Once the electorate has expressed itself in the referendum regarding spring hunting, it is opportune that as Maltese citizens and people of faith we remind ourselves of the importance of caring for God’s creation. The Church can act as an educator in this respect.
By caring and respecting the environment, we demonstrate our dutiful respect towards God, our Creator, and Father of all creation. Care for the earth is not merely a governmental or a non-governmental slogan. As Christians we are duty-bound to care and protect our planet together with its inhabitants. We must make sure that there should be a harmonious relationship between God, the people and the environment. If one of these three fundamental principles is violated, then we are heading for an existential and a moral catastrophe.
The Bible rightfully reminds us of the ethical dimensions concerning our caring for the world we inhabit. To begin with, the Word of God shows us the beauty of what came from God’s loving and creative hands. The Book of Genesis extols the work of creation done by God five times and aptly describes it as “good”. Whether it was the dry land Earth or the seas (Gen 1:10), the vegetation and plants giving seed as dictated by their species (Gen 1:12), the creation of the night (Gen 1:18), the great sea monsters, every moving creature or winged birds according to their species (Gen 1:21), or, finally, beasts of the earth and cattle, and every creature which creeps on the ground, each according to its kind, (Gen 1:25) all this “was good”. That is why the First Letter to the Corinthians says: “For ‘the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it’” (1 Cor 10:26).
The Book of Deuteronomy reminds us that since “heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it” belong to the Lord God (Deut 10:14) it is important that, as the Book of Leviticus rightly stipulates, “in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord” (Lev 25:4). The idea is that the land shall not be abused because all creation proclaims God’s glory (Dan 3:5682). Creation unravels God’s very nature. The Letter to the Romans says: “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20).
The obvious conclusion which stems from the above scriptural data is that God loves and cares for all He has made (Matt 6:2534)!
The Church kept subscribing to the biblical idea of caring and protecting God’s creation. In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI said: “The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole… Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Charity in Truth” (§ 48, 51).
Furthermore, in his World Peace Day Message of 2010, Pope Benedict wrote: “The ecological crisis shows the urgency of a solidarity which embraces time and space… A greater sense of intergenerational solidarity is urgently needed. Future generations cannot be saddled with the cost of our use of common environmental resources.”
The present Pontiff, Pope Francis, is following the same path of his predecessor. In his homily at Casa Santa Marta of 9 February, the Jesuit Pope said that caring for creation is not simply the issue of environmentalists, but of Christians as well.
“It is our response to the ‘first creation’ of God. It is our responsibility! A Christian that does not care for creation, that does not make it grow, is a Christian who doesn’t care about the work of God; that work born from the love of God for us. And this is the first answer to the first creation: to care for Creation, to make it grow.”
Christian! Where is your commitment on environmental issues?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
Paola