaze as if to suggest that naught else could be devised more beautiful? And yet, here amidst all this beauty and elegance well nigh unutterable, you have worms and mice and reptiles for company. How beautiful, then, that kingdom which you share but with the angels! It was little indeed to sing the praises of visual elegance, the beauty we can see. All that would apply to anything there is, in this world, the earth resplendent with forest and glade, or the sky aflame with celestial light. But those words, the great beauty of your kingdom, tell us of a sight which we have not seen and yet believe; not having seen, yet desire because we believe, bearing all things in the meantime for that desire. That is the measure of a beauty (one which does not fade): may it be loved before it can be seen, so that once seen it may be securely possessed.