Good Lord, Deliver Us!
The juxtaposition of this past week’s news events has been strange and perhaps more meaningful than we may have thought. The week started with snow, lots of snow, snow stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Eastern Seaboard. Emergencies were declared in several states, including our own, as travel and outdoor activity quickly became dangerous with snow turning to ice on the roads and temperatures rapidly descending into single digits.
Towards the end of the week, however, with snow still lingering on the ground here in Ohio, our neighbors on the West Coast were hit with an even more dangerous threat. Wildfires, the like of which no one had ever seen, roared through the hills and canyons around Los Angeles, wiping out whole neighborhoods and destroying over ten thousand homes. The death toll continues to rise as recovery operations start sifting through the rubble.
Whether we experience firsthand or witness from afar this strange coincidence of extreme snowstorms and firestorms we are left in a state of shock. Certainly, we cannot compare our own minor inconveniences at being snowed under for a few days with the mass homelessness, loss of life and property of our neighbors in California. But there is an important lesson we can take from this juxtaposition of natural disasters: we are all subject to the vicissitudes of the nature God created.
What do I mean by “subject to”? Today’s Gospel tells us that the Christ Child returned to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph and was “subject to” them. As children we are “subject to” our own parents. As children of God, we are “subject to” our Father in heaven. But what is it to be “subject to Nature”? Certainly, it is a different kind of subjection, one that is not voluntary but imposed upon us by Divine Providence. Often, we benefit from Nature’s abundance and proliferation of good things—the food we eat, the sunshine we enjoy, the beautiful scenery of our planet, and so on. This is as it should always have been, but for the sin of Adam. For with Original Sin, the Nature that was created for Man followed him in his rebellion. As Adam defied God, so too would Nature now defy Man, and Man would become not always the beneficiary of Nature, but sometimes its victim.
Natural disasters are an integral part of a world that is now at war with man. Our role in nature is to preserve the integrity of that nature by responsible stewardship of the world’s resources, and to protect ourselves from Nature’s upheavals by careful and well maintained precautions. Ultimately though, Nature obeys God and not Man, and so it is to God we must turn to keep us safe. “From lightning and tempest, from the peril of earthquake, fire, and flood, good Lord, deliver us.” (Litany of the Saints)