An opportune time to rediscover the gift of Creation

You might be surprised to learn that on September 1, the Catholic Church observes the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Like most Vatican-sponsored “World Day of” celebrations, it seems to me this commemoration hasn’t become a significant part of ordinary Catholics’ lives. After all, it isn’t a liturgical feast, and it has only been happening since its promulgation by Pope Francis in 2015.

Nonetheless, as we strive to align our lives with the rhythm of the Church, it’s worth meditating on the message that our pontiff has released to mark this occasion. It wouldn’t be a Francis document without a few head-scratchers, but it is nevertheless a short and worthwhile read.

A time for repentance and new beginnings

September 1^st may seem like an arbitrary date for this event, as it doesn’t hold particular significance for most of us today. It was not always so, however. In fact, this day continues to mark the beginning of the liturgical year in the East, where it has long been known as The Feast of the Indiction. Within the Orthodox world, this day also holds deep significance as a time to honor God in his creation through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—imploring him to “Bless the crown of this year with your goodness” (Psalm 65:11 LXX).

Seen as a day of new beginnings and a propitious time to embark on a new path of spiritual growth, it is also a time to express gratitude to the Lord for his protection of the world, particularly in the context of the harvest. It therefore also serves as an ideal moment to reflect on how well we are fulfilling our vocation as stewards of the earth. Here’s how Pope Francis described it in his letter inaugurating the event in 2015:

The annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.

Some may bristle at this last bit about seeking pardon for our ecological sins. In my experience, people don’t appreciate being accused of sins against the natural world, and this for at least two reasons. One is the obvious fact that none of us likes being told that we need to undergo a conversion. But the other has to do with the hypocritical posturing of those who reproach Christianity as the source of all our ecological woes, informing us that we need to completely overhaul our way of life yet in such a way that happens to increase their power.

Despite that fact that this skepticism is often warranted, there is something to the call for repentance with respect to the way we dwell in creation. And it did not originate with a modern pope.

How our sins dis-grace creation

Grounded in the witness of Sacred Scripture, the Church has a longstanding tradition of understanding human sin as fraught with consequences on a cosmic scale. In the Old Testament, Isaiah depicted the earth lying cursed and polluted, withering, mourning, and languishing because Israel had broken the Lord’s everlasting covenant (Is 24:3–7). Leviticus suggests that the land rebels against us and withholds its bounty when we violate the covenant (Lv 26:3–6, 18–20). The Book of Wisdom declares that “creation, serving thee who hast made it, exerts itself to punish the unrighteous, and in kindness relaxes on behalf of those who trust in thee” (Wis 16:24). And, of course, Genesis 3 associates the Fall of man with various curses upon the earth—a theme that St. Paul picks up on in Romans 8 when he describes the whole creation as “groaning” in labor pains (Rom 8:22). According to the Apostle, the universe awaits a day when it will be “set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).

Picking up on this tradition, Pope Francis affirms, “The whole of creation is caught up in this process of new birth and, in groaning, looks forward to its liberation” (§3). Like St. Paul, he emphasizes that this “liberation’ as bound up with—indeed, contingent upon—our redemption as believers:

The entire universe and every creature therein groans and yearns “impatiently” [Rom 8:19] for its present condition to be overcome and its original state to be restored. Our liberation thus includes that of all other creatures who, in solidarity with the human condition, were placed under the yoke of slavery. Creation itself, like humanity, was enslaved, albeit through no fault of its own, and finds itself unable to fulfill the lasting meaning and purpose for which it was designed. It is subject to dissolution and death, aggravated by the human abuse of nature (§4).

The pontiff’s assertion that man’s redemption encompasses all creation is well-founded in both Scripture and the teachings of the Church Fathers. More tenuous, however, is the claim that human sin ma introduced death into creation and prevented it from reaching its natural end. While popes have sometimes spoken in this manner, theological giants like Thomas Aquinas in the Medieval period and Pope Benedict XVI in the modern era did not interpret Scripture as suggesting that the human actions at the dawn of our species fundamentally altered the structure of the cosmos. So this line in the document certainly invites further debate. All the same, Francis’s primary concern is undoubtedly not the origin of death per se but rather the fact that creation’s precarious state is “aggravated by the human abuse of nature.”

In line with other recent popes, Francis laments that man’s God-given dominion over the earth (Gen 2:26) is often misinterpreted as “the right to possess and dominate nature, manipulating it at will.” He describes this as a Promethean mode of inhabiting the world that amounts to idolatry. How this is idolatry may not be obvious at first blush, but I take it its meaning to be that man makes an idol of himself by becoming “intoxicated by his technocratic power,” and “arrogantly plac[ing] the earth in a ‘dis-graced’ condition, deprived of God’s grace” (§7). This idea ties back to what the pope had mentioned a few paragraphs earlier. Regardless of what Francis may or may not think about how physical decay and death entered our universe, the key point is that we humans—who are entrusted with the mission of bringing the life of grace into creation—deprive it of this sanctification when we fail to receive it in grateful joy for the gift that it is (Lumen Gentium, 31). Our exploitation of creation—through excessive consumption, careless waste, and the like—is truly a disgrace, even if it doesn’t effect a fundamental alteration in the natural order or directly cause catastrophic ecological devastation.

Take, for instance, the guy who threw his Styrofoam plate and cup out the car window when I was driving behind him the other day. His act of littering may or may not go on to have a significant impact upon a local animal, but there’s more to it than that. This act is disgraceful not only because it might harm wildlife, but because it harms humans—the homeowner whose yard the trash ends up in, the unsuspecting driver who might get pelted with it, and especially the poor, who bear the brunt of waste-related problems. What is more, this action also harms the perpetrator of the action, for through it he sows the seeds of greater disorder within himself. Broadening this out on a grander scale, Francis makes the haunting observation, “Unchecked power creates monsters and then turns against us” (§6).

The redemptive interconnection between mankind and creation

If the effects of man’s sinful misdeeds reverberate throughout the created order, then the good news is that our loving actions, moved by the grace of Christ, do so as well. Returning to the Letter to the Romans, Pope Francis teaches that the moral struggles of Christians have been intertwined with the “groaning” of creation ever since the latter “was subjected to futility” by Adam’s sin (§4, citing Rom 8:20). Echoing St. Paul, the pope says that “the salvation of humanity in Christ is a sure hope also for creation,” According to Catholic tradition, mankind and the wider creation not only have a common origin but also a shared heavenly destiny. Aquinas, for example, speaks of a graced renewal in which the natural world will be raised above itself and achieve a share in man’s heavenly glory. In the words of Pope Francis, everything in our universe is ordered towards a “final consummation in his peace and to bodily resurrection in righteousness” (§3).

Considering our shared eschatological inheritance, Francis continues, “Consequently, it is possible to contemplate in hope the bond of solidarity between human beings and all other creatures” (§4). Now, if I were the one drafting this document, I probably would have tried to avoid giving the impression that our union with creation is established only by virtue of Christ’s redemption. After all, we are inescapably joined in a common life with other creatures on the basis of nature, not only as a result of grace. At any rate, the pope’s central point here is critical, namely that “this harmony among men and women should also be extended to creation” (§3).

And how are we to achieve this goal? Using the familiar papal language, Francis proclaims that “salvation embraces creation,” and that “the path to salvation for our common home and for us who inhabit it” lies in “a humane and integral ecology” (§3). Coined in the past century on the basis of the interconnectedness between humans and the wider created world, integral ecology emphasizes that what we normally think of with ecology (understanding and caring for the natural world) is inextricably bound up with human ecology—that is, the truth of man’s integration in the created order and his endowment with a nature that has unique gifts and needs. While aware that this vision will never be completely fulfilled here on earth, Francis echoes his predecessor in teaching that embracing integral ecology allows us to experience a foretaste of Heaven even now, leading the world around us to become an “earthly paradise…a place of joy and a promise of happiness for all” (§3).

Bearing this in mind, the pope reminds us that every one of our actions has wider implications than we tend to assume. Adam’s sin has tainted all our “fundamental relationships”—namely with God, with ourselves, with one another and with the universe. Francis insists that all of these must be “integrally restored, saved and put right”—because the inner connection among them is so profound that neglecting even one of them results in a scenario in which “everything else fails” (§5). Applying this specifically to creation, the pope explains that the life of grace “radically changes the way we think,” transforming us from “predators” who see the earth merely as a resource to be exploited for our own gain into “tillers” and stewards of the garden that has been entrusted to our care while remaining wholly God’s (cf. Lev 25:23).

In this way—and in a happy contrast to much of what we find in secular environmentalism—Francis teaches that a “situated” or “theological” anthropocentrism is the correct approach to creation (§§3, 7). Steering clear of an unqualified anthropocentrism (“We can do whatever we want—the earth is ours!”) on the one hand or biocentrism (“Every creature is the same—humans aren’t special!”) on the other, the pope highlights the significance of the biblical vision of humans as the image of God, which is to say the Lord’s representatives tasked with extending his loving rule throughout the world (§8).

Guiding principles for incarnational stewardship

As is often the case with papal teaching, Francis does not delve deeply into specifics regarding what this representation ought to look like on a practical, day-to-day basis (a topic he already addressed in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’). Nevertheless, he does leave us here with two guiding principles to help us implement this vision each in our own way.

The first is this: “To hope and act with creation, then, means to live an incarnational faith” (§9). Environmental issues—whether local or global—are not going to be remedied through nice thoughts alone. To live Christianity incarnationally means imitating Christ by entering into the concrete, nitty-gritty particulars of the world. Rather than willing the good of “the environment” at large or striving to “think globally” (a task Wendell Berry considers impossible, in the first place), I should be attending to this yard around my house, this neighborhood, this local forest, this particular river. This involves doing things that aren’t glamorous or revolutionary, immersing ourselves in the local and mundane through what Norman Wirzba calls a “spirituality of descent.” In concert with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Francis soberly reminds us that putting this sort of spirituality into practice necessitates continual conversion with regard to the manner we inhabit God’s good earth.

The second directive in Francis’s speech can be found after he observes that creation “is not static or closed in on itself” (§7). Francis says that protecting creation “is not only an ethical issue, but one that is eminently theological, for it is the point where the mystery of man and the mystery of God intersect,” adding that this intersection “can be called ‘creative’ since it originates in the act of love by which God created human beings in Christ” (§8). At least to this reader, this paragraph is rather clumsy in its logical arrangement and is hasty in arriving at its conclusions. Based on what is presented here, it is not abundantly clear what makes the issue of environmental stewardship more theological than others, nor is it apparent to me why it should be specifically labeled as “creative.”

Most puzzling of all, though, is the very end of the document. It’s genuinely moving when Francis concludes by saying that a life lived in harmony with creation enables our lives to “become a song of love for God, for humanity, with and for creation, and find their fullness in holiness.” Ever the poet, Joseph Ratzinger was fond of deploying this same musical analogy with respect to creation. As we’ve seen before with Francis, the potentially confusing part here is the concluding footnote from the Rosminian priest Clemente Rebora, which includes the line “Yet from one Mother alone, who is divine, we come happily into the light.”

As a theologian, I can tell you that, when examined in light of Scripture and the Fathers, the question of whether this language is appropriate or not is actually more complicated than it might seem to some. On that note, unsurpisingly, Francis’s predecessor offers a much more nuanced and evidently orthodox perspective of the matter, as detailed in his meditation on the Lord’s Prayer in his Jesus of Nazareth series (The key is that feminine imagery is applied to God in our tradition, but not feminine titles for God). In any event, to quote a priest who refers to God as the divine feminine distracts from Francis’s main point, at the very least.

But, to return to what I understand to be the more salient point, my takeaway is that Francis is not saying that every one of us needs to be “creative” with the way we inhabit the earth in the sense of a dynamic trailblazer, but rather that we are all called to collaborate in the ongoing work of the Spirit—to “complete what is lacking” in Christ’s mission (Col 1:24). One of the great themes of spiritual theology throughout the ages is that we who bear God’s image are called to share in the divine nature as his adopted sons and daughters (2 Pet 1:3-4). Thanks to this participation, we his disciples have been given the daring promise that we will perform even “greater works” than he accomplished on earth through the grace of the Holy Spirit that he has lavished upon us (Jn 14:12).

God is the original gardener, and he created the earth as his garden sanctuary. We, his stewards, are in turn blessed with the joyful duty of tending this garden and leading it to further perfection. We undertake this task not merely as servants with no personal stake in the affair, but as adopted children of the Father entrusted with making our own genuine contribution to the world. For my part, I have a very definite plan for perfecting the Lord’s work in creation later today in my backyard and kitchen. After work, my wife and children will join me in the effort to eradicate a bunch of weeds, pick some pears, and harvest a handful of tomatoes. Then, we’ll achieve something that only we humans can do, raising creation above itself as we transform the gifts of nature into heavenly bruschetta and cobbler.