Laudato Si summarized in one image or five words!
One image
It is a simple graphic! But as we have heard since our youth, “pictures are worth a thousand words.” The graphic illustrates two common, but disastrous, attitudes.
The first attitude is a myopic view of problems. I can’t see anything beyond what affects me.
The second is like unto the first. I can’t see problems that do not appear to affect me now.
Both of these are manifestations of a tendency as old as civilization. “Me-ism”!
The cartoon perfectly captures these two manifestations of the same problem. Being “high and dry” is not a sustainable solution.
Isn’t this one of the problems today in coping with the pandemic of the coronavirus. Just because I don’t feel sick doesn’t mean that I am not a carrier of the virus. Out of concern for those I love (every other child of God, not just those significant in my life) I need to develop the habit of wearing a mask when appropriate as well as more frequent hand washing.
If we are truly God’s sons and daughters whether we look different, live in different zip codes, or vote differently, the first commitment for each of us must be to work toward a shift from being “me-focused” to “we-focused.”
It is in our best interest to step back and see how we are focusing on only ourselves being “high and dry.” We need to address the underlying causes of what our brothers and sisters face as they are trying to bail out their end of the boat. We’re all in this boat together!
Laudato Si summed up in five words
I recently revisited the scene in the Gospels, where Jesus casts out the money changers saying that his Father’s house is a house of prayer. I asked myself whether my concept of “my Father’s house” too small?
Our earth and all that is in it is God’s own house, permeated by the Spirit of God from the dawn of creation, where the Son of God pitched his tent in the supreme event of the Incarnation.“
We live in God’s house as God’s children. But as children we haven’t matured yet.
Let me share a reaction of myself as an Immature child at Christmas. It may not be surprising but as a young boy the gift that I definitely did not appreciate was clothing. I wanted toys!
There were other gifts that I got that I appreciated because they were what I wanted. But I often missed the more important gift… the love that was being shown through the gift. In short, sometimes I neither appreciated the gift nor the love that the gift symbolized.
Pope Francis connects the dots
Pope Francis connects dots of insights expressed in just one graphic or five words. In a way that few beside Pope Francis can do, he invites us to a big picture or an ecological way of thinking.
He moves us beyond what I recently referred to as “whack-a-mole” approach to problem solving to “big picture thinking.
Some are amazed and others intimidated that it took him 15,000 words to connect so many dots. On the other hand, I am amazed at how comprehensive a view he offers of our inter-relatedness and the inter-relationship of the wide range of issues in a mere 15,000 words.
For further thought…
- How aware am I of that we are all God’s children in this boat together?
- How aware am I that I live in God’s house?
PS See a big picture view of Genesis 1:28 “Subdue the earth”
The big picture of ‘we’ is the summed up in the Social Doctrine as the virtue of Solidarity – a firm and persevering determination to work for the common good of all and of each. In that notion we must be careful that the work respects free will and that our work is always a manifestation of God’s will in our world. I have recently become aware that class struggle ideology has dawned sheep’s clothing to express itself as a pathway of helping the poor in our Church initiatives. We might need to analyze power, but power always tends to corrupt. Freedom and dependency, when God is the one we depend upon, are directly proportional (Rhaner). Humility and trust are much better pathways than power. I was reminded of founding principles for social action in our faith are – universal human dignity which comes from us all being made in the image of God, Solidarity and Subsidiarity which allows diversity but assumes hierarchy.
First, I am happy to read Pope Francis recent speech on the illusion that individualism is.
Secondly, I agree with Fr Miles that “Humility and trust are much better pathways than power.” But there is an out-of-this-world kindly power that the first reading for the 16th Sunday in OT (Wis 12, 13. 16-19) speaks about.
Thirdly, I submit that we may have to make do with fostering, in today’s pluralistic civil societies, only “the greatest amount of good or happiness for the greatest number,” and support, say, ACA until something much better is enacted. By the way, part of the Lone Ranger’s strict of conduct is: “That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.”
Fourthly, that “the devil is in the details,” seems to me to demand that each one engages in the kind of discernment that St. Vincent’s wrote about to Antoine Durand. There are situations that general principles apparently cannot deal with. That’s why there is casuistry. And why, too, that as good a moral theologian B. Häring was and as standard textbooks as his Law of Christ had become, still his conclusions sometimes did not seem to flow out of the principles he had laid out (said a moral theology professor of mine).
And so, there’s need to let the Spirit, the dynamic element in the Church, to guide us to all truth, as unbearable and illogical it may seem and, because of which, then, we need the Spirit’s “consolation without cause.”