322nd Meditation
“In your wisdom you have fitted human beings to rule the creatures that you have made” (Wis 9:2).
With good reason, the Father entrusted human beings with dominion over the creatures of the earth, for who but His children, endowed with understanding, could lead it?
However, true dominion always goes hand in hand with wisdom, and this counts also for the Creation entrusted to our care, otherwise we would not give it the treatment it deserves.
Indeed, it is the human being whom the Lord endowed with the ability to penetrate the mysteries of Creation, so that he might recognise and praise “the invisible existence of God by the mind’s understanding of created things” (Rom 1:20), and cooperate in setting “creation itself free from its slavery to corruption and bring it into the same glorious freedom as the children of God” (Rom 8:21).
This has not yet been accomplished, and “we are well aware that the whole creation, until this time, has been groaning in labour pains” (v. 22) and “is waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be revealed” (v. 19).
If wisdom is lacking, one can go to the extreme of turning the irrational creation into an idol, of not recognising God in it and of falling into various errors and dependencies, allowing oneself to be deceived by demons.
If wisdom is lacking, dominion over Creation becomes, at the opposite extreme, its ruthless exploitation, which does not correspond to the dignity of either human beings nor of God’s good Creation.
It is wisdom that orders everything and gives everything its place. Without it, confusion and chaos proliferate. Therefore, O Lord, we beseech you – together with King Solomon – to grant us wisdom, so that we, who are called to dominion over created beings, do not end up losing our way.