In no other area do we face so directly the limits and the responsibilities of being collaborators as in the care for our Common Home. The challenge is the greatest, because everything is at stake, and there is only little we can achieve. However, our contribution is indispensable and urgent. Every delay in actively starting to care for the future of our earth, constitutes a threat to that future.
1. As I begin my prayer, I ask for the Grace: of a greater commitment to the care of creation.
2. Jesus has a different way of looking at material things.
Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? ... Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? (Mt 6: 26-30)
3. I let myself be challenged by the desires expressed in the fourth UAP.
“We resolve, considering who we are and the means that we have, to collaborate with others in the construction of alternative models of life that are based on respect for creation and on a sustainable development capable of producing goods that, when justly distributed, ensure a decent life for all human beings on our planet. The preservation over time of the conditions of life on our planet is a human responsibility of immense ethical and spiritual importance.”
“It is necessary, therefore, to step out of oneself and lovingly care for everything that is good for others. A model of human life reconciled with creation will not be possible if we are not able to break out of individualism and inaction.”
“Conversion for us, Jesuits and our companions in mission, begins by changing the habits of life promoted by an economic and cultural system based on the consumption of an irrational production of goods.”
- How would I evaluate my habits of life in terms of the urgent ecological conversion?
- How do I relate this ecological conversion with my following of Christ and with the overall mission of the Society of Jesus?
I consider these questions and talk about them with the Lord.
4. Following my prayer, I reread section D of Fr. General’s letter Feb. 2019 "To collaborate in the care of our Common Home" (pp. 5-6).