October 2025

Earlier this month, the Presentation Sisters who live at Villa de San Antonio, where we also live, hosted two events marking the tenth anniversary of Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for the earth, “our common home.”

Maurice Lange, Justice and Peace Director for the Presentation Sisters nationwide, spoke about Laudato Si one evening. The next morning, he led us on a brief pilgrimage (photo below) to pray for the earth and all its creatures. This inspiring experience prompted these reflections.

We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7);

our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air

and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

[Laudato Si, par. 2]

Yes, we have forgotten. And I need to be reminded. The best way for me to be reminded is to spend time outdoors, in nature. On a chilly morning last week, I walked along the Boise River in Garden City, Idaho. A bright sun warmed my shoulders. Beside the path, a tree’s golden leaves seemed to glow against the clear blue sky. Geese soared overhead. Quacking ducks paddled in the river.

Ahhh! When I am so reminded, then sings my soul, along with St. Francis: “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs.”

A rare coincidence of events brought me to this place, to this joyous mood. I was in Idaho to visit my brother. Just days before my trip, the Laudato Si observances took place at the Villa. Just shortly before that, I had started to read The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf, in which she explores how Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the great natural scientist, first came to understand the earth as a complex ecosystem, “a web of life,” thus, in her words, “invent[ing] the concept of nature as we know it today” (p. 5). I finished that book while flying across the U.S., looking down from the airplane at fields and forests, mountains and streams.

Yes, I need to be reminded of my connection to the earth, to all of God’s creation. These recent experiences helped to remind me. So, I join with Pope Francis in this prayer [from Laudato Si, par. 246]:

Father, we praise you with all your creatures.

They came forth from your all-powerful hand;

they are yours, filled with your presence and your tender love.

Praise be to you!

Son of God, Jesus,

through you all things were made.

You were formed in the womb of Mary our Mother,

you became part of this earth,

and you gazed upon this world with human eyes.

Today you are alive in every creature

in your risen glory.

Praise be to you!

--Bill

Many people think of creation, the earth, as that giant gorgeous orb decorated with turquoise and terra cotta under white paisley streaks. For a little girl about 4 years old, creation was a driveway and garage floor of semi-crushed seashells delivered from Corpus Christi Bay 5 miles away.

We lived close to the earth. Our seashell garage ‘floor’ was my playground. I built houses, schools, and churches with whole oyster shells. Little critters crawled out of muddy shells and doodle bugs kicked sand out of the way to burrow crater homes. My pet horned toad didn’t mind being tethered with a leash, a thread tied around his neck. Sometimes he, primarily insectivore, got vegetable bits from the backyard garden.

Laudato Si presenter, Maurice Lange, told stories of his youth, sharing his childhood memories of treasured outdoor activities with his family. Several times he bent his knee to illustrate his size when he was a little boy. Such movements were visual messages encouraging us also to return to the earth. So impressed, that evening Bill and I went out to dinner on a restaurant patio nestled under live oak trees and a spoon’s throw from undeveloped natural brush.

Our world is spinning so fast that sometimes we need to be reminded of our common home and our need to care for it. I often see degradation of the environment. Six years ago, it was a shocking sight driving up Guatemalan dirt roads and seeing shriveled coffee trees on the right and, on the left, rows of corn stalks that looked like standing scarecrow corpses. In our area we see hydraulic fracking, literally piercing the very heart of the earth.

While there is hope that the natural ecosystem pendulum will one day swing back, we now must develop a passionate, loving care for the earth. Author and cultural/political commentator David Brooks suggests a moral ecology and that “it's a great legacy for anybody to leave behind a moral ecology.” John Paul II said that the world needs a global ecological conversion (Laudato Si, par. 5). In other words, let us return to the earth, get to know it well, love it, and take committed care of it.

It was a transformative thing, for Pope Francis to give us Laudato Si. It was a touching thing for Maurice Lange to give us visual encouragement to return to those sacred days when we first trod the earth. and when the earth was our playground. Now it is an essential thing for us to truly accept the serious responsibility to love and care for the earth. During his inaugural Mass, Pope Francis invited all his hearers to be “protectors” of creation.”*

--Jan

* Kevin W. Irwin, “Introduction: Pope Francis the Environmentalist,” in On Care for Our Common Home, The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si (Paulist Press, 2015), p. 1. 

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