A conversion of heart for the planet’s sake

During Lent, Christians examine their conscience to consider the steps they can take to change their lives to better follow Jesus.

Mar 10, 2016

During Lent, Christians examine their conscience to consider the steps they can take to change their lives to better follow Jesus. In his recent encyclical letter "Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home," Pope Francis has called us to examine our conscience about our relationship with the earth and how we treat it.

Reflecting on the contents of this letter and its challenges for how we live on this planet seems a valuable Lenten exercise.

The encyclical takes its name from the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, beginning with the words, "Praise be to you, my Lord." The pope, citing his namesake, notes that St. Francis thought of the earth as his sister "with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us" and sustain us.

The pope then says that "this sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her." No longer seeing ourselves in a personal relationship with the earth, too frequently we "see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will."

The earth, says Pope Francis, has been wounded by our sin and "is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she 'groans in travail' (Rom 8:22)."

We have forgotten that we are only a part of God's creation, and we are "dust of the earth; our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters," as Genesis 1 and 2 remind us.

In calling us to a conversion of heart, the pope quotes the spiritual head of the Orthodox churches, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, saying that we are called to "repent of the ways we have harmed the planet," and "acknowledge 'our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation.'"

We must come to understand that "to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God."

The pope challenges us to consider the "ethical and spiritual roots of environmental problems" and to look for solutions first in the heart.

Again citing Patriarch Bartholomew, Francis asks us to "to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing" and to develop "an asceticism" that empowers us "to give, and not simply to give up," and to develop "a way of loving" that allows us to move gradually "from what I want to what God's world needs."

While the encyclical provides specific detail for living an ecologically sound life in keeping with Catholic social teaching, its core can be found in these words from the ecumenical patriarch quoted by Pope Francis:

"It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God's creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet."