RESPECT - for our Environment

Tomorrow, St Mary’s will help to ‘Clean Up Australia.’ This annual event reminds us of our responsibility to respect God’s gift of creation. From the beginning of time, human beings have been tasked with being the ‘keepers of creation’.

‘So God created humankind in his image… God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (Book of Genesis, New Testament)

The words subdue and dominion, do NOT mean that humans have the right to overpower the earth for their own ends. The author of Genesis was referring to stewardship. Our planet is fragile and it is Humankind’s role to care for it.

The two Genesis stories of Creation are not historical, scientific truths but, rather, deep religious truths about God, the meaning and purpose of the cosmos and the role of humanity. They are Sacred Myths. Catholics believe that although the world was not created in six ‘24-hour days’, the creation stories reveal to us these divine and sacred truths:

• All of creation stems from an original act of God. God said ‘Let there be … light, day, night, sun, stars, moon, land, sea, nature, creatures and humankind…’
• God intended creation to be GOOD (‘And God saw that it was good’ – this phrase is repeated 6 times in Genesis 1)
• God placed the responsibility of managing it and caring for it on humankind.

Human beings are ‘made in God’s image’; and each one has a spirit, the capacity to love, a conscience and unbound intelligence. The Catholic Church teaches that all humans have a responsibility to the land and all living beings, including fellow humans.

Please help us support the ‘least of our brothers and sisters’ this Lent by sending in money for our Project Compassion Boxes. There is a Project Compassion box for donations in each classroom.