St. Lawrence Catholic Church

“Laudato Si –On Care for Our Common Home”  Encyclical by Pope Francis 2015

Notes for Study and Reflection

A Reminder~~

We might call this a “study” but it is about seeing how God is inviting us to live in this beautiful gift of the earth—“Our Common Home” as Pope Francis calls it.  Some notes are provided.  There are questions to aid our pondering.  The important thing is that our hearts are formed to live as God would desire. 

Some parts of this Encyclical are challenging, maybe even a little depressing.  But we are invited to hope and to respond to hard realities by cooperating with the Holy Spirit in our day to day choices.  This reflection might be a very good time to gently watch your thoughts and attitudes around how you use the resources of the earth, what you might take for granted and what you might change so that you are indeed a good steward of all the gifts of the earth that God has blessed you with.  What action will you do?

Another invitation might be that as we have been practicing the slowing of our pace and our consumer tendencies during this Covid-19 time, we also pay attention to the “greening” of the earth as Hildegard of Bingen would call it.  Are you noticing the birds sing?  Are you watching the leaves make their way out, and the blossoms coming forth with their fragrances?  What prayer of thanksgiving for creation comes from your soul?

Note: The numbers used at the end of a quote refer to the paragraph number of the document.

Introduction

Pope Francis begins this document:
“LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. (1)

Nothing in this world is indifferent to us

Francis notes how his predecessors beginning with Pope Saint John XXII through Benedict XVI have each addressed the whole world to reflect on how our actions affect one another and the sustainability of our common home.

United by the same concern
“Outside the Catholic Church, other Churches and Christian communities—and other religions as well—have expressed deep concern and offered valuable reflections on issues which all of us find disturbing.”  (7)   Pope Francis goes on to share thoughts by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

St. Francis of Assisi
“What is more, Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his invite beauty and goodness. … Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.” (12)

My appeal
“I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.  We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”  (14)  **cf #13-16

As you read, pray with what you find yourself connecting with and with what you might resist.  Take notes if you wish.  Note what you’d like to talk about with a small group or with another person.  Above all notice where God is leading you instead of worrying about understanding all the content.   
 
Chapter 1 What is Happening to our Common Home
This chapter is a stark reality check on how our human activity affects everyone and everything in creation.
“Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. …  Change is something desirable, yet it becomes a source of anxiety when it causes harm to the world and to the quality of life of much of humanity.”  (18)

I.  Pollution and Climate Change
            A. Pollution, waste and the throwaway culture
            What action can you take to affect this dilemma?
            B. Climate as a common good
“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social,  economic, political and for the distributions of goods.  It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.  Many of the poor live in areas particularly affected ….” (25)

II. The Issue of Water
“…access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.” (30)
            How aware am I of my use of water? Do I take it for granted?

III. Loss of Biodiversity
“…a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly.  We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.” (34)
How might you grow in appreciating the beauty of creation and recognize your connection with it?

IV.  Decline in the Quality of Human Life and the Breakdown of Society
“We were not meant to be inundated by cement, asphalt, glass and metal, and deprived of physical contact with nature.” (44)
Are we aware of how we use media to connect us to the world?  As we examine our use of social media, does it enrich us and our relationships or does it serve to isolate us more?

V. Global Inequality
“It needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness of problems which especially affect the excluded. … Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (49)
“We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family.  There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less ist here room for the globalization of indifference.” (52)

VI. Weak Responses
“These situations have caused sister earth, along with all the abandoned of our world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and fullness. The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations. The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable; otherwise, the new power structures based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice.” (53
 
VII. A Variety of Opinions
            Where do you find yourself resisting the importance of what the Holy Father lays out?
 
What is your prayer after reading this first chapter?  What do you feel God nudging you toward?  What is it you would ask of God?
 

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