Homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7; Psalm 145(146):7-10; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37
15 September 2024
This weekend in dioceses all around Australia we have been invited to participate in the Season of Creation Convocation. We are are called together during this convocation to ‘wonder’, ‘weave’ and ‘heal’ the Earth and the whole of creation. This nationwide convocation is part of the annual Season of Creation which is an international ecumenical series of events running from September 1 to October 4, the feast of Francis of Assisi. During this season, the Christian family unites for a worldwide celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home. If you’re like me, you need to crank yourself up to enthuse about these sorts of events.
Listen at https://soundcloud.com/frank-brennan-6/homily-15924
In 2015, Pope Francis published his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home. His inspiration and starting point was Francis of Assisi. The pope introduced his encyclical with a reflection on the saint whose name he took as pope:
‘Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. He is the patron saint of all who study and work in the area of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians. He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast. He loved, and was deeply loved for his joy, his generous self-giving, his openheartedness. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.’1
Hoping that the encyclical would not just sit on the shelf gathering dust, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development set up a Laudato Si’ Action Plan. Like all Vatican dicasteries, it does not have much by way of resources, and it does not have a presence on the ground. It’s like a think tank in Rome with just a few people to assist along the way. But the platform on the internet invited local groups to network and to do something about climate change.
The Action Plan gives us seven goals on which to aim so that we might live an Integral Ecology in the spirit of Laudato Si’.2
- Response to the Cry of the Earth (greater use of clean renewable energy and reducing fossil fuels in order to achieve carbon neutrality, efforts to protect and promote biodiversity, guaranteeing access to clean water for all, etc.)
- Response to the Cry of the Poor (defence of human life from conception to death and all forms of life on Earth, with special attention to vulnerable groups such as indigenous communities, migrants, children at risk through slavery, etc.)
- Ecological Economics (sustainable production, Fair-trade, ethical consumption, ethical investments, divestment from fossil fuels and any economic activity harmful to the planet and the people, investment in renewable energy, etc.)
- Adoption of Simple Lifestyles (sobriety in the use of resources and energy, avoid single-use plastic, adopt a more plant-based diet and reduce meat consumption, greater use of public transport and avoid polluting modes of transportation, etc.)
- Ecological Education (re-think and re-design educational curricula and educational institution reform in the spirit of integral ecology to create ecological awareness and action, promoting the ecological vocation of young people, teachers and leaders of education etc.)
- Ecological Spirituality (recover a religious vision of God’s creation, encourage greater contact with the natural world in a spirit of wonder, praise, joy and gratitude, promote creation-centred liturgical celebrations, develop ecological catechesis, prayer, retreats, formation, etc.)
- Emphasis on Community involvement and participatory action to care for creation at the local, regional, national and international levels (promote advocacy and people’s campaigns, encourage rootedness in local territory and neighbourhood ecosystems, etc.)
In 2020, five years after Laudato Si, the Interdicasterial Working Group of the Holy See on Integral Ecology published a document Journeying Towards Care For Our Common Home. As can only happen in the Vatican, this document is even longer than the original encyclical. It all becomes a bit daunting. How can I actually make a difference to the planet? What is there in my power to do? This document concluded by asking in the words of Luke’s gospel: ‘What is it that we should do?’ (Lk 3:14).
It’s no surprise that the Interdicasterial Working Group said, ‘There is no single answer to this question. As in John the Baptist’s response to the crowds who asked this question, there are different tasks for each of us, according to our age and condition and the role we have in the Church or in society. But there is one answer that applies to all of us, since each of us has the responsibility to protect our common home and to show concern for our neighbours, whether near or far in space and time. Like every summons to conversion, this call to ecological conversion is addressed to each of us personally and demands a discernment and change in the way we live.’
The working group then quoted directly from Laudato Si: ‘We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity. Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others… Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice.’3
As the Portuguese Bishops put it: ‘The environment is part of a logic of receptivity. It is on loan to each generation, which must then hand it on to the next’.4
During the week, I watched Ajay Banga, the new President of the World Bank speaking at the Lowy Institute. I was aware that his predecessor had retired early, having been burnt over his ambivalence about the effects of fossil fuels on climate change. Banga is an Indian who was the son of a military officer who was moved to many placements around India. He spoke of the capacity for religious and racial tolerance he developed as a boy moving around India. Once he became established in business, Banga moved to the USA and became fabulously rich being the CEO of outfits like Mastercard which he expanded exponentially. He has now come from the private sector with a commitment to making a real difference in the public sector. It was refreshing to hear his disarmingly simple and optimistic approach to problem solving. He told us: ‘We’ve expanded our mission and vision: To create a world free of poverty on a livable planet.’5 He said: ‘We’ve committed to deploy 45% of World Bank Group funds toward climate, with half of development finance for mitigation and half for adaptation, by 2025. In the Pacific region 97 percent of our climate financing goes to adaptation.’ He acknowledged ‘that the World Bank alone won’t be enough to provide the trillions required annually for climate, fragility, education, hunger alleviation, health care, and inequality.’
Banga repeated his simple image of a triangle:6
‘If you look at the state of the world, I try and look at the challenges we face as being on three sides of a triangle.
‘And one side of the triangle is the longer-term issue of “one versus many”: essentially the inequality, poverty aspect … you could feel it because of gender or ethnicity or religion or being born on the wrong side of the tracks. And it might be exhibited in the form of access to education or health care or clean air or water or, frankly, opportunities of all types…
‘So that’s one side of the triangle. The other side of the triangle to me is the challenge of humanity versus nature. And today we discuss that as climate and biodiversity and forest degradation and the challenges of all the aspects of climate and nature that society has begun to discuss now.
‘And the reason these two sides of the triangle don’t fall down is because the third side is what keeps them up. And the third side is the trade off between long-term and short-term. And whether you’re a politician, a CEO, or a teacher, society [incentives] you towards short-termism. Whereas the nature of these two sides of the triangle is that these are very deep-rooted problems that require longer-term solutions.’
I found this image of the triangle helpful and hopeful. We are confronting very protracted long term problems but each of us can do our bit and encourage others to hold in tension the one versus the many, humanity versus nature, and the long term versus the short term. There will be ongoing scientific, economic and political debates about renewables, gas, and nuclear. There will be ongoing philosophical and moral debates about the relative responsibility of developing and developed economies, the latter of which have contributed more than their share to global warming in the past. Banga insists that the answers are not black and white but are found pragmatically in the grey areas of life with everyone’s interests being considered, including the interests of future generations. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis goes to great pains to point out:
‘On many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views.’7
‘There are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus. Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good.’8
This past week, Pope Francis has been in our neighbourhood. Unsurprisingly, he could not be lured to the wealthy, middle order, pluralist democracy, Australia. We don’t make the cut as being part of the peripheries which are so central to Francis’s thinking. Instead he went to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and Singapore. The churches in all those four places have a cardinal; Australia does not. When meeting with civil leaders in the mineral rich Papua New Guinea, Pope Francis said: ‘These environmental and cultural treasures represent at the same time a great responsibility, because they require everyone, civil authorities and all citizens, to promote initiatives that develop natural and human resources in a sustainable and equitable manner. A manner that improves the wellbeing of all, excluding nobody, through concrete programmes, international cooperation, mutual respect and agreements beneficial to all parties.’9
Pope Francis then went on to Timor Leste, and, as is typical, spoke with disarming simplicity when addressing the hundreds of thousands of Timorese who turned out for the papal mass in Dili:
‘I have been thinking a lot about what is the best thing Timor-Leste has? Its sandalwood? Its fishing? These are not the best things. The best thing is its people. I cannot forget the people on the side of the road, with the children. How many children you have! The people, the best thing they have is the smile of their children. And a people that teaches its children to smile is a people that has a future.
‘But be careful! For I have been told that crocodiles come to some beaches; crocodiles come swimming and have a stronger bite than we can keep at bay. Be careful! Be careful of those “crocodiles” who want to change your culture, who want to change your history. Stay faithful. And do not go near those “crocodiles” because they bite, and they bite hard.’10
Committed to intergenerational solidarity, we should always be thinking of the children – those who are to come after us. What do we need to do so that the children of the future will have good cause to smile? What do we need to do to keep the crocidiles at bay? Let’s wonder, weave and heal the Earth and the whole of creation. Aiming for all seven goals of Laudato Si’, we will realise how ‘inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace’. Let’s pray, dream, hope, plan and act so that we might create a world free of poverty on a livable planet.
From the start of 2024, Fr Frank Brennan SJ will serve as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his forthcoming book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
[1] Laudato Si’ #10.
[2] See https://laudatosiactionplatform.org/laudato-si-goals/
[3] Laudato Si’ #159.
[4] Interdicasterial Working Group of the Holy See on Integral Ecology, Journeying Towards Care For Our Common Home: Five Years after Laudato Si’, 2020, pp. 219-220.
[6] Banga repeated what he had said at the World Economic Forum on 9 January 2024. See https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/world-bank-president-ajay-banga-priorities/
[7] Laudato Si’ #61.
[8] Laudato Si’ #188.
[10] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2024/documents/20240910-timor-leste-messa.html
