03/07/2024
What is Creation Care and Why is it Important for Us?
Creation care is our caring for God’s Earth as God tells us to do, even as early as in the Book of Genesis:
“The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.” (Genesis 2:15, New American translation). “God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.” (Genesis 1:31).
For countless generations, people lived in mutually reciprocal relationships with the land and with plants and animals for survival. Yet as humans began to flourish and multiply, the mutual connections with land, plants, and animals gradually weakened. Over the last few hundred years with the advent of the industrial age, our connections with God’s earth have weakened further to the point where we can now go about our lives and not be aware of the land, the plants, and the animals that were once essential for our survival. For many of us, these living things are now viewed as secondary to our human “progress.”
While our conscious relationship with God’s earth has weakened over time, our need for God’s earth remains. We come from God’s earth. We have become humans thanks to God’s love for the Earth and its varied and wondrous gifts. We owe a huge debt to God and the Earth for sustaining us. Now more than ever, we have a responsibility to care for God’s earth, as the Lord commanded in Genesis 2:15. Creation is the gift and manifestation of God’s love through all forms of life. We are not separate from the Earth. When we do harm to God’s Earth, we do harm to ourselves. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops tells us that, “Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith.”
Healing for all of us happens when we make efforts to heal the Earth. When we embark on Creation Care, we are renewing and deepening our connections to God’s total creation, which is not only essential for us, but is also part of us.
For more information: https://www.syracusediocese.org/laudato-si
