Loppiano, 27 November 1975
In a confidential tone, Chiara shares the graces of light she had while contemplating nature
« I have a special love for nature and I have often asked myself how my relationship with nature should be so that it is not a sentimental one but a relationship as God wants it to be. Can you tell us something about your relationship with nature? »
Chiara: Right Markus, well then, let’s talk as if there were just the two of us so that no one can hear us.
In my spiritual life, in various moments, the Lord enabled me to feel this aspect of life more powerfully, this contact with nature.
But it was a rather special meeting with nature, and I could relate several episodes.
In these episodes, however, what the Lord showed me in nature was not primarily nature, but rather God who was sustaining nature, God who keeps nature alive, God who is beneath nature, God who gives to nature that beauty which is the beauty of beauties, that is, harmony, unity among all things that are in nature. Because all things in nature, I saw, are linked to one another by a golden thread, by a harmony, by a unity.
When the river flows into the sea it flows to the sea out of love, it does not run there by chance. In the same way, when a flower blossoms it is out of love that it blossoms, it does not blossom by chance. In the same way, when autumn comes and the leaves fall, it is not by accident that the leaves fall, but out of love. It is out of that love – which is like Jesus forsaken – that the leaves fall. Nature is all supported by a kind of Gospel; it is all sustained by God.
Now, several times in my life, the Lord … made me understand, He showed me, I would like to say, almost with my eyes but it was with the eyes of my soul, the presence of God beneath nature: like a great sun that illuminates all of nature. And so nature appeared with such beauty that I still have it before my eyes the beauty of nature. It’s a beauty that you do not see if you do not have that grace, but after you have had that grace you can never forget it.
Now, just as we are children of God, since love sustains nature like a mother, all the things of nature are God’s children. This is why St. Francis called them sisters, brothers: sister moon, brother sun, sister water … this is why, because it is true. Because we are all creatures of the same Creator.
To discover, to see, to have the grace of perceiving beneath nature God who binds together the things of nature like so many sisters and brothers, was an enormous grace. This allowed me to breathe and not to be afraid of nature, but to embrace it. With my eyes, for example looking at pictures and paintings, I could appreciate all artists and recognize what lay deep within them, understanding, as I have said on other occasions, that artists have something in common with the saints.
Because … true artists have captured that something in a certain aspect of their art, something of their inspiration, which is beneath nature: it is God.
Having grasped this, nature acquired enormous value: the dignity of a child of God. It is no longer simply nature itself, a poor little blade of grass or a little flower or this or that type, and we must be careful about touching them, about looking at them; we must see them as creatures of the same Creator, of the One who created us.
Therefore, have no fear in looking at nature. If you look at it separated from its Creator, then you are looking at it sentimentally. However, if you look at it as the child of the One who made you, then you are looking at it in a supernatural way. You can look at it as much as you like, and it will bring you closer and closer to God.
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