purple-orange

Contemplate for a moment that all things in the cosmos are connected and interwoven in some grand pattern, tapestry or design. Many threads and strands interwoven together in the patterns of reality’s fabric. All our stories, intermingled with both happiness and sorrow, interwoven together in the great cosmic narrative.

Deacon Keith Fournier offers such a reflection in The Divine Design. He refers to the metaphor of a quilt, a grand tapestry and notes that, “The quilter begins at a center point, with a patch of cloth that becomes the reference point from which he or she weaves the entire pattern of the quilt. From that center, the design emanates and to it, the design returns.” The ‘center’ which Fournier is referring to is Christ. Christ is the center of the Divine Design, from which all things emanate and to which all things shall ultimately return. Fournier emphasizes this point, but it is also important to emphasize the other rich meaning behind it – that the Maker pours himself into the design also. He is not disengaged from the design, but present within it, and in that sense there is an intermingling between the Divine and the created order, and this intermingling is described as the Mystical Body of Christ (I Cor. 12:12), the intimate and mystical communion of love that we experience with our Creator – the Everlasting Covenant. The Maker is therefore revealed to be both transcendent from the tapestry but also immanent within it, at its very center. Perhaps that is how one can understand the phrase, “God’s … center is everywhere, but his circumference is nowhere.” (Apologies – I am not sure to whom that quote is attributed.)

Nature may be contemplated as a sort of narrative. According to Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, nature is a “book whose author is God.” (see here) The Pontiff remarks that this image was particularly retained by Galileo and other scientists. It is an understanding that reflects the notion of a narrative underlying the evolution of the cosmos, and an Author who is not only transcendent from the narrative, but willingly enters that narrative so as to reach out to his own creation.