What profits mankind if he saves the environment but loses his soul?

Sep 20, 2024

This is hardly the headline you might have expected to see in this column but it provides the starting point for contemplation as we’re in the Season of Creation: a global ecumenical celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home. Have you wondered: what is the end game of Caring for God’s Creation, for Laudato Si’?

The name Laudato Si’ provides some clues: it “Praise be to you my Lord”, which is the opening line of the beautiful canticle of Saint Francis of Assisi, sets the tone.

To begin with, we must consider the universal for all Christians which is to be union with Christ: to follow Christ and to make Christ and His Gospel - His Good News - present in the world. Hence, this is the first premise and should be our primary concern: the state of our own souls. That we remain right with God - first.

And for us Catholic Christians, this clearly resounds in our profession of faith in the (Apostle’s) Creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth” setting the stage for the order of priorities in our life. Firstly, we worship God, precisely because the world was created for God’s glory.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 319) reminds us that God created the world to show forth and communicate his glory. That His creatures should share in His truth, goodness and beauty - this is the glory for which God created them. Our hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King”, reminds us that indeed all creatures recognise the might and godhead of our Creator.

Caring for ecology is also caring for the state of our souls, said Pope Francis. As good Jesuit priest once preached in his homily, that it is to the peril of our souls if we associate the environmental destruction as the end of the world. As Jesus Himself aptly reminded us in Mark 8:36 and as St Ignatius himself warned St Francis Xavier, we can paraphrase: “What profits mankind if he saves the environment but loses his soul?”. Survival on earth and salvation of our souls are not mutually exclusive.

Thus, caring for God’s creation is a call to worship the Creator (and only) then to sanctify his creatures.

The central message of Laudato Si’, is the call to recognise the importance integral ecology. The call to care for the God’s creation not merely for the sake of saving the environment alone– its trees, the rivers, the animals and wildlife, but because we recognise how its destruction adversely impacts and hurts human life particularly the poor, and the vulnerable.

“When creation suffers, it hurts most the poorest of people. Poor people generally must depend so much more on the water, on the climate because that’s how they make their living. They are very vulnerable to climate change,” said Dr Carolyn Woo, the former President and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, points out in the Catholic Social Teaching 101 video series.

She cited for instance farmers who experience two to three degrees increase in temperature, cannot grow the same thing in the same area. “So, the care for creation translates directly into the care for our brothers and sisters,” Dr Woo points out.

Hence, our care for creation must extend to the care of the human person – their dignity, rights and needs particularly the poor and the marginalised. In Malaysia, the indigenous peoples (Orang Asli and Orang Asal) and local communities (IPLCs) who live within the fringes of forests, riverine and coastal areas are the guardians of the forests, and depend on these landscapes to support and supplement their livelihood to provide for their B40 families. Environmental degradation including deforestation, river and coastal pollution, unsustainable development, as well as degazettement and land use issues continue to plague these communities. Similarly, those with little to no access to clean potable water and clean sanitation.

Another group of communities that are often overlooked in the discussion on climate change is those displaced due to floods. Displacement due to floods is a real and present danger in Malaysia. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) revealed that there were 354,000 climate-related internal displacements between 2016 and 2021. In 2021, floods triggered around 129,000 internal displacements in Malaysia compared with 24,000 in 2020. In 2022, IDMC recorded 156,000 people displaced due to floods, landslides, and storms: signs of a changing climate.

In the CST 101 video series, Cardinal Peter Turkson, President, Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace highlighted: “Caring for creation, it calls for a certain kind of unity of reciprocal relationship between man and his environment. We receive the earth as a garden. It would be very unfair if we pass on the earth as a wilderness”.

The life of St Francis of Assisi whose feastday marks the end of the Season of Creation, offers us a timely inspiration for an orderly love. While to most of modern day society, St Francis is known for his love for animals and creation, he loved Triune God first. then he loved the poor and the nature. He recognized God who created the earth, the skies, the seas, the trees, the animals, and finally, men and women in his image and likeness.

The watershed moment in Francis’ life was his chance encounter with a leper. Francis, who hailed from an aristocrat family was accustomed to the finer things in life: loving beauty and hating deformity. He encountered the leper while riding his horse through the countryside and although initially he repelled by the sight and smell of the leper, he got down off his horse and offered him the kiss of peace. As the leper returned his embrace, Francis found himself surprisingly overjoyed. It was in the leper, that he experienced an authentic encounter with Jesus. It was soon after this that Francis would hear Christ asking him to rebuild his Church from the cross of San Damiano.

Let us pray and ask God for the grace to move away from disordered affections but to love like St Francis of Assisi did: loving God first, our neighbour including our loved ones and the poor and marginalised and then, all other created things.

(In the Beginning offers ruminations from Mary Terra, a not-so-young Catholic striving for holiness with a desire to grow in grace and leave behind a legacy of love for God, for others and all his other creatures. and hopefully leave this earth with a significantly reduced ecological footprint)