Since the publication of Laudato Si in 2015, Pope Francis' great encyclical On Caring for Our Common Home (LS), the period from September 1 to October 4, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, marks the Season of Creation[1]. It is time set aside annually for all on this planet to re-experience the blessings of creation, the fact that we are part of it, and what our responsibilities are towards it. This year, as the Season of Creation began, the San Jose seminarians observed a holy hour as dusk turned into night. Before a simple wooden cross in the glow of many flickering candles, we were reminded of the grave global ecological crisis and the damage human beings have inflicted on creation. But the theme of this year's Season of Creation is hope. The imperative: to act with creation. As I prayed in the dim light, a praying mantis landed on my left knee and stayed with me. It was a whisper from nature, I guess, of the need as well to pray with creation.
We need to hope, since the gravity of the crisis is so daunting. To act with creation, and not just for it. And to pray with creation that groans "to be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rom 8:21). For it is not only the human being that the Son comes to redeem, but all of creation that has been implicated in man sin.[2]
That is not a familiar idea for many. But when one sins, one implicates creation in sin. When Adam and Eve, the handiwork of their life-breathing Creator, use their freedom to disobey him, they sin, but they also implicate creation in their sin. Against the will of God, they allow the will of a creature to overpower the will of the Creator. They coopt creation, victimize it, assimilate it into their sin. They take from creation, eat from creation, take pleasure in creation, hide in creation to hide from their Creator. So it is with all sin. In sin, beyond the human being's disrespect for himself or herself, there is no respect for the word, the nous, the spirit, the purpose, the law that the Creator speaks into creation.[3]
What the Creator wills is that human beings recognize in each other the dignity of being created in the image of God.[4] Having alienated themselves from God through sin, they are redeemed through the blood of Jesus, the Son of God. Through the Church, the community of His disciples, they are called in the power of God to build a community of humankind that lives in harmony with God's creation. Through the Spirit they are to participate in a reconciliation worked out by the Father between humanity and God, human beings and human beings, and between humanity and creation. In this reconciliation, it is not only the human being who is redeemed, but creation as well.[5]
In the human being's sin, creation is disrespected, abused, raped, and alienated from its inner finality of bringing praise and glory to the Creator by nourishing, uplifting and honoring humanity wrought in the image of God. He kills with the war machines wrought of the steel and chemicals of this world. She lusts in the flesh and pleasures of the world. He fashions false gods with the woods and metals of this world. She idolizes money as a god, a fetish, a proxied infinity of created goods, for through money she has access to all produced goods. So humans create a culture of insatiable consumerism, build a production gargantuan dedicated to satiate the insatiable, to exploit and abuse the earth beyond it limits to feed the gargantuan, to reward its owners and remunerate its technicians richly, and discard those who are inconsequential to the production process heartlessly. They implicate the world in this selfishness, greed, and the inhumanity of its drivers. But the sin, implicating all of creation, belongs not just to the owners and the technicians; it belongs as well to the consumers.
As described in my last blog, this consumerism is in the air. To consume, it demands we own. To consume insatiably, we must own insatiably. Property is not immediately desired as a means for building a family, or a local community, or a national community, much less a global community of brothers and sisters thriving together on this God-given earth in fraternity based on human dignity. Property is desired for me, for my private consumption. And if in my insatiable need for such private property the property of others has to be disrespected, or the ancient property rights of ancestral communities cancelled, or the human rights of others transgressed, or the mountains destroyed, the old-growth forests felled, the rivers poisoned, the habitats of bio-diverse species annihilated, then so be it. For, as the old Romans used to say, in owning property I have the right to use or to abuse it. The more property I own – or we own corporately or collectively – the stronger our right to use and abuse it. And damned if anyone or even any law should claim social justice trumps what I own!
So life goes on. Consumption goes on. Today, humanity needs to understand where humanity is bringing humanity in its consumerism. And where is humanity bringing the earth in its international trade and business. In Vatican II, after humanity had witnessed the death and devastation caused by nuclear bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Church urged Christians to work for a society which would know how to protect itself from the catastrophe of nuclear war, even if it then fell short of outright condemnation of nuclear weapons. Humanity and earth could be annihilated from nuclear war, so nations and international organizations of nations were to work on structures to best deter nuclear war.[6] But today, in this Season of Creation, humanity and the earth do not need nuclear warfare to annihilate the world. It only needs business as usual.[7]
We know that. From our experience of increasingly powerful hurricanes and typhoons, from the increasingly destructive forest fires and floods, from the lethal outcome of every war, from the bombed centers of human culture and life, from the graves of countless fallen soldiers, we know that. Creation is not the property of humanity, not ours to use and abuse, not the property of humanity. The center of creation is not humanity[8] but the Father's work of reconciling ourselves with himself, ourselves with each other, and ourselves with creation. In this work of the Father, we are called to participate.
There is hope in this knowledge. And hope in the increasing numbers of those who during this Season of Creation hear not only the cry of the poor but the cry of the earth.
Beyond hope, we are called to act. All are called from within to freely work together in social friendship to break down barriers to achieve genuine fraternity[9] not only among women and men of diverse nations but among Brother Sun and Sister Moon and stars, Brother Wind and Sister Water, Brother Fire and Sister Mother Earth. The requisite action to respond to the climate crisis should not be action for creation, but with creation. It should not be an imposition of human technical solutions onto the environment where humans are separate from nature. It should rather be a more humble working with creation where humans understand that they are part of the ecosystem, not outside of it, and so willing to work with natural rhythms and processes as in regenerative agriculture or rewilding projects.
With creation, as with the praying mantis on my knee, we are also called to pray.
[1] Cf. https://seasonofcreation.org
[2] It is therefore not the case that we can disrespect creation because "heaven and earth pass away" (Mt. 25:36) in the sense of annihilated or discarded. The entire creation, along with humankind will be renewed and transformed. Creation was created good, and despite its implication in sin through the fall of humankind, it will be restored (cf. Rom 8:19-23, Col 1 19-20, Rev. 21:1-5). In our environmental action we participate reverently in God's reconciliation of nature with himself and humanity through Jesus Christ.
[3] The Creator infuses his creation with his goodness, his reason, his purpose, his eternal law. Human beings, wrought in his image, are called to live and act in response to this creative sharing of God's reason and goodness with them and all of creation. In certain discerned cases, this is not just an option but a matter of obligation in freedom. Failing this obligation is sin.
[4] In the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (GS) the Church offers herself as a partner in dialogue with the world seeking progress and development. Its teaching on the "dignity of man" is a key notion in this dialogue. Today, GS is best read together with Francis' Laudato Si and Fratrelli Tutti, since it was written prior to today's consciousness of the ecological crisis. Otherwise one could be led to a false anthropomorphism which is antithetical to ecological equilibrium and conversion. E.g. "All things should be related to man as their center and glory" (GS, 12). At the same time GS teaches that man is subject in conscience to a law that is greater than him, "In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose on himself, but which holds him in obedience. For man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. (GS 16).
[5] "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away, behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal thrpugh us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (2 Cor 5:17-20).
[6] Cf. GS, 79-82. Nuclear weapons are referred to as "scientific weapons". The build up of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to nuclear war is accepted, even while rued as a "treacherous trap for humanity"
[7] The consumerism - and the international trade and business which enables it - drives the globalization of the technocratic paradigm which destroys people and the world (LS, 106-114).
[8] This would be a dangerous anthropocentrism: "Modern anthropocentrism has paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought over reality, since 'the technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere 'given', as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere 'space' into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference.' The intrinsic dignity of the world is thus compromised" (LS, 115).
[9] Cf. Francis' encyclical Fratelli Tutti on Fraternity and Social Friendship, 2020. In this context, Fraternity is not only a brotherhood of human beings but a fraternity of human beings and all creature created by a loving Father.
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