Dear Friends,
Last weekend, the Sisters of Saint Joseph from across the country and abroad celebrated our 375th Anniversary of life and service to the dear neighbor. The gathering, held in Kansas City, MO, brought together Sisters, associates and partners in ministry, all of whom find inspiration in Saint Joseph.
The Saturday morning keynote speaker was Brentwood Sister Elizabeth Johnson, a well-regarded theologian. Now retired, Sister Elizabeth's theological thinking has not stopped evolving over the years. In recent writings and in this talk, she aligns herself with Pope Francis’s encouragement to care for our common home – the earth.
With her, I invite us to enlarge our values to actively include a tender regard for the world in which we live. We have to only pay attention to the daily news to know how much this emphasis is needed: hurricanes, tornadoes, blistering heat, floods, devastating fires. Nature is in pain and so are we. We need to act.
We can send contributions to relief agencies, but that is really not enough. We need to form new personal and communal habits that honor the world in which we live.
Pope Francis wrote ten years ago in his encyclical Laudato Si’:
“Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, an educational program, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault on nature brought on by technology. (n.111)
Taking a cue from Pope Francis, Sister Elizabeth Johnson
- encourages us to become conscious of all of nature in our prayer. When we pray for “all of us” in the psalms and other prayers of the church, we really mean all of creation.
- invites us to consciously choose to watch nature programs on PBS or read National Geographic to see the remarkable way in which nature expresses the glory of God.
- reminds us that we can take part in ecological projects, however small, to hold back the overwhelming tide generated by those whose actions do not uphold life to the full.
As he concludes Laudato Si’, Pope Francis invites us to pray
Triune Lord, wondrous community of infinite love,
Teach us to contemplate you
in the beauty of the universe,
for all things speak of you.
Awaken our praise and thankfulness
For every being you have made.
Give us the grace to feel profoundly joined
To everything that is.
This summer, watching the fireflies send out their light, smelling the fragrance of growing crops in the fields, looking up at the vast sweep of stars across the nighttime sky, pledge with me to treasure the earth anew now.
~ Sister Joan Sobala
