Cosmic justice

Paul Claudel, the French mystical poet, writes of the need for justice throughout nature, in a surprising way that illuminates the meaning of the cosmic ecological order:

"It is necessary that the scales be equally balanced between heaven and earth, and that one should return to the other as much as it has received. It is this hunger for justice and confession which grips the bowels of the earth and expresses itself in eruptions and convulsions, those cramps and colics of nature which are represented by mountainous masses. Nothing in nature was made to rest content in itself. There is no living substance which does not struggle to break out of its mould. 'I have declared thy justice in a great church... I have not hid thy justice within my heart' (Ps 39:10-11)."

(The emphasis is mine.) The reference to "not resting content in itself" suggests that the impulse to justice is more than an aspiration for equality and balance: it is ultimately a yearning for union with God, which the creation can only attain through Christ.

The quotation is taken from I Believe in God (section on Judgment, 3).