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ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL…
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The full text of the first verse of the song is:
All things bright and beautiful/All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful/The Lord God made them all.
But this is secondary to my “main theme.”
The homily is the one portion of the Eucharistic liturgy in which the words are not those of God, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or addressed in prayer to them, or expressing our belief in them. In that sense, even though good preaching is highly valued in the Catholic Church (when it can be found!), nevertheless it’s the words of the preacher, trying to interpret and apply God’s Word to us and our lives. From that perspective, Scripture and Sacrament must always take pride of place in our liturgical worship.
And so, when I’m finished with my homily my mind is on what’s next: for Sunday Masses, this means recitation of the Creed (I’ll spare you the history of why what we call the “Nicene Creed” is actually the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed”—you’re welcome!).
This past Sunday, for whatever reason, one phrase really struck me: that God is the Creator “of all things, visible and invisible.” And I wondered how often I think of or acknowledge the reality of “things invisible.” And I don’t mean things like viruses or microbes that are “invisible” to us but can be seen under a microscope—I mean things truly invisible to us, yet somehow real.
I think about experiences that dying people sometimes have, of loved ones coming to greet them, to escort them home. I know my own “adoptive Father,” Glen Adams, had that experience the morning before he died, and several times in the days just before. I think of the dying words of St Dominic Savio, who sat up in bed with a radiant smile. He was asked what he saw: “Things,” he said; “wonderful things…” And with that, he passed to the world of those things.
I think of the words of our liturgy, that we join with the saints and angels in “one chorus of exultant praise” (the ending of the Preface, just before the Holy, Holy)—are they really with us (and with every other Eucharistic celebration over the whole world)?
And finally, I think of the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist, itself—Jesus, glorified and triumphant and at the right hand of the Father—somehow in the Host and Chalice? Really?
When Hamlet waited to see if his father’s ghost would appear to him, Horatio mocked the idea that the guards had actually encountered the murdered king. But Hamlet’s (and Shakespeare’s) reply is meaningful here: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (I, v). Some of those “things” might well be beings of both heaven and earth, after all. If we believe in the Resurrection, if we believe in Christ raised up in glory, if we believe that there are saints and angels, then why might they not want to consort (anonymously, invisibly) with us? Who would you want to see at your death-bed, to guide you and welcome you to heaven?
