The beautiful four-week, liturgical season of Advent is framed within some of the most hope-filled and poetic passages from the Scriptures. Themes of anticipation and joy are threaded through all the readings which nourish and renew our spirits. It is a time to celebrate the wonder of generativity and the continual renewal of life as we await the birth of the one our hearts long for, Christ the light and life of the World – our planet earth, our common home.
Throughout this past year, which marked the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, we have reflected on and celebrated in a range of ways, the sacredness of all creation, embedded in our Christian story. From the genesis of our world, the biblical narrative is imprinted with divine affirmation. God saw everything that was made, “beholding it as very good” (Genesis 1:31).
To increase our understanding of this, theologians and scholars through the centuries have reflected on our relationship with all of creation. St Francis of Assisi has left us a timeless legacy where he personifies the pivotal aspects of the created world in his Canticle of Creation (1225), also known as the Canticle of the Creatures.
Almost a century after St Francis, the Franciscan theologian St Bonaventure was captivated by the beauty of the natural world. Experiencing a deep, intimate relationship between creation and our Trinitarian God, Bonaventure described creation as “a mirror of God”. Hence, divine love and goodness are central to his theology which confirms that everything begins and ends in God who is the cause, the centre and end of all creation. Thus, all creation flows from love, is sustained by love and returns to love.
In feminine imagery, Bonaventure depicted the nativity of creation as emerging from the “womb God”. Creation is birthed by God. It is God’s child and, therefore, is intimately connected to the Divine. He portrays the harmony and interconnectedness of all creation as being like a beautiful song, a cosmic symphony that flows freely into the vast spaces of the universe.
Echoing this, the Catholic Bishops of Japan in their conference document “Reverence for Life” say that: “To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God’s love and hope” (Laudato Si’: 85). Such doctrine, which supports a God-centred universe, provides hope because as Ilia Delio OSF notes, despite the uncertainty and complexity of life, God is hidden in the world, and the world is grounded in a communion of love.
Advent is the season when we express in a heightened and more focussed way, our longing for this hiddenness of God to be revealed. The theme of desire expressed in the liturgical prayers and scripture readings, threads itself through the four weeks preceding the Feast of Christmas. It is captured beautifully in the verses known as the “O Antiphons”, which precede the Gospel and the Magnificat of the Evening Prayer of the Church, from 17 – 24 December.
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In the first of these Antiphons, God our creator is addressed as Wisdom; described as the breath of the power of God – a pure outpouring of God’s glory (Wisdom 7:25). She is portrayed as the feminine personification of the divine, given to humanity to connect us with God. In the Book of Wisdom, we are assured that in every generation she passes into holy people making them “friends of God and of the prophets” (Wisdom 7:25). Bonaventure, described as the “mystic of the goodness of God”, is one such person. He embraced wisdom as the path to holiness or human wholeness.
Wisdom can be seen as the heartbeat of God’s relational presence in our world. Both the books of Proverbs and Wisdom tell us that wisdom is found in the heart of the marketplace: “sitting by the city gates, crying out at the busiest corners, at play and delighting in creation”.
So, as we embrace the spirit of joy and reverence for all of life which permeate the seasons of Advent and Christmas, let us deepen our commitment to being Pilgrims of Hope. May this be evident as we continue to strive to realise the presence of our hidden God, revealed in our communion of love with each other and our kinship with all of creation.
Sr Patty Andrew OSU is the Vicar for Consecrated Life of the Diocese of Parramatta.
This article was originally published in the 2025 Advent & Christmas | Summer edition of the Catholic Outlook Magazine. You can read the digital version here or pick up a copy in your local parish.
