Lent III – Laudato Si’

The Third Sunday of Lent

_{The third homily in a Lenten series on the Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si’ of Pope Francis.}

Are you content in your life?

Before you answer, what do we mean by words like satisfied, happy, and content? Expectations and understandings are different for each of us.

Are you lonely?

We can argue that we all at times experience loneliness. Though unspoken, are we not aware of a depth of loneliness that permeates our culture and lives? This loneliness is masked. It is revealed in the rising number of suicides among our youth, the addiction we have to our phone-computers, the loud volume of music in our restaurants and public spaces that inhibit conversation and encounter, and the busy-ness of our lives in which we have no time for each other.

With what words would you characterize your life?

Is your life rich, shallow, purposeful? Conversations, even with friends, are surface conversations. Few of us talk about personal issues, and if so, with any depth. Depth demands trust between people. Depth requires, as columnist David Brooks’ recent book subtitle offers, “…Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen”.  Are you deeply seen and known by others?

We use the word ‘community’ in much of our discourse. What does ‘community’ mean? For me, an indicator of the presence of ‘community’ is whether you would be missed if you were not present. Would you be missed by anyone in this congregation if you were not present for the Eucharist for a number of Sundays? Does anyone know who you are, know your name? Would they care enough to call and inquire about you or is that too intrusive today?

What do these questions have to do with my reflections on Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si’ – On Care for Our Common Home?

In acknowledging the human roots of the ecological crisis, Francis reveals that this crisis has both positive and negative affects upon us. He focuses on the dominant technological paradigm out of which we have lived our lives for two centuries. A period of immense human progress. However, what is ‘progress’? How do we measure the quality of ‘progress’?

First consider what we have technologically accomplished in the last centuries: from steam engines, railways, and the telegraph; electricity, automobiles, and airplanes to space exploration, the chemical industry and modern medicine; information technology, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnologies and A. I. Do you realize that when the Empire State Plaza was built the quarter length building to the west was for the computer system? I expect the computers in our pockets, [we still call them phones] have more capabilities!

Francis invites us to rejoice and be grateful for the God-given human creativity that has remedied many harmful aspects of our lives to the immense possibilities for improving the quality of human life. Another word for all these advancements is ‘power’. Humanity has never possessed such power. However, does the possession of power ensure we will use it wisely? Need I only recall Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the deforestation of the Amazon and the stripping of the African continent of its vast yet limited resources?

What is ‘progress’?

How do we measure the quality of ‘progress’? There is tendency Francis notes to believe that every increase in ‘power’ means an increase in ‘progress’. Is that true?

Like Eve and Adam who grasped for power in the garden and then realized they stood naked and exposed before their choice, are we not just as exposed, naked, and ironically powerless in the face of our ever-increasing technological power and our lack of controlling it?

Thus, my questions about a life content, the experience of loneliness, the hunger for community and the quality of our lives.

Humanity cannot derive its value from technology. There needs to be a distinctive way of thinking, a lifestyle and a spirituality that technology supports but does not direct or control.

To seek only technological remedies for the environmental crisis is to separate what in reality is interconnected. Otherwise, we experience our present moment of treating everything and everyone in a consumerist and wasteful manner resulting in discontent and loneliness.

Like humanity, science and technology are not morally neutral. These wonderful gifts can dehumanize people where we see others and ourselves as simply one being among others, a cog in a machine. Consider the image of people working on an assembly line doing the same action over and over and over – like a machine. Consider a person sitting for hours at a computer doing data entry. Humanity may have created technology but it would seem technology is repaying us the compliment, creating us in its image and likeness.

Pope Francis encourages us to reflect on our reality and the qualities that makes us most human. The more human we become the more concern and care we will have for our planet. Being created in the image and likeness of God, filled with the breath of God, we are drawn, we hunger, for transcendence; a wholeness that can only be found in God.  Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from this relationship.

The quality of our lives, our relationship to the environment, our use of the power we have in technology, are all interrelated.

Thus consider again my questions with stark honesty.

Are you content with your life?

Would you be missed by anyone if you were not present for a period? Is your experience one of being deeply seen and known by others?

They are questions that can lead us along paths in which we will care for our planet.