Fr. Aidan Writes: Pope Francis and world Faith leaders have been asking us to pray for the serious issues facing the environment as we lead up to the COP26 conference in Glasgow. His very challenging, yet beautiful, encyclical, Laudato Si, focuses the Church’s, and the world’s, attention on these real issues facing us all and our beautiful home on this blue marble in space.
Our need to take these matters seriously stems from the fact that we must be true to God’s created intent for us to be stewards of His creation. Notice the use of “His”! Firstly, the whole of creation is God’s gift to us and we are really misusing His gift. Secondly, as Eu- charistic people we are supposed to live our lives in a thankful manner for all His graces and gifts. Mother earth is suffering because of our greed and the arrogance of our human place in this created order.
In Genesis, we read human kind was given “dominion” over all of creation. This is a danger- ous word in translation because it implies unlimited power to do what we want with God’s cre- ation. This is not what it means. When we look at the whole of the Old Testament true King- ship is compassionate, merciful, wise, providential and socially responsible with respect for the land God gave the Israelites; not domineering.
Here in the parish we take the little steps we can do locally. Lighting is converted to LED, sprinklers are adjusted to be more efficient, waste is sorted into recyclable and non, there is very little food waste and we use heating sparingly, etc.
I remember 25 years ago in Santa Barbara, the LA times ran an article that if everyone put one brick in every toilet cistern it would save a litre of water each flush; that accumulated to solving LA’s water shortage! So our little bits can help if we all overcome our prejudices, some of our arrogance of ignorance and our received political view-points. Remember we are to be thankful stewards of God’s creative gift to us…His gift…His…
May God bless you, your families, and the week ahead,
Fr Aidan Peter