“Laudato Si, mi Signore” – “Praise to you, my Lord.” In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace. “Praise to you, my Lord, though our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.
            The sister now cries out to use because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our responsible use and abuse of the good with which God has endowed her….

Thus begins Pope Francis’ encyclical, just over a hundred pages long, but one sure to cause a firestorm of reaction because its talk about climate change – not in a political context but in one of love and faith. And it calls all Catholics, Christians, and fellow humans of all faiths, or none, to immediate and resolute actions on fossil fuel and other pollution that harm God’s earth and hits the poor the hardest.

  “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month, the people of Israel
were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth,
and with earth on their heads.”
Nehemiah 9:1
 
      As I was thinking about Pope Francis’s upcoming encyclical, I played Bible roulette, letting God lead me to the passage I should pray with.  This is the one my Bible opened to, one I never remember reading before.  And it shocked me.

            “. . . .  fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. . . . ”