Tag Archive | climate change

St. Francis Prayer Service, 2018: Who Is My Neighbor?

Sep14

St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology, is also famous for his concern for peace and his devotion to people suffering from poverty and injustice. Catholic Climate Covenant (CCC)’s theme for his feast day this year joins all of them: “Who Is My Neighbor in a Climate Threatened World?” It especially focuses on the interconnections among immigration, refugees, and climate change.

Many past blogs have stressed these problems, their interrelationships, and our place in the cosmos’ evolution. I feel no need to “convince” readers. Instead, I offer the outline of a brief prayer service that you can adapt in any way:

                                                                            Prayer Service

Leader: Let us join together to honor St. Francis, to remember the needs of our own times that Frances would surely care about, and ponder how his spirit and commitment can lead us to action. Laudato Si’ is permeated with St. Francis’ spirit; Pope Francis mentions it in the first paragraph of his 2015 encyclical: “St. Francis reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.” (par. 1) 

Take turns reading from Laudato Si’:

“Authentic human development … presumes full respect for the human person, but it must also be concerned for the world around us and ‘take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system.’ Accordingly, our human ability to transform reality must proceed in line with God’s original gift of all that is.” (par. 5)

“There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation.” (par. 25)

“There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.” (par. 26)

“…everything is interconnected, and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis….” (par. 137) 

“… we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion.” (par. 220)

“The poor and the earth are crying out.” (par. 246)

Share

How do you see climate change, immigration, and refugees as interconnected issues?

Imagine you are the head of a family forced to leave homeland due to flooding, drought, or lack of food in order to find housing and sustenance elsewhere. How would you feel? What would you miss?

Watch this 3:33 min. video

Links between migration and climate change – YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQslOVboFfU

Decide

How might each person here, or this group together, improve the situation for immigrants, refugees, and climate change this week? We CAN make a difference!

Together: Prayer for Creation and Migrants 

May the Holy Family, who, Scripture tells us, fled to another country for safety, guide all those forced to leave their homes. 

May St. Francis’ example of giving what he had to those in need inspire us to respond generously when so many must leave everything due to climate disasters. 

May our own sense of interconnection with people and the entire planet bring us to take political action in this time of denial and rejection of climate change and migrating families.

May future generations have reason to be grateful to us for what we do, now, to stop the causes of migration, immigration, and climate change.     Amen.

Sing

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your love,
Where there is injury, your pardon Lord
And where there’s doubt true faith in You.

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there’s despair in life let me bring hope,
Where there is darkness only light,
And where there’s sadness ever joy.

Oh, Master, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
In giving of ourselves that we receive,
And in dying that we’re born to eternal life

REFUGEES, CLIMATE CHANGE, YEAR OF MERCY

Dec1

Refugees

I am writing this on Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a day we join with friends and family to give gratitude for the abundant blessings we enjoy. In contrast, think of what one refugee replied when asked what he had brought with him on the boat heading for Turkey. He thought for a moment and answered: “Sadness.”

This man is caught in the greatest migration since World War II. Though numbers cannot 5288632902_85224781d1_bbe exact, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 2014 saw almost 60 million women, children, and men displaced either within or outside their home areas. That number is approximately the population of Italy!

How we respond to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing terror and persecution, war, poverty, gangs, climate change, and hopelessness is a major issue for both leaders and citizens of the countries to which these homeless people flee. We must get beyond the numbing numbers and “feel” the plight of individuals. For those aware of how closely we are interconnected to all creation on our common home, the decision to welcome these brothers and sisters is inescapable.* (The US terror attacks have come from within.)

Connection to Climate Change

Researchers and policymakers warn that these numbers are sure to increase because of climate change. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center states that roughly three times as many people were displaced by environmental disasters between 2008 and 2013 than fled from conflict and violence.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned recently that the scenes of chaos and heartbreak in Europe will be repeated globally unless the world acts to mitigate climate change. “Wait until you see what happens when there’s an absence of water, an absence of food, or one tribe fighting against another for mere survival,” Kerry said.

Climate change leads to crop failures, natural disasters, higher food prices and the spread of waterborne diseases, creating poverty and pushing people at risk into destitution. The World Bank warns that rising temperatures could drive 100 million people into extreme poverty. Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University and other reputable scientists put the number at twice that amount.

Talks in Paris now until Dec. 10 give hope that the world’s leaders will take positive steps to reduce climate change and thus reduce refugee numbers in the future.

Jubilee Year of Mercy

JUBILEE-YEAR-OF-MERCYCare of Earth and care of humanity cannot be separated. Pope Francis recently said, “There is a clear link between the protection of nature and the building of a just and equitable social order. There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature, without a renewal of humanity itself.”

December 8th begins the Roman Catholic Year of Mercy that extends to November 20, 2016. Calling us to a spiritual conversion, Pope Francis writes: “We want to live this Year in the light of the Lord’s words: ‘Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’ (cf. Lk 6:36)” Addressing Catholics, he writes: “I am convinced that the whole Church will find in this Jubilee the joy needed to rediscover and make fruitful the mercy of God, with which all of us are called to give consolation to every man and woman of our time.”

It seems relevant that Human Rights Day will be celebrated two days after this special year begins. The Year of Mercy reminds Catholics — and others — to show mercy by helping refugees achieve their human rights. Welcoming refugees is a direct response to the Gospel mandate to welcome the homeless and treat everyone as we would treat Christ. It is an important way to show mercy. We also practice mercy by taking action to mitigate the reasons — like climate change and war — that cause people to flee their homes.

Listening to those who would withhold compassion for certain groups makes one wonder if the innkeepers who refused Joseph and his pregnant wife 2000 years ago truly had no room, or if they didn’t choose to accept people from Galilee. How sad if we could be similarly blinded!

 

* Entering the United States as a refugee is already a long and difficult process. It takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months or longer, and involves the FBI, Homeland Security, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Defense Department and the State Department. Your biometric data is checked against law-enforcement databases. You must pass a battery of interviews. And if you’re from Syria, the process is even more rigorous.

*My parish, St. Gertrude, Chicago, true to its pledge that “All Are Welcome!” is making plans to welcome a family from Syria (or whatever family is in need). Over 100  parishioners have volunteered to help, and the entire parish will contribute as needed.

Weekend for Trafficking Victims

Sep9

The last weekend in September — this year Sept. 26-27 — is International Weekend of Prayer and Fasting for Victims of Human Trafficking, be it trafficking for sex, labor (agriculture, textile, domestic, etc.), organs, or child soldiers. 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of this weekend initiated by the Salvation Army and the Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking (IAST). Anyone who believes that all life, all creation, is sacred will want to participate in this global effort of prayer and fasting to relieve this suffering endured by so many.

Although even the concept of human persons being treated as slaves — and worse — is repulsive, it occurs all over the globe, very probably in your area. Children, both boys and girls, are exploited.

Numbers 

2010_0825_child_trafficking_mNumbers of trafficked persons are deceptive for two reasons. For one, accurate numbers are impossible to get — traffickers are not eager to share them and police cannot find them. The other is that numbers tend to be numbing. Learning that the International Labor Organization estimates that almost 21 million people are trafficked each year, or that 4.5 million of those exploited by individuals or enterprises are victims of forced sexual exploitation can be too big to comprehend by mind or heart. (http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang–en/index.htm)

Something tangible happens when we read that “two brothers, aged 7 and 10, died in April 2015 in a fire in one of the numerous clandestine garment workshops in Flores, a Buenos Aires neighborhood, where their parents, immigrants from Bolivia, were living and working.” (http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/garment-sweatshops-in-argentina-an-open-secret/) One might not WANT to picture the sweat shops, the fire, and the protection given to exploiters by police in return for bribes, but it is POSSIBLE to do so. Both mind and heart can grasp the death of two innocents, the pain of their parents, and the injustice aggravated by police corruption.

Or that Pariyar, a poor uneducated laborer in Nepal, was tricked into selling his kidney. He needed money, was lied to about what would be removed, was offered large sums (which never came), and so he agreed. He now has a urinary problem, no way to track down the sellers, cannot afford a trip to a doctor, and worries what will happen to his two children if he dies. (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/world/asia/freedom-project-nepals-organ-trail/)

One Major Cause                                                                                                    Pope Francis leaves his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Oct. 23. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) (Oct. 23, 2013) See POPE-AUDIENCE Oct. 23, 2013.

In July, Pope Francis told a meeting of the world’s Mayors that the  state of the environment is directly and intimately linked to the life and wellbeing of humankind. He said huge migratory waves of peoples across the globe are triggered by environmental issues such as

• desertification,
• deforestation,
• drought, and
• floods, which leave people and entire communities without the possibility of seeking a livelihood. Thus – he said – the exodus that takes them into urban centers gives life to human trafficking which brings with it diverse forms of exploitation of women, children and vulnerable people.  

Pope Francis mentions human trafficking three times in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, always linking this issue with climate change and other results of the  destruction of our common home.

Prayer and Fasting Weekend

The focus on September 26-27, 2015, is on prayer and fasting, two simple actions that any reader of this blog can take to improve this blight on humankind. Uniting globally on the last weekend of September, our intentional and loving prayer and fasting “can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20) But do imagine one of the many victims, and pray/fast/picture his or her release — especially if environmental destruction contributed to his or her plight. Pray and fast that this cause may be mitigated by response to Laudato Si’.

Solutions to human trafficking are many. For actions to reduce trafficking (that include prayer and a prayer service), go to https://ecospiritualityresources.com/2014/12/31/5-ways-to-reduce-human-trafficking/.

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I add very sincere thanks to Jean Schafer, sds, editor of Stop Trafficking! (www.stopenslavement.org) who generously and graciously assisted with this blog and whose monthly newsletter is always a source of valuable information.