Living Laudato Si’

Laudato Si’ is a call to conversion of mind and heart.  In the words of Pope Francis, “A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal.”  What might that mean for us in practical terms, in our daily lives?  How does one live Laudato Si’?

How does one live Laudato Si’?  I would suggest that this is a question not all that different to “How does one live the Gospel?”  for in calling us to care for our common home, Pope Francis tells us that “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” (217). On 1^st September, just a few weeks ago, Pope Leo wrote in his message for the 10^th World day of Prayer for the Care for Creation: “The Encyclical Laudato Si’ has now guided the Catholic Church and many people of good will for ten years. May it continue to inspire us and may integral ecology be increasingly accepted as the right path to follow.”

As Fr Andy Nguyen SJ has made patently clear tonight, it all begins with conversion of mind and heart, a sudden insight or a new understanding, or even perhaps a mystical experience.  It may be as big as falling in love with a place of great natural beauty or the simple realisation that our children or grandchildren may never see a real koala.  If you don’t feel that you’ve had that kind of conversion, if you think that the natural world is not something we should love and care for, I do urge you to read Laudato Si’ and let yourself be moved by the words of Pope Francis.  He wants to “promote a new way of thinking about human beings, life, society and our relationship with nature.”  And he really does want us to change – to change our mindsets, our habits, our lifestyle.

Listen to what he has to say in paragraph 217:

the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an “ecological conversion”, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them.

The assumption here is that an ecological conversion is also an encounter with Jesus Christ, and that this encounter will change our relationship with the world we live in.  “It is we human beings above all who need to change,” says Pope Francis, “and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal.”  The long path of renewal.  So…no overnight change.  A journey of ongoing conversion, in other words.  A daunting challenge for most of us.  And the greatest obstacle is we ourselves – our narrow mindsets and our ingrained and often unconscious habits.  Where do we begin to live the conversion challenge of Laudato Si’?

Let me suggest that Chapter 6 might be a good guide for us in this respect. In this chapter we can discover what are the marks of this profound interior conversion that Francis is calling us to.  They include: a protective relationship with creation; acknowledgement of our failings to care for the earth, leading to repentance and a desire to change; a spirit of gratitude and generous care; a loving awareness of our kinship with all creatures; awareness of our responsibility to the world; awareness that creation speaks to us of God; an alternative understanding of what quality of life means; “a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession of consumption”; the ability to be fully present to others; inner peacefulness; and, last but certainly not least, engagement with community to take action for change.

This is quite some challenge, and we might well suspect that what is demanded of us is beyond our capabilities.  There are great sacrifices to be made.  But let us remember that this is a journey, a long path of renewal, and we are not alone.

I’d like to unpack with you just a little bit of Chapter 6, but I do encourage you to read the whole chapter yourselves.  (The whole of the encyclical is available online)

Significantly, the chapter’s first subheading – Towards a New Lifestyle – deals with extreme consumerism. Perhaps this is a good place to start considering how one might live Laudato Si’.  We all know we have too much stuff.  We are positively drowning in stuff.  There’s even a book with the evocative title, “Stuffocation.”  We know what a problem waste has become for our world.  Look at how the market seduces us to buy new things all the time.  Pope Francis describes it as “a whirlwind of needless buying and spending,” and produces this profound sentence: “Purchasing is always a moral – and not simply economic – act”. He goes on to speak of “the moral imperative of assessing the impact of our every action and personal decision on the world around us.”

Our buying and spending habits are just that – habits we take for granted.  But Pope Francis tells us, “An awareness of the gravity of today’s cultural and ecological crisis must be translated into new habits.”  The simplest question one can ask before buying something new is “Do I really need this? Can I get it second hand or borrow it from someone?”  If we need to buy something, there are deeper questions we can go into: where does it come from, how was it made, what or who was harmed in its production?  I am sure that many of you here are aware of these issues, and are indeed doing the kinds of actions that Francis specifically mentions in paragraph 211 as being ways of directly and significantly affecting the world around us: “such as avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices.”  Francis shines a particular kind of light on these actions.  He says they all “reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings. Reusing something instead of immediately discarding it, when done for the right reasons, can be an act of love which expresses our own dignity.”

Generous and worthy creativity…bringing out the best in us…act of love.  Pope Francis is interested in a spirituality that is embodied, a spirituality capable of inspiring us to protect our world. He asks us “to recognise and to live fully” the awareness that every living creature “reflects something of God and has a message to convey to us,” and the knowledge that God “created the world, writing into it an order and a dynamism that human beings have no right to ignore.”  What might that mean for us?  At the very least should we not get to know our own local eco-systems and habitat, the trees and plants and wildlife that are our neighbours?  We cannot love what we do not know.  (Just as an aside, you might like to consider joining WEPA – the Willoughby Environmental Protection Association, a good way of engaging with local environmental issues).

Under the sub-heading Joy and Peace are some of the most beautiful paragraphs in Laudato Si’ focused as they are on the Christian spirituality we need for our times.  I would like to share with you two paragraphs, and I invite you to hear the voice of Pope Francis speaking to you directly.  (I suggest you close your eyes)

222. 222. Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption. We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”. A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment. To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfilment. 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.
223. We are speaking of an attitude of the heart, one which approaches life with serene attentiveness, which is capable of being fully present to someone without thinking of what comes next, which accepts each moment as a gift from God to be lived to the full. Jesus taught us this attitude when he invited us to contemplate the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, or when seeing the rich young man and knowing his restlessness, “he looked at him with love” (Mk10:21). He was completely present to everyone and to everything, and in this way he showed us the way to overcome that unhealthy anxiety which makes us superficial, aggressive and compulsive consumers.

I’m just going to let you sit in silence for a minute now.  Has anything so far really touched you?

According to the logic of Francis, consumerism is destroying the planet, the antidote is changing the way we live, and the only way we will do that is if we have a spirituality strong enough to inspire and motivate us.  All of us here tonight have a spirituality that is grounded in a faith tradition.  What more might be needed to develop a deeper spirituality that will embrace care for creation as an integral part of it? (Wherever we sit on this spectrum there is always room to go deeper)  I can’t tell you the answer to that question in a few minutes.  I suggest you read Laudato Si’.  I also highly recommend a book called Jesus and the Natural World, written by Denis Edwards, an Australian priest and theologian who was one of Pope Francis’ advisors on the writing of Laudato Si’. (You can order it online from Garratt Publishing for $19.95 or find it at Pauline Books in town).  Or you might like to join your local Laudato Si’ group.  I would also suggest that you find a contemplative prayer practice that suits you if you don’t have one already.  You cannot have a contemplative lifestyle if it is not underpinned and supported by a regular contemplative practice.  Personally, I recommend Christian meditation, and we have several such meditation groups meeting regularly in our area, but if meditation is not your thing, seek out a practice that suits you and that you are prepared to commit to.

Finally, to quote Pope Francis again, “the ecological conversion needed to bring about lasting change is also a community conversion,” and furthermore, “Love is also civic and political, and it makes itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world.” There is only so much we can do as individuals.  There is so much more that we can do as a group.  Anne Lanyon spoke of the Faith Ecology Network two weeks ago.  It describes itself as an interfaith network of people connecting faith with ecological awareness and care.  The Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (commonly known as ARRCC) calls itself a grassroots organisation that mobilises people of all faiths to take effective action for climate justice. They are just two of a multitude of faith-based groups that strive to make a difference.

Let me tell you a little bit about our own home-grown Laudato Si’ group here in the parish.  Late in 2021 Fr Brian Moloney invited me to speak at Sunday masses and set up a Laudato Si’ group.  For nearly four years now we have met once a month.  We begin with silent reflection followed by group sharing, before moving on to the agenda.  In the first year we did a parish audit and discerned needs in order to design a workable 5-year plan.  Our most visible work is the monthly cleanup we do on first Saturdays, after 9am Mass here at St Leonard’s, and this year we have been joined by a few local residents and have had articles published about us in the local Naremburn Matters.

As a group we are supported by Catholic Earthcare, especially by their quarterly Zoom catchups where people from all around Australia share what their parish is doing.

There is so much that a parish could be doing to care for our common home.  This recent publication, The Parish as Oasis: An Introduction to Practical Environmental Care, has so many good ideas. We would love to do so much more. But we are only a very small group and there is only so much that we can do.  The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few.  It was ever thus!

It's my belief that a parish should be a community of communities, that every person in a parish should belong to some group.  Generous and worthy creativity brings out the best in us, but creativity thrives on collaboration.

And now I’d like to give you 2 minutes’ silence in this sacred space, to reflect on what you have heard tonight ?

I’ve quoted Pope Francis quite a lot tonight, for obvious reasons.  I’d like to finish by drawing your attention to a female theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, who has written a few books on ecological theology.  According to the blurb on the inside cover of her book, Ask the Beasts, Elizabeth Johnson “expounds upon the notion that love of the natural world is an intrinsic element of faith in God and that far from being an add-on, ecological care is at the centre of moral life.”

I would like to finish with her words tonight:

A flourishing humanity on a thriving planet rich in species in an evolving universe, all together filled with the glory of God: such is the vision that must guide us at this critical time of Earth’s distress, to practical and critical effect.  Ignoring this view keeps people of faith and their churches locked into irrelevance while a terrible drama of life and death is being played out in the real world.  By contrast, living the ecological vocation in the power of the Spirit sets us off on a great adventure of mind and heart, expanding the repertoire of our love.

A talk by Tricia Gemmell at the Season of Creation evening on 23 September 2025 at St Leonard’s Church, Naremburn. Tricia Gemmell has a Masters in Theology, is a member of the Australian Grail, and has been a parishioner of St Leonard’s Naremburn for 35 years.