"Let us imagine a garden. A thousand
different trees and various types of plants grow there, each of them different
in appearance, color, and quality of growth. So many plants in one place, all
nourished by the same moisture! Although the strength of the moisture, filling
each one of them, is in essence the same, yet the plants use the moisture
according to their different needs. In wormwood, the moisture turns rancid; in
water hemlock, it becomes poisonous juice; in others — saffron, balsam, poppy —
it develops other qualities: in one — it heats, in another — it cools, in the
third, somewhere in between… In laurels, spikenard and similar plants — it is
fragrant; in the fig and pear — sweet; in the grapevine it becomes grape and
wine. The tang of the apple, the rose’s blush, the lily’s whiteness, the
violet’s blueness, the hyacinth’s purple, and everything that can be seen on
earth, growing out of one and the same moisture, differs in so many varieties
of appearance, construction and qualities."
The holy bishop sees in all this the miraculous
breathing of life. He calls it either the "life force,"
"mind," or, in a sense, "soul." This last notion he divides
into three categories: "the growing-nourishing soul" in the plant
world, "the sensitive soul" in the animal world, "the rational
soul" in man. These are three consecutive stages, tightly knit together.
And man, from the moment of his birth, passes through the initial stages,
before his own rational soul is revealed fully, which from the beginning was
already part of his potential.
Following the thought of the holy bishop, we can
add that plants have the initial elements of "sensitivity," for
example, to light, to warmth, even to foreign touch. They may even have the
ability to react to what they "sense," and also the instinct to
attract attention to themselves through their aesthetic side. Botanists can
surely tell us so much about this!
St. Gregory then writes about man:
"A similar miracle is performed by nature,
or, rather, by the Lord of nature, in respect to us as animated beings. Bones,
cartilage, pulsating blood vessels, muscle fibers, ligaments, the body itself,
skin, fats, hair, glands, nails, eyes, nostrils, ears and all that is similar
and, besides them, thousands of other connections, differing from one another
by various characteristics — all these are nourished by the type of food
characteristic to its nature, so that the food, approaching each of the
members, changes appropriately . If it nears the eye,
it dissolves into this seeing organ and, according to the characteristics of
the eye’s various parts, separates to nourish each of them. If it approaches
the hearing organs, it mixes with the hearing ability; in the lip, becomes the
lip; in the bones it hardens; in the marrow it softens; it changes into tension
in the muscles, stretches over the surface in the form of skin, turns into
nails, becomes refined enough to produce hair from itself, wavy and curly if it
goes in winding movements, or straight and long if it moves in a straight
line."
That which was said 1500 years ago begs to be
supplemented by modern knowledge. Today we have at our disposal the results of
such inventions of the 20th century, or more accurately — the last
few decades, that appear to surpass the powers of nature: humans have surpassed
the wisdom hidden in nature and perfected its blessings. So it appears
superficially, at least. But one only need to look deep inside oneself to see
that all the achievements of culture, including the computer, conform to God’s
initial gifts that we carry within ourselves and make broad use of. Thus, in
our brain, in this very humble case, we have an innumerable number of chambers,
where we have our own dictionaries of various languages, if we have learned
them, or ones available for them; miniature libraries, formed from the notes of
our memory; archives filled with materials from our entire life; vocal or
musical works memorized or etched into our souls; there is a photographic
device where innumerable photos are kept; when we are alone, we have in
ourselves an audience and a class for self-tutoring. The apparatus of our brain
gives us the ability to play back at any time the content of a speech we’ve
heard, or vocal works or visual pictures that have been impressed there. We
keep in our brains our spiritual riches, but also often leave unnecessary
trash. All this belongs to our eternal soul, and the landlord and manager of this
wealth is our mind, our reason, that is also the
evaluator of our collection. Its job is to bind our spiritual content, which is
protected in an inexplicable manner within the brain, a physical organ, with
all the surrounding life, with the help of a series of other physical organs.
St. Gregory suggests that his readers mentally
place a person, as God’s creation, next to a sculpture or a painting of a
person: what a difference between the creative power of God and the imitative
creativity of humans! Thus we can ask, together with the saint, whether all the
modern achievements of our mind are to be compared with the structure of our
spiritual and physical self? Can we compare the
life-abounding acts of the incomprehensible God, the One Creator and Provider,
with the often lifeless, fake, and even dead achievements of human genius?
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