“Nature is screaming. Stop! Stop!”
These words from Pope Francis in documentary The Letter: A Message for Our Earth are no longer a warning about a distant future. They describe the reality unfolding before our very eyes.
This summer has brought record-breaking heatwaves. Wildfires have devastated large parts of the Mediterranean. Sea temperatures have reached unprecedented levels. Here in Malta, many of us have experienced weeks of relentless heat, while recurring power cuts have reminded us how vulnerable even our basic systems can become under growing pressure.
Nature is screaming. And, truth be told, so are we.
We feel it in our exhaustion, our frustration and our growing anxiety about what lies ahead. Yet despite all the warning signs, changing course seems incredibly difficult.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle is not ignorance but resignation. We tell ourselves that the problem is too big, that our choices are too small, that someone else should act first. We convince ourselves that there is no alternative to the way we live, consume and grow. And so life continues at full speed, whilst hoping that somehow things will work themselves out.
Laudato Si’ offers a different path.
In that encyclical, Pope Francis certainly calls for courageous leadership from governments, businesses and those with the greatest responsibility and capacity to act. But he also reminds us that ecological conversion begins much closer to home, with the ordinary choices that shape our daily lives.
As he writes: “Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack” (Laudato Si 222)
As we prepare to celebrate the Season of Creation, beginning on 1 September, let us dare to stop. Stop long enough to step back from the path we are on and ask where it is leading us. Stop chasing the illusion that more consumption will bring greater fulfilment. Stop feeding the endless cycle of grabbing, accumulating and never having enough. And stop long enough to recover one of the most precious resources we have neglected: time. Time for God, time for one another, and time to rediscover the beauty and wonder of creation.
Mark Cachia