We begin reflecting our Sacred Land by reading the Scripture on this day of our Saints. The book of Genesis is not new to most of the Christians and yet the question is how are we living our call on what God sees as good, remains good. We honor someone by protecting and taking care of what our loved one entrusted to us. In this Holy day of the Saints, we reflect on how can we be eco-Saints just like Saint Hildegard, Saint Pope John Paul II, Saint Kateri, Saint Francis of Assisi, among the other saints who once struggled and discovered to live being one with our Creator and now enjoying the fruits of their labor to be one with the Source of Life.
Genesis 1:12, 24, 25, 27-30 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
The Sacred Land Program in Our Lady of Perpetual Help
With the approval of the pastor/priest of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Corpus Christi, the Congregation of Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio's Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation carrying the goal of Laudato Si' Movement's call to action to spread awareness of sustainable lifestyle. We have sponsored the 8 sessions of learning about the our Sacred Land. How we as individuals and society have a role to play in this call.
As a community of faith with the local parish, we have learned the way the Agriculture and Land are treated in United States and what can we do to protect the environment and restore its health. We had our sessions ran from 7pm with food for everyone and spend our time praying, listening, learning and having conversation about the state of our environment in United States particularly how the pesticides and herbicides have been harming our planet and how the Government subsidizes the farming to pay for these chemicals as the universities also teaches the students with conventional farming using chemicals. The big agrochemical companies provide grants and funds to the universities to use these harmful substances. In the field, the farmers get impacted by these chemicals with their pregnancy, health, the extreme heat from farming at any point in time, "super bug" introduced by chemicals and the soil's microbes die, destroying the health of the soil. This is one of the biggest issues with the Sacred Land apart from the ethics in raising animals for poultry and meat industries (e.g. cruelty in breeding environment and merciless killing of those animals suffering from deformation or sickness of the animals due to neglect and abusive practices in the industry).
In the middle of our 8-week session, we had a Special Speaker from Sierra Club who talked about the local environmental issues in Corpus Christi and how each can contribute in everyday choices and immersion by visiting the Local Garden in Corpus Christi which was a property of United Methodist.
How do we restore its balance? The regenerative farming has been re-introduced among the farmers so that what was the practice before the industrial age, we are reclaiming it for the restoration of the environment. The wisdom of the Native Americans remain a practice for some of the ranchers and farmers. We have discovered from the capacity of the microbes and the diversification of crops in keeping the health of the soil and the nutrients intact amidst a disastrous calamity.
At the end of the session, all groups were invited to make a commitment in making concrete actions as a gift to the Sacred Land. We are all consumers of this land, how are we participating in a healthy production for our environment to continue to thrive for today and the next generations?
This land gives us nourishment and shelter and produces microbes for good quality air, soil and climate. How are we taking care of the land, so that the food or meat for the meat lovers being patronized come from good practices that keep the whole eco-system healthy and climate sustainable?
Below are Laudato Si' articles to ponder:
20. Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths... There is also pollution that affects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general. Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.
34... Human beings must intervene when a geosystem reaches a critical state. But nowadays, such intervention in nature has become more and more frequent. As a consequence, serious problems arise, leading to further interventions; human activity becomes ubiquitous, with all the risks which this entails. Often a vicious circle results, as human intervention to resolve a problem further aggravates the situation... But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.
134. Although no conclusive proof exists that GM cereals may be harmful to human beings, and in some regions their use has brought about economic growth which has helped to resolve problems, there remain a number of significant difficulties which should not be underestimated. In many places, following the introduction of these crops, productive land is concentrated in the hands of a few owners due to “the progressive disappearance of small producers, who, as a consequence of the loss of the exploited lands, are obliged to withdraw from direct production”.[113]The most vulnerable of these become temporary labourers, and many rural workers end up moving to poverty-stricken urban areas. The expansion of these crops has the effect of destroying the complex network of ecosystems, diminishing the diversity of production and affecting regional economies, now and in the future. In various countries, we see an expansion of oligopolies for the production of cereals and other products needed for their cultivation. This dependency would be aggravated were the production of infertile seeds to be considered; the effect would be to force farmers to purchase them from larger producers.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.
All you Saints in Heaven, pray for us.
Happy All Saints Day!
