Bro. Solanus Mary OFM Conv., Franciscan Friary, Wexford
PROLOGUE
We hear much talk nowadays from many quarters about the non-existence of God. In other words, atheism. Actually, it is very reasonable to believe in God's existence. His existence can be proved by reason alone - and that is a teaching of the First Vatican Council ('Holy Mother Church professes and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty to the natural light of human reason through the things created' , Dei Filius, II)
ST. MAXIMILIAN M. KOLBE
St. Maximilian M. Kolbe was a Polish Conventual Franciscan priest and theologian who lived in the first half of the 20th Century. He wrote much on the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sadly, he perished in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941. He was canonised as a martyr in 1982.
Here is a piece St. Maximilian wrote in Niepokalanow, Poland in 1940. In it he takes the example of a flower and demonstrates for readers how it must have a Maker:
The Divine Life
"When I look at a small flower, a common meadow flower, I cannot understand how, with such thoughtlessness, one may doubt Him Who is the Maker of that small flower, Who shaped its structure and arranged all its parts so that it could bear fruit, which in fact it does.
If we were to find in an unremarkable corner of the moon even just a watch amidst chaos and general confusion, that would be quite enough to assert in all certainty that there exists a watchmaker who assembled such device. A watch deteriorates, stops, and rusts. It falls to pieces. It would be useless to plant it in order to make it produce other watches. Our small flower, on the contrary, bears fruit, from which other flowers originate and again more fruits ever forward, ever onward.
And that happens not only to-day, but has been going on for centuries, millennia, hundreds of millennia. And there are many such flowers, and living beings are so diverse and numerous that one would not even be able to count them.
Thus, in the most diverse manners, creatures proclaim the glory of the Creator, of the Father of the Universe" (Scritti Kolbe, No. 1309 - English translation, 2016).
LORD ALFRED TENNYSON
This foregoing piece by St. Maximilian reminds me of a lovely little poem by the great English metaphysical poet from the 19th century, Lord Alfred Tennyson. It was written in 1863. In the poem he illustrates God’s creation by making use of a flower analogy:
Flower in a crannied wall
"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
EPILOGUE
In both of these literary pieces we see how a simple flower is used to illustrate God’s Creation. When we look at Nature all around us - the flora, the fauna, the solar system, and especially ourselves - the order and design of it all: How can we say that there is no God?