Jesus and the Hazelnut

The Pope’s annual ‘Season of Creation’ begins on 1st September and ends on 4th October – the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron of Ecology. His joy at relating to the human and natural worlds as one common home – with Jesus joining them – is echoed by the English mystic Dame Julian of Norwich. She interprets Christ’s life, death and resurrection, as enwrapping all that exists in a vision she received:

“God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought what can this be? And it was generally answered thus: it is all that is made. I marvelled how it could continue, because it seemed to me it could certainly have sunk into nothingness because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: it continueth and always shall, because God loveth it; and in this way everything hath its being by the love of God”.

This is the embrace which binds us and nature together “yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13,8)

Fr Peter Conley

Image Jason Tamez Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)