Our Crucified Earth

 

"What does it mean for us followers of St. Francis of Assisi to take a contemplative approach to our modern-day ecological crisis?  If we dare to look and really see, we encounter Creation crucified - at our hands.  This is truly a heartbreaking and terrifying reality, almost impossible to bear without the strong spiritual grounding that contemplative prayer offers.  If Francis were to walk our earth today, he would encounter for the first time his Sister Mother Earth, Brother Wind, and Sister Water polluted and desecrated, the creatures he loved endangered and some gone forever.  Francis never experienced this type of ecological devastation since it occurred largely after the Industrial Revolution, yet the way he lived his life can teach us how to contemplate such realities and then find the courage to act. . . . For he saw that God 'humbly bends low in love and hides in weak and fragile form.' "

Ilia Delio,
Franciscan Sister

Photo: A single Pasqueflower blooms on a hillside in the Hewlett Burn; Roosevelt National Forest, CO; April 8, 2014