In this time of so many changes, when it seems that there is no way, when the night thinks it has won, Your voice assures, I am with you (cf. Mt 28:20).
When we talk about the difficult reality that our world is experiencing, the first thing we pose is that we lack awareness of the care that we must have of it to preserve its existence, and it is a phrase that we have heard and repeated endlessly, «the world is as it is, because we lack awareness” but is this true at all? Or is it a phrase that has become stale over time and has worn out from repeating it so much?
Before the saturation of so much information, the traces of despair and indifference appears with that categorical phrase: WE ALREADY KNOW THAT. To safeguard ourselves from this ghost, the ethics of care urges us to help others, in such a way that OMISSION cannot arise. We determine the need, we feel obliged to see to it that it is resolved; and this is based on the understanding of the world as a network of relationships, in which we feel inserted. Since Genesis (Gen 1,28) God has entrusted us with the task of safeguarding and mastering the earth and today the Pope, aware of the planetary ecological crisis, urges us to develop «a new paradigm of understanding of the relationship between the species human and nature. Starting from the biblical category of creation, it conceives the world as a gift from God, organic and fragile, which must be loved, respected and regulated according to God’s own law (…) The solution lies in the union and harmony between environmental ecology and human ecology.
We cannot run away from our responsibility or from the task that we have before the world, it is precise, urgent and necessary, to pray, reflect and unite to stop this self-destruction; we must care for, recreate and defend our planet, we have the prevailing need to balance an environmental ecology and a human ecology.
This is how Bernardo Toro has expressed it: “we live in a paradox, first as human species, we have created all the conditions to vanish: climate change (global warming), the use (abuse) of water, the excessive consumption of electricity, the accumulation of wealth of a few that generates hunger in many, the limits and deterioration of the territories (fracking, illegal mining, indiscriminate felling of forests), this is born from our bad relationship with the planet; on the other hand, we have created all the conditions to recognize ourselves as single species, since there are no races, but species with different skin tones (…). The internet, tourism, globalization, inter-culturality, migration, have united us in a network and if we want we can safeguard ourselves by removing the borders that separate us, divide us, confront us and destroy us.
Paraphrasing what the Pope said in several of his speeches in the face of the natural disasters that the world has experienced, he always affirms that the world created by God is beautiful, one and harmonious, but the human being, to the extent that he is located in the center of creation, is placed above Everything; their egocentric interests introduce a fracture, a disharmony that leads the world to chaos and the loss of balance that characterizes it. The root, then, of evil, of rupture, is the logic of the ego, it consists of living according to one’s own interests.
The misuse of human freedom is the genesis of the environmental devastation we suffer. We are experiencing a predominantly anthropological crisis: in order to heal the wound in the ecosystem, we must first heal the fracture within man; caring is the same as curing – healing.
That is why it is urgent for us to return to the essential principles of the ethics of care, which is above all a way of life, which prioritizes human relationships around care, understood as affection in its maximum dimension. Caring for oneself, caring for the other, caring for what belongs to everyone; As the encyclical Laudato Si makes explicit, the common home is everyone’s business; either we join and compromise or disappear by our own hand.
Carol Gilligan, when doing a study on human actions with women, different from the one her teacher Kohlberg had done (only with men), said, among other things, that “women care about others, we have greater emotional capacity, we are more sensitive, we prioritize needs over the abstract fulfillment of duties and the exercise of rights. Women find it a little easier to respect diversity and seek to fulfil the needs of the other, not only according to their work but also their needs”.
It is time to have a change of focus in the relationship of oneself with others and with the world: it is about «moving from consumerism to sacrifice, from greed to generosity». Any change in behavior, and more so in mentality, needs specific motivations and a pedagogical path that must be worked out by all of us, and at this point, we consecrated people have a lot to contribute.
Looking at ourselves in the light of this reality, the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of the Holy Family, feel driven to commit ourselves more, not only from the local communities, doing good things, like trying to live well with each other, recycling, saving energy, not contaminate rivers and seas, among other initiatives; it is also necessary to bet from the institutionality to work in a network with others, since we have several advantages: first of all, we are women, who have that natural sensitivity that springs from within, from our spiritual maternity, forcing us not to be indifferent to the one who suffers. Second, we are consecrated women in search of spiritual depth, which is none other than identification with the person of Jesus and his actions (cf. Gal 4:19); He was deeply moved by the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages, the widow of Naïm, the Syrophoenician, the leper, the blind man, among others; on the other hand, we are heirs to a rich Franciscan-amigonian spirituality, where fraternal love is universal, encompassing creation and the cosmos; compassion and mercy are transversal axes of our actions.
It is also necessary to weave a network regarding human ecology and our option for humanity, with the certainty that everyone must be loved. Gilligan also explains that human well-being and environmental sustainability depend on bio-cultural diversity, its interaction and its temporal transformation, understanding that: Biodiversity is essential for the correct functioning of the services that maintain the stability of ecosystems and the dignity of its inhabitants. The loss of biodiversity is associated with the rapid growth of human populations, their concentration in urban centers with an unsustainable consumption model that is linked to the increase in waste and pollutants, armed conflicts and a very slow advance in equality in distribution welfare and resources.
Social inequity has very deep roots in social inequality, inherited from generation to generation, which are difficult to eradicate and to counteract this it is necessary to join the walk with others so that the voice is stronger and will reach the ears of those who pull the strings of the world, not alone, but in communion with the Church and with all humanity, especially on the borders where life cries out because it is in danger of extinction. Carlos Cullen poetically said: “If we know how to be and we do not pretend to be without being, we will take care of the other as another, as the deepest way of understanding self-care”.
And finally, faced with the catastrophe that is coming if we do not get converted, it is understood from human ecology that: There are two superstructures of the cultural environment, which condition the cycles, the first is money, which modulates the quantity and quality of life in the different human groups; the second, information, speedily disseminated through new technologies, conditions the patterns of social behavior in all its aspects, including those related to the excessive spending and consumption of resources. Only when we become aware and continue gambling for the Kingdom of Heaven, brotherhood and communion with all, will the situation of the world and the planet be upturned.
“And we still continue on your path, God made man, teacher and guide, and we still live so convinced that only the Kingdom is our utopia. And we are still in love with you and your project and we still laugh and we still sing so persistently of a new world” (Hymn, 50 years of CLAR)
CILIA IRIS BONILLA, TC
