Biosphere Homily
Biosphere 2 built in the late 1980’s was and still is the largest attempt to build a closed artificial ecosystem. It was designed as a prelude to help provide experience on designing self-sustaining ecosystems in outer space. As a result all of the oxygen, water and food consumed by the inhabitants of this ecosystem needed to be generated by the facility.
This goal has yet to be reached, but certain lessons have been learned from the many failures over the years. For example, many of the trees planted to create a rainforest ecosystem grew rapidly but then fell over before reaching maturity. The Biosphere 2 designers had not been aware of the fact that young trees need wind to grow properly. When the wind blows, the tree bends which then tugs at the roots on the windward tree and compresses the wood on the other side. As a result, the root system expands to provide a firmer base and the compressed wood cells change their structure to become stronger. The altered cell structure wood is called reaction wood or sometimes stress wood. Trees that are exposed to strong winds early in life become trees that can easily handle even stronger ones when fully mature. The lack of stress that resulted from the lack of wind inside Biosphere 2 led to the downfall of the trees.
In the first reading Jeremiah talks about a healthy tree in Biosphere 1. It has an extensive root system, verdant foliage, and even bears fruit in adverse conditions. Note that although the tree does not show signs of distress it has been stressed. In its youth that tree would have experienced drive periods. In such stressful times the young tree would have extended its roots in the direction of moisture. Once it found the stream the density of its roots near the stream would increase especially during those times of lack of rainfall. Just as trees become stronger with wind exposure so would the tree's relationship with the stream grow tighter the more drought the tree encountered. Both of these are examples of hormesis which is the beneficial adaptive response by a living body prompted by external stressors, like drought or wind. This is something that holds true at the biological level of our nature and it should not be a surprise that something analogous also holds true for the spiritual level of our nature.
St. Luke’s Beatitudes are a short lesson on spiritual hormesis. In them Jesus is trying to communicate to His followers that He wants them to suffer stress and do so in a variety of ways. He wants His followers to experience poverty, hunger, sadness, and ostracism. Blessed are the stressed because all those stressors permit man to grow in his trust in God, in his faith. Each of those differences ends up like a different pathway that connects you to God and allows Him to deliver His Providence to you.
So how exactly is this process supposed to work? Well, Our Lord doesn’t tell us at all. It’s basically ‘Trust me bro.’ St. Paul further explains a little bit by explaining that you can trust Jesus because he rose from the dead. If you actually believe in the resurrection you will only grow in strength and holiness and in love for God with every single bit of adversity you will encounter in your life. If you don’t believe in the Resurrection and you try to live out the Beatitudes you will end up as “the most pitiable of all people” as St. Paul puts it. In effect without God’s providence all those external stressors will crush you. As a result it makes perfect sense to avoid any and all kinds of stressors or sufferings if you have no faith. The faithless man in the contemporary world has all sorts of mechanisms to avoid suffering or adversity. You can easily avoid wind at almost every moment of your life. Drought? We all have indoor plumbing. Poverty? Our poor people are fattened on appetizing food. Weeping? All sorts of prescription and recreational drugs both legal and illegal are at your disposal. Ostracism? Video games, streaming, and social media can help you escape that too.
In one way it’s surprising that contemporary society which is so generally stressed out is the same society that has the most means to escape stress and suffering and anything unpleasant. However, if you think about the spiritual hormesis that is embedded in the readings today it makes sense that the more secular a society, that is a society more separated from God, the worse it will be able to handle stress even though it has the means to avoid it.
Those two trees in the different biospheres were both cared for. One tree in Biosphere 2 was entrusted to human beings while the other tree in Jeremiah was entrusted to God. The first was nurtured in an artificial environment that was a simulacra of the real one created by God, while the second directly was nurtured as God had intended. You as a Christian have a call to let yourself be cared for by God when confronting life’s stressors and avoid those avenues of man made escape at your disposal. A good way to prepare yourself for this spiritually is to practice this as a human animal. In fact you have a perfect opportunity this week as the Lord blesses us with a polar vortex. Just go out everyday for a walk where you just embrace the climatic gift God is bestowing upon you. Of course it will be unpleasant because you will be poor in temperature, but He wants you to be poor. If you try to enrich yourself by staying indoors 99.9% of the time, you will only end up impoverishing your soul.
In Christ,
Fr. Athanasius Soto, O.S.B.
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