On September 1st, we will celebrate the Day for Care of Creation. The Commissions of the Italian Bishops’ Conference for Social Problems and Work, for Justice and Peace, and for Ecumenism and Dialogue, have elaborated for this occasion, a document entitled:
“La famiglia educa alla custodia del creato” (The family teaches to care for creation). The document begins by quoting «
an ancient maxim of Scripture»: «
The wise woman builds her house, while the foolish one demolishes it with her own hands (Prov. 14:1)». «
This is true for creation − the Italian Bishops write −
that we can preserve and, unfortunately, also demolish. It depends on us, on our own wisdom, to choose the right path». And «
the family is a school for the stewardship of earth». Why? According to three principles of life and moral values: «
The culture of care that is learned in the family is based on gratuitousness, reciprocity and the repair of evil». The family is the «
teacher of the gratuitousness of the gift, which is first received from God. The gift is its task and its mission in the world. It's its face and identity». The family «
has a decisive importance in building good relationships with people, because in it one learns respect otherness. Each brother is, in fact, a person different from the others. It’s in the family that otherness, rather than being a source of envy and jealousy, can be seen from an early age on as an asset». In the family «
we also learn how to repair the evil done by ourselves and others, through forgiveness and conversion; the self-giving teaches the love of truth, the respect of natural law, the care for social and human ecology along with that for the environment».
Man is the guardian of creation to the extent in which he keeps the Word of God. «Keeping the Word: that is the first task of a community of believers who truly want to live faithfully “with the constant attention to God”, open to His ‘signs,’ available for His project, as Pope Francis indicate in his homily of March 19th», we read in the document of the Bishops. «The care of creation is, therefore, a qualifying dimension of the vocation of the believer, who is aware of the Word’s resonance also in the reality of a creation that came to be entirely in the Word». This is the «secret of the ecological soul of St. Francis of Assisi». As the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin said: «A Christian can say to God that he loves Him not only with his whole body, and with all his soul, but with the whole universe».
The issue of care of creation is recurrent in the teaching of Benedict XVI, and is grounded in the biblical Word and in Christian anthropology. In the Encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” the Pope wrote, among other things, that “Nature expresses a design of love and truth. Thus it too is a vocation” (nn. 48, 15). Pope Francis, since the first moments of his Pontificate, has repeatedly addressed this issue. Already homily of the Mass for the possession of the Chair of St. Peter, on March 19th, 2013, he said: «Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation!». Then, he added: «The vocation of being a protector, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live». Precisely in the early hours in Rio de Janeiro, for the World Youth Day, on July 24th, Pope Bergoglio said that «protecting creation is the challenge for the future». On the opening day of the 2013 World Youth Day, a Manifesto − promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Laity in collaboration with the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea − entitled: “The Young: Guardians of Creation. The Future on a Human Scale that We Want” was presented.
