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Laudato si
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Third Week of Advent
Isaiah 45:18
Thus says the Lord, creator of the heavens, who is God, the designer and maker of the earth, who established it not creating it to be a waste, but designed it to be lived in: I am the Lord, and there is no other.
Earlier this year Pope Francis published a policy letter on the environment entitled “Praise Be” or Laudato Si. This week negotiators in Paris agreed on a worldwide effort to reduce what has come to be known as “global warming” by limiting the rise in temperature to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
The developed world agreed to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries switch to greener sources of energy. That amount will rise each year.
By 2050 the world is supposed to meet another goal: net zero emissions of greenhouse gases.
Francis wrote, “We have come to see ourselves as the earth’s lords and masters. The violence present in our hearts is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. The earth herself is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.”
“Lack of physical contact and encounter between rich and poor can lead to a numbing of conscience and tendentious analyses which neglect parts of reality. Ecology becomes social; it must hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
“To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some is one way of refusing to face the issue, that situation where a minority believes it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.”
“No creature is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
“As committed and prayerful Christians, we all need an ‘ecological conversion,’ so the effects of our encounter with Jesus Christ becomes evident in our relationship with the world around us. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”
“The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face. The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things.”
A prayer from Isaiah 45: Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from above, like mercy fall from heaven like gentle rain, upon the place beneath. Let the earth open and salvation bud forth, Lord. Let us see these works of God with our own eyes.
Francis said in a recent press conference: “God always forgives, human beings sometimes forgive. But when nature is mistreated, she never forgives.”
Download and read Laudato Si? Here’s a link to a no-charge PDF: https://laudatosi.com/watch … Also on this site a cool video and some written thoughts from Fr. Robert Barron.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1412
