We mustn't lose sight of who created nature

The Catholic Register, 18 January 2020

Nature reflects the beauty of creation but cannot replace the still greater, still more powerful Creator.

KANYAKUMARI, TAMIL NADU, INDIA -- A new year is upon us, which comes first a new day. At Kanyakumari each new day is marked with festivity.

Tourists and pilgrims come to this southern tip of India — formerly known as Cape Comorin — to see both, the sunrise and the sunset. Kanyakumari is surrounded by bodies of water which create a vast horizon, an empty canvas for the illuminating sun. The confluence of the three bodies of water — Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea — inspires visitors to watch the sun rise in the east, making its way across the sky to set in the west. The sun emerges from the water only to return; the two observatory points are a mere 2.5 kilometres apart. 

Tourists come for the breathtaking views but are inclined to visit the large monuments off the coast of the city. A short, yet choppy, ferry ride brings them to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial built in honour of Swami Vivekananda, a guru who is said to have attained spiritual enlightenment in that location. 

A temple of the virgin goddess Kanya Kumari — whom the city is named after — and a meditation centre lies there. Across the memorial stands a massive, 133-feet tall statue of Tamil poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar. The Thiruvalluvar statue and temple are the Hindu shrines that mark the sunrise viewing point. In contrast, at the sunset viewing point is a more modest, but still tall, statue of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Stella Maris. 

At sunrise, there were some 10,000 to 15,000 Hindu pilgrims thronging the sunrise point. Hinduism has many gods and like all polytheistic religions — ancient Egypt comes to mind in the biblical context — tends to divinize nature itself. The opening lines of the Bible — In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth — make it clear that the Judeo-Christian tradition firmly rejects the worship of nature as idolatry. Nature is not God; only the God who created the natural world is God. Having both Hindu and Catholic shrines in close proximity underlines that contrast. 

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