All Creation Witnesses to God - Weekday Homily Video

Today we celebrate the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a Bishop and a Martyr. He was a writer who was especially concerned with Church unity. His message is important and urgent in our contemporary world and, to an extent, in the Body of Christ, which is divided in many ways and on many levels.

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has asked the Universal Church to offer special prayers today for peace in the Holy Land. We pray that the Lord brings conversion in human hearts so that the violence we have seen in the Holy Land in the last week comes to an end soon. We pray for all the innocent people who have become victims of this war.

A Higher Power

One of the most powerful instincts we have as human beings is the belief in a power higher than ourselves. That belief is found in all human cultures. They all worship something. People believe in something higher and more powerful than themselves.

Christianity has been in the land of my ancestors, Uganda, for less than 150 years, yet people had a name for God before the arrival of Christianity. In my language, Lusoga, we call Him “Kibbumba” (The Great Potter); in another language, Luganda, He is called “Katonda” (The Great Creator); in the Zulu language of South Africa, He is called “Unkulunkulu” (The Old Old One); and in Ghana, the Akan call Him “Onyame” (The Supreme One in the Sky).

What all these names tell us is that long before Christianity or any of the major world religions showed up in some cultures, people already believed in something higher and more powerful than themselves. They looked at the formations in geography, the order that marked nature, the complexity of their own being, and they believed that all of these things are not mere accidents of nature. There must be a power higher than themselves that put it all together and keeps it all together.

Nature Reveals God

The reading taken from the Letter to the Romans addresses a growing contemporary problem. The reading says, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, namely His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” God has written so much in nature about Himself, including on our own lives, but we have refused to see Him and to honor Him, yet His deity and power is all around us, on us, and in us. With all that God has provided, the reading says, we have no excuse to say we did not see Him, because all creation witnesses to our God.

Today is a good day for us to ask ourselves, how attentive am I to the way God speaks to me through nature, through other people, or through the complexity of the way I was created?

May we look at the faces of our family members and see God. May we look in the faces of our neighbors and see God. May we look in nature, into the skies, the hills, the meadows, and the rocks and see the vestiges or the imprints of our God.

• Today’s Readings

• Father Fred's inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center this morning. Please view the video on our Facebook page. (You don't need a Facebook account to view.) 

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