Saving Mother Earth … and ourselves!

Aug 30, 2024

As I was contemplating - Fr Gerard Steve Theraviam
The Season of Creation is upon us! Each year from September 1 to October 4, Christians unite for this worldwide ecumenical celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home. This special season honours God as Creator and invites us to see Creation as the divine ongoing act and God invites us to be collaborators in creation. We are called to care for all of Creation – we are ourselves creatures, and yet God has made us share in his role as Creator and called us to be stewards of all that is the work of his hands.

Pope Francis promulgated his Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum addressed to all good people of good will on the climate crisis just last year in 2023. This came hot on the heels of his earlier lengthier encyclical letter Laudato Si’, published just eight years prior. Why two papal documents on the same topic coming so soon after each other? Laudato Si’ was a gentle and pastoral invitation to concerns about the care of our common home. However, he tones of Laudate Deum is stronger and grimmer! Sadly, we have largely failed to rise to the challenges he outlined in the Laudato Si’.

Hence, the Pope addresses not just Catholics but all people as this is a global problem affecting us all! “I have realised that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” says the pope. “The reality is that we have not taken adequate steps to ‘save’ Mother Earth. Climate change impacts us all and we feel its effects in the areas of health care, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc.” In this short period of eight years since the publication of Laudato Si’, global climate change has become a climate crisis!

There are some who choose to deny the reality of climate change and yet, we ourselves can see it so evidently in the way the weather has changed locally. We experience higher temperatures as well as storms and flash floods in the city. Places like Cameron Highlands are losing their cool temperate climes as forests are chopped down. Seas are being polluted with plastics and other pollutants, resulting in there being less fish and thus causing higher prices, affecting us all, but especially the poor! We see many animals becoming extinct as their habitats are lost. Global warming is a scary reality with some island nations being at the risk of disappearing while the ice in the Arctic and Antarctica melts, causing rising sea levels.

We are reminded that our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together. Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community. The effects of climate change are borne by the most vulnerable people, whether at home or around the world. We cannot be mere onlookers at an immense problem – because it affects our own selves right now and will have severe multiplying effects on coming generations if unchecked. ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ takes on new significances as we are being challenged to see our neighbour as not just other humans but also Mother Earth itself! Our well-being is interwoven with the well-being of the Earth.

Some effects of the climate crisis are already irreversible so we may be tempted to give in to despair and give up. Yet, if we all make concerted efforts we can indeed turn the tide, hard as it is. We simply must do so, not just for the coming generations, but for ourselves too! We do so with Hope, doing our very best together! We cannot shy away from the stark reality that we are facing but to “accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home and help to make it more beautiful.”

Our efforts at parish level to inculcate the ‘5R’s – Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recycle ? must continue. Many parishes are engaged in re-cycling efforts and reducing the use of paper and plastics. Going paperless has meant that our church bulletins are now online. We ask that minimum plastics are used at our coffee mornings and invite people to bring their own containers and even cutlery. Rather than use disposable plates and cutlery that add to the landfills, we are encouraged to wash our cups and plates!

We must also engage and pressurise our political and civic leaders to address the crisis and not accelerate economic progress without recognising ecological and human factors that must be prioritised. We need to see where political parties stand on ecological issues and ensure that our economic policies do not put profit above people and our ecology. We need to stand up against polluters and demand that they pay stiff penalties to deter them, and this must be led by the authorities. We need also to join community and NGO ecological efforts.

Louis Armstrong’s song What a Wonderful World resounds in my head as I close this article. Laudato Deum (Praise God!) indeed for the gift of this world that we are called to care for. May we take our responsibilities to be co-creators and stewards seriously indeed!

(Fr Gerard Theraviam is the Parish Priest of the Cathedral of St John the Evangelist in Kuala Lumpur, as well as the Spiritual Director to the World Community for Christian Meditation, Malaysia.)