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| Br. Barry |
From: Barry . . .
Subject: chapter talk
Date: Thursday, 12 January, 2012.
St. Aelred of Rievaulx 2nd Patron of Nunraw
Community Chapter Talk, Br. Barry.
SAINT AELRED 2012.
Just down the coast there in Yorkshire, St. Aelred sat in his monastery of Rievaulx and wrote his book ‘ The Mirror of Charity’. We might surmise that during breaks in his writing activity, he would have gone outside into the valley where the monastery is situated for a breath of fresh air and to stretch his legs.
If it was winter and a cold, clear dark night or early morning, he would have had a fine view of the stars above. No street lights or other forms of light pollution in those days.
In fact, there may be an allusion in his book to his doing just that. In one passage he writes ( he is addressing human beings ) ‘ O wondrous creature, inferior only to the Creator. Do you philosophise about the harmony of the revolving heavens ? But you are more sublime than the heavens. Do you examine the mysterious causes of creation ? But no creature is a greater mystery than you.’ Was it himself who was philosophising about the heavens and examining the causes of creation?
When he looked at the stars and the night sky, St. Aelred would have seen much the same sight as we do today but he would have interpreted what he saw very differently.
In the 12th century, the ancient Greek view of the Universe still held sway. The heavens were regarded as a sort of revolving canopy with the stars attached to it – ‘the sphere of the fixed stars’ as it was called. The earth was thought to be stationary as the absolute centre of the Universe.
St. Aelred would have no inkling of the mind–boggling distances and sizes out there in space; that the Universe is reckoned to be 93 billion light years in diameter ( one light year is just under 6 trillion miles ); that it has been estimated that there about 30 billion trillion stars. Nor would he have any notion of perhaps the most amazing modern discovery of all in the field of astronomy, that the galaxies are all moving away from each other at incredible speeds.
What is even more mind-boggling than all this, however, is the lengths to which some people will go to keep the Creator out of the picture. This is so of most popular presentations of science. A recent BBC publication, ‘Planet Earth’ describes all the conditions that were necessary before this planet could become capable of sustaining life. It puts the appearance of these conditions down to ‘plain good luck’. ‘When the cosmic dice were thrown’, it says, ‘our planet came out with a double six’.
Such authors have raised up a new god named Chance. Chance is the origin of everything and explains everything.
Yet is there a better way to come to some appreciation of the immensity and infinity of God than to have a good look at the Universe? Not everyone has received the spiritual gifts of a Blessed Columba Marmion. When he was a young seminarian in Dublin in the 1870’s, he was entering the study hall one day when he was ‘overwhelmed by a light on the infinity of God and seemed to catch a glimpse of the immensity of His Being.’ In the absence of an experience like that it is necessary to use the principle: to go from what is seen to what is unseen. From a notion of near - infinite physical distances and numbers, an idea of God’s infinite qualities can be got: his infinite goodness, power, mercy & etc.
The greater the sense of what divinity is, the greater will be the wonder at the Incarnation or of the Maker of the World appearing under the form of a circle of bread.
When St. Aelred looked at the night sky, he did not see receding galaxies or classes of stars with strange names: quasars, white dwarfs, red giants. He tells us himself what he saw ‘ the tranquillity of that order which charity ordained for the Universe’. As the title of his book indicates, St. Aelred could not see past charity.
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