Earth Day 2025
As we observe the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, we honor the passing of Pope Francis who warned that the outlook regarding the health of our natural environment is mixed at best, and leaning towards alarming. When an American Administration appoints an Oil Executive to the Department of Interior, an agency responsible, among other things, for the management of our National Parks and Federally managed timberland, it is natural to think that these lands, among our most precious resources, might be endangered in an effort to extract maximum profit from oil and gas drilling and timber harvesting. Indeed, there has already been an Executive Order to increase the timberland open to harvesting to be 112 million acres of the 193 million acres under federal control. That’s an increase from 35% of federally controlled timberland open to harvest to 58.8%. Some see this as potentially better forest management, while others see it as a grab for more profit in the American energy, timber, and lumber sectors.
Other things such as more violent storm systems, more powerful hurricanes, more devastating wildfires and floods are at least in part the result of human degradation of the environment, principally by the over-use of fossil fuels causing land and ocean temperatures to continue to rise. The disappearance of large numbers of bees threatens our nation’s farm communities, which results in negative economic impact as well as a drop-off in crops heading to market, eventually causing food deserts, especially in poor neighborhoods and poor countries. Not to mention the inevitable loss of more and more farmland.
Those who call upon us to be more responsible in managing
the natural world that surrounds us and supports come from a variety of
backgrounds. A powerful voice for the environment is an encyclical from Pope
Francis in 2015 titled Laudato Si. It is the first such statement ever
from a Pope in the history of the Church. The Pope writes, “The universe unfolds in
God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in
a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face. Standing
awestruck before a mountain, we cannot separate this experience from God”
(233). [i]
It is fair to say that the recently departed Pope Francis was a poet,
theologian, and mystic rolled into one compelling personality. In Laudato Si,
Francis goes on to say that integral action must be taken on behalf of the
environment of which we, all of us together, are a part.
For those of us who desire to follow in The Way of Jesus, Pope Francis’s linking environmental issues with social crises should come as no surprise. From beginning to end, the Bible describes, as Woody Guthrie expressed it, every spec of dust as Holy Ground, of which Moses is reminded while conversing with a bush on fire that is not consumed. [iii] And at the end of the Bible, the vision of the Revelation of St. John of Patmos depicts a renewed Earth as a garden city, with a crystal river flowing from the throne of God and The Lamb, Jesus Christ, with abundant trees of fruit, and “the leaves of the trees [are] for the healing of the nations.” [iv] We do well to note that when God chooses to reveal God’s self to Moses, it is from the midst of a bush. And when Jesus describes our relationship with him, he depicts us as a fruit on a vine; fruit nurtured with energies from the very root of the vine, which root is Jesus, God in Christ. He urges us to bear much fruit following his command to love one another as he loves us, even unto death on a Roman cross. He tells us that the health of the vine is vital for our joy in living here, upon this Earth, so far, the one place in the 14 billion light-years of the universe capable of sustaining human life. [v]
Indeed, it is the fully human expression of God, Jesus, who makes the link between social justice and environmental sustainability Pope Francis writes about. Are we called, as those who desire to follow The Christ, to maximize profitability and production out of Earth’s resources? Or, are we called to conserve and sustain these resources of the fragile Earth, our island home, so that there is enough for all to know the kind of joy Jesus prays for us the night before his betrayal? He wants there to be joy for all people, all creatures, all living things, and the very planet itself.
Earth Day is not some sort of invented “woke ideology.” Earth day means to redirect us, our minds and our efforts, to the very vision of stewardship of the Earth and of all who dwell on this most abundant and sustaining of all regions of the known universe as expressed in The Bible in chapter one of Genesis where we are created, male and female, each of us and all of us, to care for the creation God has gifted us. A vision that finds its final expression in the very last words of the last book of the Bible, urging us to see, to understand, there will be no joy until we respect the environment as a necessary condition for the healing of nations – the healing of all exploitation of the Earth which produces nothing but conflict, unhappiness, and poverty of mind, body, and spirit.
Pope Francis read the texts correctly: The life of Jesus represents “an integrated approach to combating poverty”: one which “protects nature” while at the same time “restoring dignity to the excluded.” He often warned, “There is a real danger that we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse.”
To sum it up differently, continued exploitation of the natural environment offers only a passing moment of joy and profitability for a few corporations and their investors. To protect the natural environment, on the other hand, is to ensure a future for our children, for those who are excluded from such “profitability,” and for all future generations. In fact, the guarantee that there will be future generations at all can only result from how we protect the environment and restore dignity to the excluded. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, we thank you for your inspiration and faithful devotion to the Good News of Jesus. May your new and eternal life continue to challenge us to do the same, and may you rest in peace. Amen.
