Spring is finally here and moods are spontaneously lifting. This particular soul always finds solace in nature. Being in the garden or around animals or just out there with the blue sky and the trees with birds chirping their songs. In these environments I find it the easiest to pray. I find myself stopping randomly as I am struck by God’s glory. And being in conversation with Him, the angels or the saints, is far less a chore. Rather, it is spontaneous, joyful and happy. It feels more right to pray here than almost anywhere else.
Why is this? Why is it easier to pray outside in pure nature than it is to pray in our rooms? Why do the distractions of the birds and the plants, the sun and the sky draw us closer to God rather than the distractions we get during Mass which only make it harder to unite ourselves to Him? After all, we know that He wants us to go to Mass at least each Sunday and Holy Day. We know that He is present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Tabernacle and wants us to visit Him there.
So why is praying out in a field so effortless, and so right?
I was in a beautiful flower and herb garden recently and while sitting on a bench in the shade I began pondering this question and asking Our Lord for the answer.
It struck me that when He created us, He put us in a garden and told us to tend and care for it. We started out as farmers and husbandman. He gave us creation not only to nourish us, but as a way to recall just how much He loves and cares for us. And to remind us that as we tend the soil of the earth, we must also tend the soil of our souls.
As shocking as it sounds to our modern sensibilities, mankind survived by living off the land for literally centuries and they did quite well. Their knowledge of medicine was far greater than we care to give them credit for. Their knowledge of healing herbs and natural remedies was intense and vastly helpful. It wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation caused havoc in the medieval world, and divided religion and care for mankind and God’s creation from the rest of life’s activities, which then led to wars and deaths and ceaseless arguments, that the modern world began to unfold. Rather than continue to fight over religion and knowing full well that without an authority, namely the centuries old Catholic Church founded by Christ Himself, agreement was impossible, people decided to stop discussing religion. After all, how many of them had died due to fighting over religion? Rather than continue the slaughter, they divided religion from every facet of their lives and decided that there was truly only one thing they could agree upon.
That one thing? Making money.
This intense form of greed quickly devastated Europe as peasant lands were seized and peasant families were forced off of their land. The common lands which had been used by townsfolks for generations as grazing grounds for their livestock were confiscated and given to greedy men for their own use. Farmers were forced into cities to work in the degrading and deadly conditions of the factories. It was all about making more and more things to get more and more money to buy more and more things. Gone was the mindset possessed by mankind since the beginning, that to have enough to survive on and provide for your family in a comfortable way was enough. Now everyone wanted more of their new god, money, so they could have more stuff.
Fast forward to today through all of the isms and countless wars caused by the reformer’s thoughts which sprouted into such deadly seeds, modern man is living the life of a robot. His time is ordered according to a clock which renders him subservient to an employer who cares for him only insofar as he is a tool to make the business more money. He is locked away in a lifeless office chained to a screen which minute by minute sucks the life out of him. But ‘oh’, they say, ‘there is so much time off of work to relax and do whatever you want. We’ve made your lives so much better!’ No, most of our lives are spent either at work, getting ready for work, sleeping so we have the energy to go to work, or collapsing at night because work is so exhausting. The weekends are times when necessary duties must be fulfilled. Rarely is there a time to simply rest and truly refresh yourself from the inside out.
In the words of G.K. Chesterton, “Nothing solid can be built…upon the utterly unphilosophical philosophy of blind buying and selling; of bullying people into purchasing what they do not want; of making it badly so that they may break it and imagine they want it again; of keeping rubbish in rapid circulation like a dust-storm in a desert; and pretending that you are teaching men to hope, because you do not leave them one intelligent instant in which to despair.”
We have been robbed of our God given right to provide for ourselves, our families and our communities by working off the land and by owning our own means of support. We have been robbed of the ability to order our lives according to the seasons, to rise when the sun rises and retire when it sets. Our whole system is set up in diametric opposition to the way God created mankind and the natural world to be. I do not condemn everything in the modern world, but much of it insofar as it is opposed to the common good of each individual, I do condemn. It is time that we reclaim our birth right. This must start with self educating ourselves in solid and unshakeable truths.
For the validity of my assertions, please look into the works of the historian Brad S. Gregory. Namely his books Rebel in the Ranks and The Unintended Reformation.
To read the excerpt of the book from which the Chesterton quote was borrowed, please visit here.