If I Could Talk to the Animals

If I could talk to the animals

It is my pleasure and honour to address you on this beautiful day. It is always a great thrill to speak to such a diverse, beautiful and gifted audience as you are. Of course, you may not understand everything I have to say, but perhaps your human companions and masters can somehow further communicate the few words I want to share.

I have three points. First, I want to tell you why we bless you. Second, I want to remind you that you share the same basic purpose for your lives that we humans have — we are all called to glorify God in our very lives. Third, I want to thank you for the ways in which God uses you to reveal God’s very self to us.

First, I want to say why we have come to bless you.

We bless you for the same reason we bless ourselves or bless one another, and similarly receive a blessing from our priest.

In receiving a blessing, we humans are being told that we are holy and beloved by God. So too, when you are blessed, you are being told by God that you are holy and loved by God.

Each cat, each dog, each sheep, each iguana — each of YOU here has been created by our loving heavenly God, and each of you, whether you are a rabbit, or a sheep or a horse, you reveal something of our Creator in all your being.

Secondly, I want to speak about what you all have in common with each other, and have in common with us human animals. The most important thing that you share with human animals is that you have been created to glorify God.

If you are a cat, you glorify God by your cat-ness, being what God has created you as a cat to be. If you are a dog, you glorify God in your living as a dog. In the same way I, a human animal, glorify God by being the kind of human animal God created me to be.

So your main purpose in life as well as the lives of myself and all other humans, is to glorify God. By living your lives as dogs, or as iguanas, or rabbits, or cats, you glorify God, you give pleasure to your Creator.

I must be honest and say that while I don’t understand everything about you one thing is clear. That your strangeness, your otherness is a great reminder to us humans of the great and marvelous riches of Our shared Creator.

And this brings me to my third point, that we humans thank you and bless you for the ways in which you reveal God to us. How clever you are.

You see, when we humans question our God, question his designs and purposes, God often helps us understand by pointing towards you all, and saying, in effect to us uncomprehending humans — I’m like this mother hen in this way, I’m like that lamb in that way, I’m like this dolphin in this way, I’m like the pelican in that way.

Sometimes God has to remind us human beings that your relationship with God is beyond our human comprehension, You dogs teach us what it is to smell well. You birds, you show us simplicity, as well as graceful flight. You horses, you show us gentleness, as well as speed. You cats amongst us, you not only incite us to curiosity, but your sight is an amazing gift.

But perhaps the creature who has most famously revealed the truth of God to us humans, the most popular symbol for Christ, is the lamb. From the earliest days of Christianity in the catacombs, long before Christians dared to show a cross, the lamb was the dominant symbol of Christ. The lamb was the symbol chosen to take its place. It was, we might say, the first crucifix, or the pre-crucifix.

Today, Christ is our Passover lamb. In the Eucharist we eat of the divine lamb. In the book of Revelation, St. John has the believers following in the footsteps of the lamb.

I have only begun to say a little of the gifts you offer to God, and that is of course all I can hope to do. So today we bless you in recognition of your holiness and being loved by God. In doing so we recognize that this world is yours as well as ours, because God has put you here, and that is the only rationale for your existence that you need. Finally, we bless you in recognition that you reveal God to us in ways we only begin to comprehend, and remind us in sometimes difficult and painful ways that we are not at the centre of the universe. Like you, we are God’s creatures. Thank you and God bless you