Lectio Divina — Day 14 of the Season of Creation
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Theme: “life”
Lectio — What does the Word say?
> “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
— John 3:14–15
Today, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, I am confronted by Christianity’s great paradox: the instrument of death is lifted up as the sign of life.
John speaks here for the first time of “eternal life.” Yet eternal life is not merely an infinitely extended version of the life I already possess. It is a different quality of life—life received from Christ, life lived in communion with God, life that begins now.
And during this Season of Creation, with its call toward Living Water, perhaps the Cross teaches me something about all created life. Living water does not remain sealed in a container. It flows outward. Christ does not clutch his life to himself; he pours it out.
So the question becomes unsettlingly personal:
Am I merely keeping myself alive, or am I actually living?
—
Meditatio — What does the Word say to me?
Bianca is now at The Glenn, and this is certainly not the life she knew before.
The air-conditioned house is gone. The familiar domestic routine is gone. Now there is a bonding pen, sheep, poultry, dirt, weather, strange smells and unfamiliar sounds. One small continuity remains: the pad in the crate where she used to sleep.
Seen from one perspective, somebody might look at that change and say, “Poor Bianca. Look at everything she has lost.”
But perhaps that is exactly the wrong way to measure life.
A Livestock Guardian Dog was not fashioned merely to occupy a couch in climate-controlled comfort. Bianca’s former owner recognized her restlessness and wanted something more for her. He wanted her to have the opportunity to become what generations of Maremma Sheepdogs have been bred to become: a guardian living among those entrusted to her care.
She has not simply been taken from one life. She has been brought toward another.
And suddenly the Cross becomes uncomfortably close.
I spend considerable effort arranging my own comfortable pad in the crate. I want Christianity without too much inconvenience, stewardship without sacrifice, conversion without losing anything, and mission provided that mission fits comfortably around the life I have already arranged.
But Jesus does not save the world from a couch.
He takes up the Cross.
The Cross therefore asks me something Bianca cannot ask herself: What kind of life was I created to live?
During this Season of Creation, that question extends even to my relationship with Living Water. Water exists by flowing and giving life. Perhaps Christian life does too. If I hoard my time, possessions, comfort, attention and the gifts of creation merely for myself, I may preserve something—but I will not necessarily discover the fullness of life.
Bianca’s bonding pen therefore becomes an unlikely icon for me. What initially appears to be restriction may actually be formation. What looks like the loss of freedom may be the discipline through which freedom discovers its purpose.
Perhaps some of God’s boundaries in my own life are not fences keeping me from happiness.
Perhaps they are fences keeping me close enough to my vocation to discover it.
—
Oratio — What do I say to God?
Lord Jesus Christ,
lifted high upon the Cross,
you reveal that eternal life
is found not by protecting myself from every sacrifice
but by giving myself in love.
When I confuse comfort with happiness, awaken me.
When I confuse having more with living more, correct me.
When I resist the boundaries through which you are forming me, give me patience.
Bless Bianca as she begins her new life at The Glenn. Let her learn the sheep, the poultry, the land and the responsibilities for which she has been brought here. And as I train her, teach me to recognize how patiently you are still training me.
During this Season of Creation, make me a guardian rather than merely a consumer of your gifts. Teach me especially to receive Living Water with gratitude, conserve it with prudence and share it with justice.
May the Cross I would rather avoid become the Cross through which I finally discover life.
Amen.
—
Contemplatio — Cross, technology, and the pace of life
The arrival of Bianca makes the warning of Magnifica humanitas surprisingly concrete.
I could measure her transition technologically: temperature, acreage, calories, activity, location, livestock losses, training results. Technology can help me tremendously in caring for her. Even the virtual fencing I have used with my LGDs demonstrates how a technical tool can assist stewardship.
But no measurement by itself can tell me what constitutes a good life.
That requires wisdom.
And the same is true of artificial intelligence.
The temptation of the technocratic age is to assume that because something can be done faster, it should be done faster; because something can be automated, it should be automated; because something is new, it represents progress.
The Cross destroys that illusion.
Nothing about Calvary looks efficient.
Christ could apparently accomplish more by coming down from the Cross than by remaining upon it. Yet what appears to human eyes as failure becomes the place from which eternal life flows.
That is why prudence concerning AI is not hostility toward technology. Sometimes genuine progress requires me to ask questions slowly enough that the answers can mature. What kind of human beings are these technologies forming? Who benefits? Who bears the cost? How much energy and living water does my digital life consume? What responsibilities am I quietly handing to machines because doing so is easier?
And who decides what counts as progress?
Bianca reminds me that the easiest life is not necessarily the fullest life.
The Cross tells me the same thing infinitely more profoundly.
Perhaps this is precisely the spiritual discernment demanded by the Season of Creation. Creation cannot merely become another system to optimize. The Glenn cannot merely become something I control. Bianca cannot merely become equipment for predator management. Water cannot merely become a commodity. And I cannot reduce myself to a producer whose worth depends upon what I accomplish.
All are gifts before they are resources.
The Cross restores that order because Christ does not dominate creation from above. He enters it, receives a human body from it, suffers within it and allows himself to be lifted upon its wood.
Today I exalt that Cross because it reveals what neither an algorithm nor an efficiency calculation can finally tell me:
The measure of life is not how comfortably I preserve it, but how completely I learn to give it in love.
—
Actio — Living the word “life”
Today I will spend a few quiet minutes beside Bianca’s bonding pen without trying to accomplish anything. I will watch her beginning to discover the life for which she has come to The Glenn, and I will ask Christ:
“What comfort am I protecting that keeps me from the life for which you created me?”
Then I will choose one concrete answer and carry that small Cross today.
As I provide water for Bianca, the sheep, poultry, wildlife and myself, I will also remember the Season of Creation and pray:
“Jesus, Living Water, teach me to receive life as gift, guard life as steward, and give my life in love.”
The Cross may then cease to look like the place where my life ends.
It may become the place where my life finally begins.
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on Day 14 of the Season of Creation
