Living Laudato Si’
“To restore nature, we must first restore ourselves”, words from Pope Francis speaking at an event to mark the beginning of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This global initiative is an effort to protect and restore the vast ecosystems of our planet. Biodiversity loss is at critical levels due to human activity. Through pollution, the destruction of forests, habitats and the continuous use of fossil fuels, we have pushed the world’s ecosystems to the brink.
In Laudato Si’ – On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis notes that “Although we are often not aware of it, we depend on these larger systems for our own existence. We need only recall how ecosystems interact in dispersing carbon dioxide, purifying water, controlling illnesses and epidemics, forming soil, breaking down waste, and in many other ways which we overlook or simply do not know about.” (Laudato Si’, 140)
Laudato Si’ also reminds us that these ecological crises we face, are at the heart of it, a deep spiritual crisis because we have forgotten who we are and where we come from. We have forgotten that “Through him all things were made” (John 1:13) and the very first commandment we were given was to protect God’s creation (Gen 2:15). We have become so disconnected from nature that we appear deaf to the facts even when scientists tell us that we are now living in an age of the 6th mass extinction of life on this planet due to human activity. Perhaps Covid-19 has helped us to realise that humans cannot be healthy on a planet that is not healthy.
Pope Francis notes that “Contemplation is the antidote against misuse of our common home”. The cure is quite simple: reconnect with God’s creation, rekindle a child-like sense of awe and wonder where our relationship with the natural world is concerned. It is out of this that everything else will flow. Author Richard Louv says: “We cannot protect something we do not love; we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. And touch. And hear.” So as the summer months have arrived, the evenings are longer, there is a buzz about the place as people enjoy the outdoors and plan holidays, this is a wonderful opportunity to encourage the cure for environmental destruction: spending time in nature and encouraging our families to do the same. This is the starting point of the deep eco-conversion we are being called into.
“The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, mountains everything is, as it were, a caress of God” (Laudato Si’ 84).
Jane Mellett is the Laudato Si’ Officer with Trócaire
