As many people around the globe, I have been unsettled by the environmental\ncatastrophe that is the devastating wildfires in Australia, not least the news\nthat an estimated 1 billion animals have died in the fires. The loss of species\ndiversity due to the fires will be immense, scientists agree, not only through\nlosses from the disastrous burns but because animal and plant species will be\nfacing drastically reduced habitats and lack of food in the future. And scientists agree that human-caused\nclimate change is the decisive culprit in this environmental catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what has haunted me beyond that is a sentence from Pope Francis\u2019s\nencyclical Laudato Si\u2019.<\/em> Written five\nyears ago, the sentence is startlingly relevant today: \u201cBecause of us, thousands\nof species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey\ntheir message to us. We have no such right\u201d (LS # 33).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To think that the Australian wildfires not only cause\nthe very visible devastation that we witness on our various screens (I am\nwriting far away from the fires!), but that they diminish a \u201csublime communion\u201d\nof beings giving glory to God, a planetary symphony of praise so to say, is\nheart-breaking. Here is Pope Francis\nagain: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe created things of this world are not free of\nownership: \u2018For they are yours, O Lord, who love the living\u2019 (Wis 11:26). This is the basis of our conviction that, as\npart of the universe, called into being by one Father, all of us are linked by\nunseen bonds and together form a kind of universal family, a sublime communion\nwhich fills us with a sacred, affectionate and humble respect. Here I would reiterate that \u2018God has joined us\nso closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the\nsoil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful\ndisfigurement\u2019. (LS 89)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have been hard-pressed to pray in the face of such\n\u201cpainful disfigurement\u201d as the Australian wildfires that is, to pray deeply,\nbeyond asking God to have mercy on suffering mother earth, to be close to the\ndying and hold eternally those who have died, to strengthen and sustain first\nresponders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So I turn to Laudato Si\u2019<\/em> again, and simply hold\nthe images of the devastating wildfires in Australia together with this\nbeautiful and painful claim: \u201cEverything is related, and we human beings are\nunited as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the\nlove God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond\naffection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth\u201d (LS\n92). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Facing Australia\u2019s devastating wildfires as a challenge to prayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":50642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-plaza-new-ws"],"yoast_head":"\n