Year A: Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - St. Nicholas’ Parish

What St. Paul advises in the second reading about renewing our mind, St. Peter learned the hard way from Jesus himself. In the episode told in today’s Gospel we see Peter’s mind and heart being renewed by Jesus. Peter has his notion of who Jesus is and what Jesus should be doing. But he was using just his simple human logic and not allowing himself be guided by the Holy Spirit, by God. And this is what Jesus wants for him. It must have been a difficult moment but he learned so much.

In our thinking things through, we need to have God’s perspective not just our own logic.

A few weeks ago I attended the World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, with a million and a half young people from all the nations of the world bar one represented. It was an amazing event. High energy! It was great to be in the presence of so many young catholics with Pope Francis, the 86 year old, so very much young with the young. We had a group of 20 from Limerick and they got a lot out of it. Not least when the Pope passed very close by them on two occasions.

One of the topics that was mentioned several times was the care of our planet, the environment. It’s a topic young people really are passionate about. As you probably know, Pope Francis has written an encyclical Laudato Si’ about it and has said recently that he will be publishing another letter on this topic. I myself wrote a pastoral letter a few years ago about (Listening To Nature's Words Of Love: Caring For Our Common Home). As the Pope repeated to the young people at the World Youth Day, we need to recognise “the dramatic urgency of taking care of the common home.” The weird weather patterns we’ve all experienced in recent years and also this summer remind us of this. Indeed, on the last days of the World Youth Day the temperature was up around 40 degrees. Pope Francis commented also that “we cannot settle for mere palliative measures or timid and ambiguous commitments,” as “it’s about taking responsibility for what, unfortunately, keeps being postponed, that is: the need to redefine what we call progress and evolution.”

For the past two centuries in particular, European culture especially focussed a lot on progress and evolution. It brought many benefits. But today we realise it didn’t bring just progress. It also caused regress. We see this in the damage done to our planet. What Pope Francis wants to help people realise is that progress and evolution aren’t bad in themselves but if they forget God they end up a disaster for humanity. CS Lewis, the English author, wrote a famous book entitled, “The Abolition of Man”. He recognised the risk of the direction the world was going in – by forgetting God and thinking we can do all on our own, we could end up abolishing humanity itself. Yes, we need our minds and hearts to be made new with regard to care of our planet.

Going back to Pope Francis. In Lisbon he spoke with young people in a university and reminded them that care of the planet isn’t just about the physical environment, it has to do with our relationships, with how we hear the cry of the poor, and other social issues. In other words, we need to have a bigger picture of ecology and care of the earth. He said: “Don’t forget that we need an integral ecology; we need to listen to the suffering of the planet alongside that of the poor; we need to put the drama of desertification parallel to that of refugees, the issue of migrations alongside the decline in birth rates; we need to address the material dimension of life within a spiritual dimension.”

September 1^st to October 4^th (Feast Day of St. Francis) has become in the past few years what is called a “season of creation” promoted by the Catholic and Orthodox churches around the world. It’s a time for us all to focus on our part in caring for the planet and promoting this “integral” ecology. Everything is connected with everything and everyone is responsible for everyone as Pope Francis put it. As well as taking practical steps to do with the environment, in these weeks we’re all asked to keep in mind the spiritual dimension through prayer and simply taking time to notice the beauty of creation around us, slowing down, being more reflective, and then reviewing our life style. We need certainly to pray for and work for peace with so many wars going on such as in Ukraine, Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and many other places around the world. All parishes are invited to give expression to this season of creation in their parishes through prayers of the faithful, perhaps planting a tree, offering a creation walk, and adapting a green policy.

One practical suggestion I would like to make is to invite you to watch and perhaps arrange for others to gather with you to watch at the film “The Letter: A Message for Our Earth” that was produced last year by?the Laudato Si’ Movement, together with the Oscar and BAFTA-winning team Off the Fence. This film-documentary follows 5 courageous change makers from different parts of our world as they tell their stories about trying to bring hope to the global conversation about caring more deeply for our common home. They end up in a dialogue with Pope Francis. The film was shown during the World Youth Day and has been highly acclaimed as a film documentary. It’s available on You Tube. Watching this film, The Letter, might be a way for us to renew our mind.