Weekly Reflections on Justice are written by the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach staff, volunteers, interns, and visiting Columban Missionaries. We hope these reflections help to guide you on your own spiritual journey working toward justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.
Water tables are beginning to rise. High tides are getting higher. Severe weather events are becoming more frequent and more dangerous. If this sounds like an apocalyptic movie, it's not. It's the island nation of Fiji suffering the consequences of climate change.
I am slow to make big sacrifices to avoid creating any kind of pollution. I do not bicycle everywhere; nor do I walk on many journeys. My polluting ways include using cars, trains, and airplanes. Yet, limiting my consumption of fossil fuels does seem to be the way to go forward.
We offer a prayer for conversion. Take our hearts of stone, overcome by the daily media barrage of suffering in the world, and give us hearts of flesh, bending our hands to works of justice.
What we need today is a “Candle Light Revolution for Peace” in every neighborhood, every city square, and every nation in the world. We must magnify the cry for peace, reach across oceans, and hold our leaders accountable, for the sake of the children and their children, for the peace of our world.
You become more aware of injustice – and eager to do something about it – when you witness it “in the flesh”. I’ve seen Peruvian rivers made un-drinkable because of pollution from un-regulated mining. I celebrate mass with women and girls abused and raped, with victims of violence, most of whom cannot demand justice because of an inefficient and corrupt legal system.
Many years ago, I willingly departed my family in New England; yet, I have the freedom to return there whenever I want. Once DACA ends, the dreamers will not have that opportunity. I try to imagine the fear that a surprise knock on a door could mean to a dreamer but that is impossible. Unlike many dreamers, I am able to hire an attorney should I need to resolve legal matters.
This year, Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew have challenged each of us to hear the cry of the earth and to attend to the needs of the marginalized. Both leaders have warned that the human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together. This deterioration, they note, weighs most heavily upon the poor and vulnerable.
To end the evil of environmental destruction, we must start by examining our own broken relationships with God, with one another and with creation, and open our hearts to such an “ecological conversion.” That is the urgent call we receive from Hurricane Harvey.
Three months have now passed since the administration announced its intention to withdraw from the global climate accord known as the Paris Climate Agreement. The United States’ withdrawal left the world reeling. How has the world, and the Columbans, reacted?
The discovery of massive amounts of coal under the sands of the Thar Parkar Desert, which has the potential to end [rolling blackouts] and provide for all of Pakistan’s energy needs for generations to come, is seen as a Godsend. But at what cost to the desert environment and its people today, and to future generations?
