The Beauty of Creation

            “The silent earth sings with the voice of its own beauty. You gaze upon the earth and you behold its loveliness, you observe its fecundity, you marvel at its secret powers, how it conceives its seed, and how it may bring forth offspring different from what was sown. As you reflect on these things you long to question the earth. Your research is an asking of the questions. Wondering and awed, you search for the truth, you probe it patiently.

You discover the earth’s springing energy, its amazing beauty, its most excellent potency. But because it could not have such virtue in itself, or by itself, swiftly there flashes into your mind the conviction that not by any possibility of its own can the earth have come to be, but only from the hands of its Creator. This very truth that you have discovered is the earth’s cry of confession, and to praise your Creator you make the earth’s cry your own.”

St. Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum 144.13

Quoted by Pope John Paul II, Centenary of Gregor Mendel’s Death

This is on the ground, tucked away under plants to the right of the statue of Gregor Mendel near the entrance to Mendel Science Center. Photograph by Alice Bampton, Communication and Marketing Dept.