Our Stewardship of the Earth - A Message of Hope By Fr Tony |
I hope you have all watched the film 'An Inconvenient Truth'. This film and other writings that have come from the scientific community have warned us that global warming as a result of mankind's economic activity is perhaps the major concern of our time and certainly of our future. No other issue forces us to the conclusions that (1) we are all in this together (2) we all contribute to the problem to some degree, although the ecological foot print of people living in the rich one third of the world is so much greater than that of our poorer brothers and sisters (3) it is only by working together in a common purpose, each person making their necessary contribution, that we shall overcome, if indeed we shall the choice lies with us! A recent exhibition by our stewardship committee highlighted both the gravity of the situation for our grandchildren and great grand children if we do nothing but also the very real contributions we can all make by recycling, composting etc. But I want to bring a message of hope into this situation, which, because of the magnitude of the task before us, can easily lead us into apathy or despair. God is at work in and through all our efforts to save our planet. Indeed God's word proclaims that all our efforts and all the groaning of the old creation is but the birth pangs of a new Creation that God is bringing about. This is how St. Paul describes the process "the creation was subjected to frustration (futility) not by it's own choice but by the will of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (Romans 8.20-22). The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins expresses this hope eloquently in his poem "God's Grandeur". Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning; at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings. Yes there is ever the hope of the rebirth of our world, as we, the stewards of God's creation play our ordained part, because the Holy Ghost over the bent world ever broods as on the first day of creation. And Christians should never forget above all that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the first Easter morning was and is the beginning of a new Creation for our world. This was brought home to me recently on a visit to the Stations of the Cross at St. Joseph's Oratory (I commend it to you as a place of transcendent beauty and of a re-awakening of hope for our world). The penultimate sculpture depicts the Pieta the dead body of Christ in his mother Mary's arms. But his body seemed also to me to be draped over the sphere of our world as if all our sins against God's creation had nailed Christ to the cross. But walk a few steps and look up and there is the sculpture of the Resurrection Christ rising from the dead, massive, powerful, utterly real, triumphant, majestic - breaking forever out of the bondage of sin and death into a new Creation. This Resurrection hope then brothers and sisters must inform our struggling to save God's creation. May we all play our part to Christ's glory and for the re-birthing of our world, "always giving ourselves fully to the works of the Lord because we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain." (1 Corinthians 15.58) Yours in Christ, Tony |
