Archbishop Thompson: Environment can never be isolated from our relationships with God and others

Archbishop Charles C. Thompson incenses the altar during a Care for Creation Mass at St. Bartholomew Church in Columbus on Sept. 24. Pictured behind the archbishop are Deacons William Jones, left, Jorge Sanchez and Juan Carlos Ramirez, Father Ashok Valabazzi, Father Christopher Wadelton and altar server Eero Haywood. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)

By Natalie Hoefer

Mother Nature seemed to make a comment during the archdiocese’s Care for Creation Mass at St. Bartholomew Church in Columbus on Sept. 24: blue skies and a few friendly clouds marked the beginning and end of the Mass, with a deluge in between.

The liturgy marked the ecumenical Season of Creation. This “season” is celebrated by many faiths each year between Sept. 1—the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation—and Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology.

Nearly 450 people were present for the archdiocese’s fourth annual Care for Creation Mass.

In a sanctuary decorated with art made by St. Bartholomew School students, Archbishop Charles C. Thompson spoke in his homily of the importance of remembering that “our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God.”

‘Not destroying … but building up’

In his homily, the archbishop made frequent references to Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” The document notes that “human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the Earth itself” (#66).

“God has to be the center, the priority for all those [relationships] to fall in place,” Archbishop Thompson said, noting that anything else as the center “causes us to lose proper perspective. … Eventually, that which we allow to possess our innermost being is revealed in our behavior.”

Another danger of not having God at the center of our relationship with others and with the environment is that society “will continue to promote a so-called throwaway culture,” he said, one “where everything and everyone is objectified for one’s pleasure, comfort and personal agenda. … It is only through a sense of relationship with God and others and creation that we are able to maintain a proper perspective on the meaning of life.”

Archbishop Thompson quoted “one of my favorite lines” from “Laudato Si’ ”: “Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise” (#12).

“We need to recapture a sense of awe and wonder, gazing at creation through a sacramental lens of encountering the beauty, truth and goodness of the sacred in everyone and in everything around us.”

Such an encounter “prompts us into action [and] motivates us as disciples, as witnesses, as missionaries, carrying on the mission of Jesus—not destroying the kingdom of God, but building up that kingdom in our midst.”

‘There’s definitely a greater awareness’

The Season of Creation Mass is sponsored by the archdiocese’s Creation Care Ministry. Formed in 2015, the mission of the ministry is threefold: to provide education about creation care and outreach to the parishes, people and clergy of the archdiocese; to offer resources and programs that help parishes reduce their environmental impact; and to encourage and facilitate actions on the archdiocesan level in order to provide resources to parishes.

After the Mass, founding and current ministry member Benedictine Sister Sheila Marie Fitzpatrick reflected on the group’s impact in the nine years since it was created.

“There’s definitely a greater awareness” of the issue among members of the archdiocese, she said. “I think we’ve had a growing number of people that really see care for creation as something that the Church believes in and is really promoting.”

She also sees an increased awareness of care for the environment “being more than just the doing but the interconnectedness, really seeing the cry of the Earth, the cry of the poor, the Gospel values and the interconnectedness, as the encyclical says, of the relationship with God, with each other, with creation and with ourselves.”

As awareness increases, Sister Sheila said she and the Creation Care Ministry team are eager to help parishes.

“If a parish has a green team, or if they’re considering starting one, or if there are individuals that are saying, ‘How can we get started?’ we’ll be able to really support that effort.”

‘Archdiocese was one of first to sign up’

Another mission of the ministry is to encourage parishes to join the Laudato Si’ Action Platform (LSAP), a Vatican-sponsored global initiative to increase the Church’s ecological practices. The director of this worldwide effort, John Mundell, is a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis. Mundell, also a member of the archdiocesan Creation Care Ministry, attended the Mass.

“The archdiocese was one of the first to sign up on the global scale, and so Indianapolis is known for having its programming be part of that push by Pope Francis to make this a worldwide kind of effort,” he told The Criterion.

The Creation Care Ministry seeks “to continue to engage and invite parishes to form green teams and to join [the LSAP], which means to create plans to become more sustainable, looking at their energy and their water and their waste and how they use their land,” Mundell explained.

He paused after the Mass to take a photo of a large mobile of origami paper birds hanging in the narthex. It was one of numerous creation-care themed works of art created by St. Bartholomew School students that adorned the church for the liturgy.

Mundell said those involved with the LSAP are “finding more and more young people that are very enthused” by care for the environment. “We’ve seen everything from tree-plantings to climate marches, to shared agriculture and gardens in the parish, to changing how they recycle.

“When you give young people the chance to show leadership, they do amazing things.”
 

(For more information about the archdiocesan Creation Care Ministry and the Laudato Si’ Action Plan, go to ourcommonhome.org.) †

 

Related: Recycling advice from a Creation Care Ministry team member