Homily for 24th Sunday Year A
SVP 12 Sept 2020
The readings today are all about the need to live in a spirit of pardon and forgiveness in the community of disciples and in our family life. Without this spirit of forgiveness, a community will quickly divide and split. It will fall apart and die.
But one aspect of forgiveness is the readiness of the one who has offended to ask for forgiveness and pardon. When someone who has offended another, even by mishap rather than by intention, if he or she is ready to recognise their wrong and ask forgiveness, it is so much easier to forgive.
Today is the second Sunday of the Season of Creation and I would like to offer you on this special occasion some reflections based on this gospel with its theme of forgiveness but in relation to Creation.
We often speak of creation in a rather narrow way, when we are really speaking of “Mother Earth”. In a sense we are right to do so, as this is the part of creation we know the best and on which we live. The story of creation, as we read it in the book of Genesis, is right to say that we come from the earth. Evolution history shows that life did indeed crawl out of earth and eventually produce what we know today as homo sapiens; us. We owe our being to 4 ½ billion years of development from that first living cell found here on earth to what we are today. We are an intricate part of nature, an intricate part of creation. Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical letter, Laudato Si:
#139 When we speak of the “environment”, what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.
Sometimes we speak of nature, or the earth, and react with it as if, somehow, we were not part of it, but were some organism living separate to it. It’s as if it were another part of creation put there for our use. We exploit it and abuse it as if with impunity. We exploit the animals, using them, killing them for our own pleasure, as if they were there purely for our use and as if they had no value in themselves. We exploit and misuse everything on the planet with total disregard and no thought for the consequences. It’s as if we were the lord of all and can do what we want, when we want and how we want and we think only of ourselves and our own pleasure.
Again, Pope Francis speaks of this in Laudato Si:
#67 Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.
Unfortunately, the consequences of this misuse, this abuse of nature, have become apparent in the past few decades. Our selfish and arrogant behaviour has now turned against us and the ecosystems of nature are in the process of collapse. The most obvious of this is climate change. The droughts which have left vast, huge areas of forests tinder dry and vulnerable to fire, is, we are told, the direct result of the heating up of the planet, due to our activity. Last month alone an area the size of 2 million football fields were on fire in California and Colorado. Similar fires are burning in the Amazon and in Australia, destroying everything in their wake.
The rise in temperature causes fires in America and in other parts, like here in the UK, huge deluges of rain. But, it is always the poor who suffer the most. In these last couple of days, friends of mine in Burkina Faso, on the southern edge of the Sahel, have appealed to me for help because there mud-brick houses have collapsed under the onslaught of totally unseasonal and unbelievable flooding. Flooding in the Sahel, the driest area on earth!
Last week the UN nations published a report on the effects of climate change. Its predictions are dire and it insists that climate change is the result of the selfish activities of humankind, and is causing the disappearance of millions of species of animals.
In the report we read: “The bonds that hold nature together may be at risk of unravelling from deforestation, overfishing, development, and other human activities, a landmark United Nations report warns. Thanks to human pressures, one million species may be pushed to extinction in the next few years, with serious consequences for human beings as well as the rest of life on Earth.
“The evidence is crystal clear: Nature is in trouble. Therefore we are in trouble,” said Sandra Díaz, one of the co-chairs of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
In Laudato Si, Pope Francis writes : #142 If everything is related, then the health of a society’s institutions has consequences for the environment and the quality of human life.
You will say, “this is too alarmist”. But then, John the Baptist was alarmist when he cried out in the desert “Repent, repent”. David Attenborough is alarmist when he says we are destroying nature, destroying the planet. Covid 19 is alarmist. All the evidence is alarmist.
Repent is a call to a change of heart, to turning around and away from our selfish ways. Jesus calls on us to turn back to God. It is indeed time to repent and ask pardon of Mother nature, Mother Earth. It is time to repent and change our exploitative and selfish ways. We have to take the means now, not tomorrow, to live in harmony with nature, to live in peace with the ecology of the earth. We have to modify our way of life to fit in with the life of the planet.
Today is the time for change; tomorrow will be too late.
Terry Madden
