Lectio Divina — Tuesday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Day 22 of the Season of Creation
act
Lectio — What is God saying to me?
> “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”
— Luke 8:21
Jesus gives me two movements that cannot finally be separated: hear and act.
I can hear Scripture every morning. I can read Laudato Si’. I can contemplate the Season of Creation. I can write about living water, care for our common home, and the creatures with whom I share The Glenn.
But hearing is not yet discipleship.
Jesus does not say, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and agree with it.” Nor does he say those who admire it, discuss it, post it, or even understand it.
They hear—and act.
And outside at The Glenn, a tiny creature seems to be preaching precisely that lesson without saying a word.
The monarch does not merely receive the mysterious summons placed within creation.
It acts.
—
Meditatio — What is God saying in my life?
It is late September at The Glenn, and monarch butterflies are passing through.
I watch them fluttering among the plants and find it astonishing that something appearing so delicate can undertake such an enormous journey. The monarchs of this fall migratory generation are different from the shorter-lived generations before them. They delay reproduction and can live for many months, allowing them to make the long migration south toward central Mexico.
No individual monarch has made the entire annual round trip and returned to tell the next generation where to go.
Yet they act.
Something has been written into them that I cannot see.
They respond to changing daylight, temperature and other cues. They feed. They conserve energy. They orient themselves southward. They seek nectar along the way. Eventually, those that survive arrive at wintering grounds they themselves have never seen.
And I wonder whether I, with Scripture, reason, memory, conscience, tradition and the Holy Spirit, sometimes manage to be less responsive than a butterfly.
God speaks—and I deliberate.
God nudges—and I postpone.
God calls—and I devise another committee to study the matter.
The monarch simply acts.
Yet Laudato Si’ gives me an important correction. Creation is not a finished museum display in which every difficulty represents something gone wrong. God has created a world still unfolding, a world in which I am invited into what Pope Francis describes as cooperation with the Creator.
That means I am not called merely to admire the monarch.
I am called to act with it.
If monarchs passing through The Glenn need flowering plants, what am I cultivating? If drought makes water scarce, how am I protecting living water? If my management decisions diminish habitat, what can I change? If my consumption contributes to the degradation of the creation I praise in these reflections, what must I surrender?
The monarch’s migration makes the Season of Creation intensely practical.
A butterfly cannot plant milkweed.
I can.
A butterfly cannot decide how The Glenn is managed.
I can.
A butterfly cannot examine how much water I waste, how much plastic I consume, or how my choices affect the creatures around me.
I can.
Perhaps that is why Jesus’ little word act is uncomfortable.
The Word I hear asks something of me.
—
Oratio — What do I say to God?
Creator God,
You have filled creation with movement:
water flows,
seeds germinate,
seasons turn,
and monarchs rise on fragile wings
and begin journeys they have never made before.
Do not allow my faith to remain motionless.
Give me ears to hear Your Word
and courage to act upon what I hear.
When I admire creation,
move me to protect it.
When I speak of living water,
teach me to conserve it.
When I recognize damage I have caused,
give me humility to change.
When the journey ahead seems too great
for my small abilities,
let the monarch remind me
that smallness does not excuse stillness.
During this Season of Creation,
make The Glenn a place of hospitality—
for sheep and dogs,
birds and butterflies,
soil and grass,
and every creature passing through.
May what I do today become my answer
to the Word I heard this morning.
Amen.
—
Contemplatio — What must not be lost?
The monarch helps me understand what Magnifica humanitas means when it insists that the quality of civilization is measured not simply by the power of its tools, but by its capacity to care.
A civilization can possess extraordinary technology and still fail to notice a butterfly.
And I can do the same.
I can use technology to identify a monarch, map its migration, predict weather, measure rainfall, monitor water consumption, identify plants at The Glenn, or even help me formulate this Lectio Divina. These can all be useful forms of assistance.
But the machine cannot perform my moral act for me.
It can tell me that monarch populations depend upon suitable habitat. It cannot make me care that they do.
It can calculate how much water I am using. It cannot make living water sacred in my eyes.
It can suggest where I might plant flowers. It cannot kneel in the soil and plant them because it loves the creatures that may someday feed upon them.
That distinction is what must not be lost.
Magnifica humanitas points toward those ordinary gestures through which care becomes human: reading to a child, sitting beside an elderly person, making a home welcoming. These acts may appear insignificant beside the immense computational powers of modern technology.
Yet love has always hidden itself in small acts.
Perhaps ecological conversion works the same way.
Saving creation sounds impossibly large.
Leaving some flowers for the monarch does not.
Protecting the planet overwhelms me.
Turning off water that is needlessly running does not.
Restoring an ecosystem seems beyond me.
Planting something native at The Glenn does not.
And suddenly the butterfly becomes almost a parable.
Its wings are small.
The continent is enormous.
Yet it acts.
It does not wait until it possesses the strength to accomplish the whole migration by itself. It simply responds to what has been written into its life and begins.
During this Season of Creation, perhaps I need to stop asking whether my little actions are large enough to change the world.
The better question may be:
Have I heard the Word of God—and what will I do because I heard it?
The monarch opens its wings.
The living water flows.
And Jesus says:
Hear—and act.
Day 22 of the Season of Creation
