Daily Meditation for May 3, 2024

There have been April showers, now come the May flowers. It seems the desire for beauty is innate in our human DNA. Perhaps it goes back to our first parents as a result of their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, God’s special place of ultimate beauty. It isn’t hard to imagine the sense of loss of beauty these first parents experienced, finding themselves amid “brambles and thistles; by the sweat of your brow will you earn your food” (Genesis 3:18, 19). What a far cry from the beauty and ease left behind. Reflecting on this biblical story, is it no small wonder that we are still in the recovery mode searching for that lost beauty that was our first home? People are eager for favorable weather to begin planting blazes of beauty to brighten the once barren areas with myriads of color. Gerard Manly Hopkins has said it well: The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

By Philip Zimmer, OSB