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April 8, 2021The 51st anniversary of Earth Day is April 22. For many, this Earth Day is significant because it presents an opportunity to properly celebrate both this year’s Earth Day and last year’s golden anniversary, which passed quietly during the early season of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day through faith, including a meditative nature walk, reading a prayer or hymn by Saint Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of animals and ecology) and reading an excerpt from “Laudato Si’.”
The fifth anniversary of “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment was in 2020. The name was taken from the opening line in Saint Francis of Assisi’s famous hymn, “The Canticle of the Creatures.” The encyclical links the seven themes of Catholic social teaching, most specifically care for God’s creation and option for the poor and vulnerable, with environmental teachings.
It brings to the forefront an ancient, fundamental cosmological framework of the Church: as humans, we are connected not only with all brothers and sisters in Christ but also with all living things. Nature is for humans to protect and be a part of, not to control and consume unchecked. Dignity and stewardship of creation must be valued above “modern anthropocentrism” (Laudato Si’ Pg. 115).
Father Jim Chamberlain, who works in water conservation as the interim director of the University of Oklahoma’s Water Technologies for Emerging Regions (WaTER) Center, said Earth Day is a reminder of our common home.
“God's creation is for everyone to enjoy and for everyone to take care of. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, creation care is considered under the Seventh Commandment; ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ The reason is that when we pollute the air or water or when we pump more fossil fuels into the atmosphere, we are damaging the earth for future generations. We are stealing from the well-being of our children and grandchildren. When we use more than our share of resources (water, metals, food, etc.), we also are stealing from the poor who live with much less access to these resources," Father Chamberlain said.
As a follow-up to Laudato Si’, the Vatican will release a seven-year Laudato Si’ Action Platform in May to help the global Catholic community achieve full sustainability. Every year since 2016, the Catholic Climate Covenant, a nonprofit located in Washington D.C., puts together an Earth Day program. This year, the Covenant’s program is titled, “Earth Day 2021: Restore Our Common Home.”
The program is designed to celebrate Earth Day or commemorate Laudato Si’ Week (May 16-24). This year’s program is available online and there is an interactive element to the program – an invitation to submit creation care actions.
“We are excited to provide a means to lift what U.S. Catholics are doing at the local level, whether with their families, their parishes, their schools, or within a religious community to ‘restore’ God's creation. Our hope is that many will submit their actions and provide a visible manifestation of Catholic good works on creation care,” said Paz Artaza-Regan, the Covenant’s program manager.
Visit catholicclimatecovenant.org/program/earth-day to download the free program.
