“Thus says Our God: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be Strong, fear not! Here is your God, coming with vindication: with divine recompense God comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools and the thirsty ground, springs of water.” (Isaiah 35: 4-7a)
Clearly the words of Isaiah were written for us. We may in fact be frightened, but we are still a people of hope. Everywhere we look there are environmental disasters. No matter what we try to share, there are people who cannot see what is perfectly clear to us. No matter what we say, there are people who simply cannot comprehend the data, the science, nor the emotional pleas that are made. No matter what new severe weather event takes place, there are some who refuse to change their ways or to acknowledge the truth. But still, we look for hope. We speak for truth. We are a people who continue to try, even as we continue to see rapid changes in the climate and the weather patterns that our way of life has come to rely on.
Summer has been over for weeks. Fall set in with cool nights, warm afternoons, and the accompanying rise in dust mites, mildew, and the various other fall allergens (which I can personally attest to!) way before the official change from Summer to Autumn which is still another two weeks away. The new normal of smoky air that comes with the changing of the seasons has also set in. Today the air pollutants are very high – tomorrow they should drop down unless another fire gets going and the winds blow our direction.
The flooding, coupled with tornadoes, in the northeastern states was yet another confirmation that we pray will be seen and heard by those who have the power to make changes for the good of the nation – and the world. We have already grown too accustomed to the devastating hurricanes in the Gulf States. Ida made a smaller impression on the news as it traveled through the south. (The levees held in New Orleans – so that’s good news, right? – after all those folks chose to live there, didn’t they?) Flooded subways and people drowning by the dozens in their basement apartments made the news though. How was that possible in the United States of America in the 21st Century? People with their only escape being through doors or windows which were held in place by inflowing waters does not seem like a situation that could be overlooked, but it was. Only now are officials taking note, just as officials only made note of the failing New Orleans levees after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. First people die and then we pay attention. Why? Is it because only the poor were threatened?
Pope Francis challenged all people of faith, all people of good will, back in 2015 with his encyclical, “On Care for Our Common Home; Laudato Si.” He was not the first Pope to challenge all people regarding a common threat, nor the first to address environmental issues. In 1971 Pope Paul Vi prophesied: “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it, and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation.” In 2001 Pope John Paul II warned that humans frequently seem, “To see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption.” In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment.” (1 -All quotes cited in “Laudato Si”) Pope Francis hoped to raise today’s environmental concerns to the to the same level of concern that Pope John XXIII raised the threat of nuclear destruction, by addressing Laudato Si to the whole world, just as John XXIII addressed all people of good will – not just Catholics or Christians - in his Encyclical, “Pacem in Terris.” In our day the world is being threatened not by nuclear holocaust, but by global environmental deterioration – a deterioration that can be seen and heard if only people have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
This weekend’s Gospel is from Mark 7: 31-37. It is the story of a deaf man whose ears were opened by Jesus. Fr. Jose Pagola reminds us that, “The prophets of Israel frequently used deafness as a provocative metaphor to speak of a people who were impervious to their God and resisted him. (sic) Israel has ears but it does not hear what God is saying to it. Hence the prophets call everyone to conversion with these words: ‘All you who are deaf, listen and hear.’… It is in this context that all the healings of the deaf, narrated by the evangelists, must be understood as stories of conversion that invite us to let Jesus heal our deafness and resistance to hear Jesus’ invitation to follow him.”(2)
Jesus has asked his followers to consider the poorest among us. This is the message that echoes through the words of Pope Francis on the environment, “we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach: it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” (3) This too, is the message of the second reading for this weekend from James 2: 1-5 which cautions us not to show partiality to the wealthy over the poor, and yet, most of the mitigations for climate change from solar panels to electric cars, from organic local food to air conditioning, are accessible only to those with a sufficient amount of wealth. The poor who do the least to contribute to the environmental disasters worldwide, have been the first to be affected. Even in America, it was the poor of the ninth ward who took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina, and whose neighborhoods were never restored, and the immigrant poor of New York and New Jersey who died in their basement apartments. And these are only two of the many examples that can be given.
We may feel that what we do is of little use in the face of corporate power and billionaire dollars, but that is true only if we give up on God – the mysterious third player in a world where, as Walter Bruggemann puts it, “the justice struggle is lost if there are only two combatants.”(3) God, the Holy Spirit, the capacity for compassion, the strength of love, and commitment to the common good, is the wild card, the third player who will give us courage and power when we open our eyes and ears to the truth that surrounds us. We can and must transform our way of life because the world is being threatened not by nuclear holocaust, but by global environmental deterioration – a deterioration that can be seen and heard only if people choose to use their eyes to see and their ears to hear.
1. Pope Francis. On Care for Our Common Home: Laudato Si. Vatican City: USCCB, 2015. # 3-6.
2. Jose Pagola. Following in the Footsteps of Jesus: Meditations on the Gospels for Year B. Miami: Convivium Press. 2011. Pg. 119
3. Pope Francis. ibid. #49
4. Walter Brueggemann. Tenacious Solidarity; Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy. Edited by Davis Hankins. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2018. Pg. 96