The National Catholic Rural Life Conference's Web site carries a reflection, "Environmental Sacramentality," by Fr. Bud Grant, a theologian and pastor of a rural parish in Iowa. Fr. Grant is an assistant professor of theology at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.
"In the physical elements of grain and fruit ground and crushed and remade into bread and wine, then blessed and broken and remade into Christ’s body and blood," he writes, "we Catholics have the most sublime expression of the innate beauty and goodness of creation. For us, to put it simply, matter matters."