Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Apostles for Today - March 2020


Apostles for Today
Prayer and Reflection
March 2020


“Imaging God by taking care 
of our common house”

The Holy Scripture teaches us that God created heaven and earth and all that it contains. God’s work of creation reached its climax with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1, 1-28). Every time God concluded each day of creation, as the biblical author narrates, he saw that it was good, and even very good. That goodness is what God entrusted to humankind with the duty to perpetuate it: “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1, 28). The Psalmist was so overwhelmed at God’s empowerment of humankind that he exclaimed: “What is man that you should care for him…you made him a little like a god, crowning him with glory and splendor…you made him rule over the work of your hands…” (Ps 8, 5-9). It means then that ruling over the work of God’s hand should always reflect the godliness that indwells in human beings and sustain the goodness that creation contains originally.

Jesus Christ, the Apostle of the Eternal Father, has always understood his mission as the continuation of the Father’s work: “My Father is at work and so do I” (John 5, 17). And this work is of salvation, of redeeming the world and reconciling it with the Father, that is, re-imaging human beings to God and bringing the whole of creation back to its original goodness. St. Paul, on his part, understands Jesus Christ as the image of the invisible God in whom the work of creation was accomplished and reconciled with the Father. Jesus Christ is the recapitulation of creation, therefore the architect of the New creation in the Holy Spirit (Col 1, 15-20): “Behold I make all things new” (Rev 21, 1-5).

The commitment of the Church to the caring of the earth and all that it contains is inscribed within her evangelizing mission in fidelity to the commission of her Lord and Master: “As the Father sent me, so I also send you” (John 20, 21). This has been the driving force of different Pope’s commitment to the caring of our common home. Pope Francis inscribes his call to the awareness of our common call to protect the earth within the tradition of the Church. The Church cannot carry out her evangelizing mission while remaining indifferent to the state of the earth, the environment within which evangelization takes place. The reason behind this as Pope Benedict XVI said, is that there is an interconnectedness of creatures to the extent that anything that happens to one affects the others. The African vision of the world looks at the universe as a vital connection that exists between the cosmos, the divine and humankind. A traditional proverb states: “You cannot cut a branch of the tree on which you are seated”. It implies that by cutting that branch, you are most likely to fall down with it. This interconnection explains why Africans consider the universe and humankind as sacred, due to their origin in the divine. Any offense directed to one aspect of creation provokes a disorder in the others. Consequently, any good that affects one aspect of creation accrues and reinforces life in the others as well. Human beings have the responsibility to care for the harmony that the Creator put in creation in order to enjoy the benefits of creation.

The awareness of the interconnection among the elements of creation not only prompts in human beings the responsibility of caring for the mother earth but also of the “global ecological conversion” when people realize that they “are sinning by contributing to the disfigurement of creation”. The degradation of the ecosystem is a sin in the sense that our actions against mother earth disconnect us from the Creator and bring about disharmony within creation. We are no longer imaging God who entrusted to us the care of creation because we have become disobedient to the will and order of God. And this justifies the call to conversion; that is, a renewed attitude towards creation rooted in God. The renewal of the ecosystem is tied up to the renewal of attitude. It is a belief that things can change when human beings correspond to God’s image imprinted in them and come together “to dialogue and converse,” to honestly look for ways that uphold the common good as Pope Francis urges. 

St. Vincent Pallotti, our Founder and Father, like the Psalmist, was captured by the nobility of human beings who are created in the image and likeness of God. That is the expression of God’s infinite love and mercy. Being created in the image of God, Father, Son and Hoy Spirit entrusts to humanity a corresponding responsibility of reflecting God’s behavior, that is, “creating” and “preserving”. Caring for “our common home” is constitutive of what it means to be humans. It translates the gift of the free will that God has bestowed on humankind. St. Vincent Pallotti is convinced that the gift of the free will should be used to always grow in resembling more and more the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Although sin had disconnected human beings from God, Jesus Christ has come to reestablish that connection and redeem in humanity the capacity to mirror God. This mystery is channeled through the sacraments of Baptism and confirmation whereby humanity is configured to God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to correspond to God. Unfortunately, as Pallotti decries, it happens that human beings use their free will and the gifts of creation to offend God. Scores of the offenses against God through the negative attitude of humankind towards mother earth demonstrate how human beings have become destructive of God’s creation. The environmental degradation Pope Francis points out, extends also to the deforestation of the Amazon, the plastic bags in oceans and on the Himalayas, the melting of glaciers and the deforestation of tropical forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa, rightly termed as “the second largest tropical rain-forest area on earth” after the Amazon. 

Recently, in January 2020, there happened two major events: the 50th anniversary of the Davos World Economic Forum and the opening of the Australian Open, a major tennis tournament. Both events happened while the Australian bush was on fire, with several people losing their lives and property and large parts of the bush destroyed. In Australia, tennis stars organized functions to combat bushfire, while in Davos, debates evolved around climate change. Gretta Thunberg, a Norwegian teenager together with her peers not only strongly called on world leaders to act now and not to wait until 2030, but also were committed not to give up the fight, even when the leaders did not. Their claim points to the fact that “our common home is burning now” and that they as the children, “will be the ones to suffer the “irresponsibility” of those who have power and influence to act, yet do not”. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations’ General Secretary denounced at Davos 2020 the lack of political will to effectively implement the Paris Agreement on climate change and warned that “humankind has declared war on nature and nature is striking back in every violent way”. 

These voices respond, one might say, to Pope Francis’ call for everyone to come together, and never tire to protect and care for mother earth and the sisters and brothers that live in, whether nature or humans. It raises hope that progressively people are more and more aware of their call to mirror God through their responsibility towards our common house.

 - Do I understand my commitment to the care of our common home as a cooperator/collaborator
   in the evangelizing mission of Jesus Christ and the Church?
 - As members of the Union of the Catholic Apostolate, what concrete action (s) can we undertake
    locally or globally to respond to Pope Francis’ call for dialogue and conversation in order to shape
    together the future of our planet?

Fr. Désiré Bakangana, sac.
Saint Vincent Pallotti Parish/Bukavu (D.R. Congo)
Holy Family Province (Central Africa)