Many of us are struggling with these weeks of quarantine and distancing. While there are many normal activities that we miss, I suggest that there are still many blessings to be experienced. Many of us have a garden and still enjoy the beautiful range of flowers and trees as well as the many fruits and vegetables that grow. Many of us still see the sun set and the rich colour that floods the western sky. We still enjoy the wind in our faces and hear the swaying of the trees and sounds of the birds
Many of us are struggling with these weeks of quarantine and distancing. While there are many normal activities that we miss, I suggest that there are still many blessings to be experienced. Many of us have a garden and still enjoy the beautiful range of flowers and trees as well as the many fruits and vegetables that grow. Many of us still see the sun set and the rich colour that floods the western sky. We still enjoy the wind in our faces and hear the swaying of the trees and sounds of the birds.
There is blessing in God’s creation. In our Genesis story, we are reminded that all that God has created is good. In our Offertory prayers the priest says at Mass, parts of creation are the very things we offer back to God. In these prayers, God is named as the ‘Lord God of all creation’ who has given us the bread and wine, the ‘fruit of the earth’ and the ‘fruit of the vine’, so that they can become ‘our bread of life’ and ‘our spiritual drink’.
Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’, names that all of God’s creation finds its fullness in the Eucharist. He says that the Eucharist ‘embraces and penetrates all creation’ and therefore it is ‘a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation’.
Thus, we are called to protect all of creation. We are called to protect not because this creation is useful to us but because God’s glory is to be experienced in and through this creation. Everything created is the ‘caress of God’. Because of this, Eucharist is always more than about just humans and God.
Pope Francis calls us to mark the fifth anniversary of Laudato Si’, on the care of our common home, during the week of May 16-24 2020. With a real sense of urgency he asks for ‘ambitious actions to address the mounting environmental perils facing the planet and its people’.
Living the Eucharist, then, is a call to open ourselves up to an ecological conversion. Living the Eucharist is about being open to the caress of God in the flowers, the sunsets, the wind and the birds. Living the Eucharist is also about ‘ambitious actions’ that lead to phasing out fossil fuels, protecting endangered plants and animals, protecting water supplies, consuming less and changing our ways so all God’s creation can flourish.
Dr David Tutty
Toowoomba Social Justice Commission