Pontifical Counsil for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People

XV Plenary Session

The Sea in the Life and Culture of Mankind
Reflections today and in history

H.E. Msgr Luciano Pacomio
Bishop of Mondovi, Italy

I - Beauty, grandiosity and life
Reflections leading to joyful contemplation

1. Is there anyone who has never lingered a while to contemplate the sea at dawn or at sunset, when it sparkles with countless tiny lights like so many fireflies set as gems in its waters, or by moonlight, lingering on the veranda of his house or perhaps on the beach like Saint Augustine to contemplate the sea, one of the many seas or oceans that so abundantly cover the earth’s surface?
Let us recall a few basic data that will help us appreciate the grandiose dimensions and the teeming life of this unfathomable womb.
Water covers 361 million square kilometres, or 71% of the earth’s surface. Scientific terminology, which is always useful in reflection, distinguishes between: oceans, i.e. great areas of water with identical physical characteristics; adjacent (or marginal) seas, situated on the edge of the oceans and in full communication with them, such as the North Sea, the Bering Sea; inland seas, which are surrounded by land and do not communicate openly with the oceans or other seas, such as the Mediterranean; interinsular (or peripheral) seas such as the sea around the Sunda Islands. Finally, the term “sea” is also applied to enclosed areas of water with no communication at all with the oceans or other seas such as the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea.
Conversely, by tradition, certain areas of water which are quite definitely seas, are known as gulfs, straits or canals, for example the Hudson Bay or the Gulf of California.

2. Apart from their enormous extension over the earth’s surface, another fact that seizes the imagination of all is the abyssal depth of the seas. Their average depth is 3,800 metres, which compares with the height of the world’s mountains. The maximum depth of inland seas is 6,270 metres on the American continent, 6,505 metres in Australasia, 5,440 metres in the Arctic and 4,405 metres in Europe’s Mediterranean.
The flora and fauna, the vegetation and animal life of the oceans and seas, depend on the temperature, the salinity, the light, the pressure and the amount of oxygen present.
Vegetation, certain kinds of cormophyte and numerous species of thallophyte, or algae, can be found at 200 or even 300 metres of depth.
Marine fauna, which includes animals that migrate according to changes in temperature and salinity, is divided into three major categories: plankton, nekton and benthos(1).

3. For our “contemplation” we will open up two “windows” on the seas: the Indonesian Archipelago and the Mediterranean.
The seas in the East Indies (which can be looked upon as an archipelago) are four times as extensive as the land; in the Moluccan Sea and the Sulu Sea they reach a depth of 7,000 metres. These seas were crossed by the navigators of the second millennium, from Marco Polo (1292) to Magellan (1512), with Antonio Pigafetta who kept a diary of his voyages.
We have been left an enthralling description: “These seas teem with the most exotic and multiform species of fish and crustaceans: myriads of lobsters, crayfish, crabs; the most varied types of Pamancathus; tiger fish (Balistidaes), long-finned peacock fish (Pterois), sea urchins and every other species abounding everywhere, including Amphiprion, Dascyllus, Labridae, Forcipiger, Rostratus and Thalassoma lunare; the most extraordinary colours of the angel fish (euxiphipops navarchus and pomancanthus annularis), lion fish (dendrochirus biocellatus) and platax teira. But there are also countless swarms of dolphins, tuna and flying fish. Then in the Moluccan Sea there is a great diffusion of pearls of the species Pictada maxima and Pteria penguin Pinagaratifera, all large in size and of the highest quality”(2).
The Province of Imperia, on the Italian Riviera, has a coastline of 70 kilometres reaching from the French frontier at Ponte San Ludovico to the western limit of the Gulf of Genoa. It has been described as follows: “The beauty and variety of the countryside together with an exceptionally mild climate form the principal attraction of the coast and its hinterland today as in the past. It abounds in a natural vegetation that is without equal in any other part of the Mediterranean(3).

II - The Sea in the Holy Scriptures
Biblical and theological reflections

4. We must note that the bible distinguishes between the theme water, of great semantic wealth and theological relevance, and the theme sea. Two items of terminology are important: first, the expression “to the sea” means “the west”; second, the “sea of bronze” was the large pool of water with a capacity of 80,000 litres at Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem used for purifying purposes. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word jam (“sea”) occurs 395 times in all(4). Two other important synonyms should be remembered: tehom, which is used 36 times in the Old Testament, especially in the psalms as a decidedly poetic expression for a “mass of water”, an “abyss of water”; and majim rabbim, used 582 times in the Old Testament in the sense of “great waters”, cf. the simple term majim meaning “water”(5).

5. Taking an anthology of biblical texts, we note that for the most part the sea inspired feelings of fear in the Old Testament writers. Their minds dwelt on the flood, on cloud-bursts, on unfathomable depths, more evocative of death and drama than of life and peaceful voyages.
We will start off with the only two texts that show the sea in a positive light: the creation as a “good” work of God’s (Gn 1, 9-10), and the prayer of the psalm, almost a song of the creation, in which even the sea monsters join in praising the Lord (Psalm 104).

“God said, ‘Let the waters under heaven come together into a single mass, and let dry land appear’. And so it was. God called the dry land ‘earth’ and the mass of waters ‘seas’, and God saw that it was good” (Gn 1, 9-10).

“You fixed the earth on its foundations,
unshakeable for ever and ever;
you wrapped it with the deep as with a robe,
the waters overtopping the mountains.
At your reproof the waters took to flight,
they fled at the sound of your thunder,
cascading over the mountains, into the valleys,
down to the reservoir you made for them;
you imposed the limits they must never cross again,
or they would once more flood the land…
Yahweh, what variety you have created,
arranging everything so wisely!
Earth is completely full of the things you have made:
among them vast expanse of ocean,
teeming with countless creatures,
creatures large and small, with the ships going to and fro
and Leviathan whom you made to amuse you (Psalm 104, 5-9, 24-26).

6. All other Old Testament texts reveal quite a different outlook. We will take as examples the flood and passages from the Book of Exodus, from the prophets, the psalms and other wisdom books.

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, and on the seventeenth day of that month, that very day all the springs of the great deep broke through, and the sluices of heaven opened” (Gn 7, 11).

“The sons of Israel went on dry ground right into the sea, walls of water to right and to left of them.

A blast from your nostrils and the waters piled high;
the waves stood upright like a dyke;
in the heart of the sea the deeps came together.
One breath of yours you blew, and the sea closed over them;
they sank like lead in the terrible waters” (Ex 14, 22; 15, 8.10).

From the prophets we can take Isaiah, Amos and Jeremiah.

“Why did I find no one when I came?
Why did no one answer when I called?
Is my hand too short to redeem?
Have I not strength to save?
With one threat I can dry the sea,
and turn rivers to desert;
so that their fish shrivel up for want of water
and die of thirst” (Is 50, 2).

“It is he who made the Pleiades and Orion,
who turns the dawn to dusk
and day to darkest night.
He summons the waters of the sea
and pours them over the land.
Yahweh is his name” (Am 5, 8).

“Yahweh who provides the sun for light by day,
the moon and stars for light by night,
who stirs the sea, making its waves roar,
he whose name is Yahweh Sabaoth, says this” (Jr 31,35).

The fable-like experience of the prophet Jonah is emblematic; it is wholly concerned with the sea and sea monsters. This is how Jonah prays from inside the monster’s belly:

“You cast me into the abyss, into the heart of the sea,
and the flood surrounded me.
All your waves, your billows,
washed over me.
And I said: I am cast out
from your sight.
How shall I ever look again
on your holy Temple?
The waters surrounded me right to my throat,
the abyss was all around me.
The seaweed was wrapped round my head…” (Jon 2, 4-6).

7. And this is the prayer of the psalms:

“He sends from on high and takes me,
he draws me from deep waters...
He freed me, set me at large,
he rescued me, since he loves me” (Ps 18, 16.19).

“Others, taking ship and going to sea,
were plying their business across the ocean;
they too saw what Yahweh could do,
what marvels on the deep!
He spoke and raised a gale,
lashing up towering waves.
Flung to the sky, then plunged to the depths,
they lost their nerve in the ordeal,
staggering and reeling like drunkards
with all their seamanship adrift.
Then they called on Yahweh in their trouble
and he rescued them from their sufferings” (Ps 107, 23-28).

“The sea fled at the sight,
the Jordan stopped flowing…
Sea, what makes you run away?
Jordan, why stop flowing?” (Ps 114, 3.5).

8. Finally like all the rest of the Old Testament the wisdom books too in their teaching put us on our guard against the sea:

“Who pent up the sea behind closed doors
when it leapt tumultuous out of the womb,
when I wrapped it in a robe of mist
and made black clouds its swaddling bands;
when I marked the bounds it was not to cross
and made it fast with a bolted gate?
Come thus far, I said, and no farther:
here your proud waves shall break” (Jb 38, 8-11).

“When he assigned the sea its boundaries
 – and the waters will not invade the shore –
when he laid down the foundations of the earth,
I was by his side, a master craftsman, delighting him day by day,
ever at play in his presence” (Pr 8, 29-30).

“Those who sail the sea tell of its dangers,
their accounts fill our ears with amazement” (Si 43, 24).

9.We can understand that in the New Testament Jesus assumes an attitude of sovereignty, with a word of command that controls the violence of the sea, in this case the Sea or Lake of Tiberias:

“He woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And the wind dropped and all was calm again… They were filled with awe and said to one another, ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him’.” (Mk 4, 39.41).

St Paul records the grace of the Lord and his own apostolic zeal in the countless hardships encountered on his journeys by sea:

“Three times I have been beaten with sticks; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked and once adrift in the open sea for a night and a day” (2 Co 11, 25).

“A great deal of time had been lost, and navigation was already hazardous since it was now well after the time of the feast of Atonement, so Paul gave them this warning, ‘Friends, I can see this voyage will be dangerous and that we run the risk of losing not only the cargo and the ship but also our lives as well’. But the centurion took more notice of the captain and the ship’s owner than of what Paul was saying; and since the harbour was unsuitable for wintering, the majority were for putting out from there in the hope of wintering at Phoenix – a harbour in Crete, facing south-west and north-west.

 “A southerly breeze sprang up and, thinking their objective as good as reached, they weighed anchor and began to sail past Crete, close inshore. But it was not long before a hurricane, the ‘north-easter’ as they call it, burst on them from across the island. The ship was caught and could not be turned head-on to the wind, so we had to give way to it and let ourselves be driven. We ran under the lee of a small island called Cauda and managed with some difficulty to bring the ship’s boat under control. They hoisted it aboard and with the help of tackle bound cables round the ship; then, afraid of running aground on the Syrtis banks, they floated out the sea-anchor and so let themselves drift. As we were making very heavy weather of it, the next day they began to jettison the cargo, and the third day they threw the ship’s gear overboard with their own hands. For a number of days both the sun and the stars were invisible and the storm raged unabated until at last we gave up all hope of surviving” (Acts 27, 9-20).

It is not surprising that the Book of Revelation in its conclusions proclaims that in the new creation there will be no sea.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea” (Rv 21, 1).

III – Five thousand years of history
Historical reflections on religions, navigation, fishing and ecology

10.Undoubtedly an overall vision is necessary to help us understand how the sea has been present throughout history in the religious practices and beliefs, the practical life and creative imagination of nations in the ancient world and in the various periods of the Christian era.

Water in general is seen as having a double potency, for good and for evil, in Babylonian mythologies, in the ancient Egyptian approach to the Nile, and in the ancient Mexican culture(6). In ancient cosmogonies and cosmologies from the Hindi Riveda (2000 B.C.?) to those of Babylon (from 2500 B.C.) the great seas are shown as being fecundated by the supreme divinity. For the Babylonians salt waters were personified in Tiamat (a female being) and were fecundated by Apsu (the male principle). From this union was born Mummu, who manifested himself in the clouds and mists, rising up from the seethings of the primordial waters(7). In Ugarit Jamm (the sea) was the name of the divinity that fought against Baal, the god of creation. In the world of ancient classical Greece we recall the god Poseidon, who was venerated in everything concerning the sea and navigation; his generation and the etymology of his name are highly complex questions(8).

11.Turning now to examine the history of navigation in its various aspects (military, commercial and, in recent times, touristic) and the history of fishing both as work done to obtain food and later as a form of commerce, we must first go back to the Phoenicians and then pass on to the Greeks and Romans. The latter were primarily concerned with coastal shipping for purposes of defence and in support of their military campaigns on land. The Arabs were the ones who, first with their mathematical and astronomical studies and then from the 14^th century on with their sailors and the establishment of commercial navigation, made friends with the sea and lost their fear of it, so much so that even ocean voyages became normal for them(9).

12.To have some idea of the importance of the sea today, not only because of its extension over the earth’s surface as described earlier, but also its importance for the economy of nations, for providing work for men all over the world, for tourism and for armaments, we need only look at the annual budgets of governments.

As an example we will take a page referring to the Riviera in Liguria (Italy). “In the province of Imperia the coast has many different kinds of landscape to offer, suitable for all types of bathing and other tourist attractions. But today as in the past the coast has always been the main attraction for the local population too, 85% of whom live in the towns and villages boardering on the sea, where the principal economic activities are carried on. In this part of Liguria too it is natural and at the same time unavoidable for the inhabitants to enjoy a privileged relationship with the sea; it was always and is still their destiny and their inevitable choice, their vocation and their reason for living, though of course in the changed circumstances and situation of today’s society and economic realities.”

Finally, to illustrate how deeply the relation between people and the sea can affect society and culture, politics and economics, the Church and government, we would refer the reader to literature dealing with three cities and dioceses located far from one another: Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, the island of Ischia, which is also a diocese, and Kottar in India(10).

Fortunately the growing attention paid to ecology, at least in the continents where the risk from consumerism is highest, has led to the setting-up of control bodies and furthered an awareness making possible a clearer expression of the ethical views of the Christian gospel.

IV - Wonder and Fascination

In conclusion let us now take a passage from a prestigious work dedicated to travelling(11). We read there that “Gibbons (his memoires were published in 1796), who considered it easier to circumnavigate the globe than to travel from Rome to Naples, was echoed by numerous other travellers who complained about the “indolence” of coach-drivers, the rapacity of innkeepers…” We are back in the 18^th century.

Here are two quotations on Naples and Sicily.

“This city, built like an amphitheatre around the gulf, can boast of the most glorious view to be enjoyed anywhere in the universe. I doubt whether Constantinople can be superior to Naples in this respect. From my window I could make out all its length and breadth together with the sea, and in the distance I could discern Vesuvius in the east and Posillipo in the west. I could see the volcano sparkling by night and sending up a dense unbroken column of smoke by day”(12).