THIS planet earth is our home away from our home. This home of ours is to be kept clean and liveable not only for ourselves but for the generations to come.
The twelfth century St. Francis of Assisi acclaimed the planet and its entities as brother and sister. “Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures especially Brother Sun, who is beautiful and radiant splendour; Sister Moon and the stars, who are formed clear and precious and beautiful; Brother Wind, through air, cloudy and serene and every kind of weather, we get our sustenance for our living; Sister Water, which is useful and humble and precious and chaste; Brother Fire, from whom we get light and who is playful and robust and strong.”
Has it ever crossed your mind this wonderful way of expressing our love for the nature? If we did not, I think we can think about it now and treat our natural brothers and sisters as we treat our own biological siblings. Pope Francis in his encyclical (letter) “Laudato Si” (Praised be to you) categorically warns the world addressing our nature and its creatures including human beings as sister.

“This sister of ours cries out to us because we have inflicted harm on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will,” Pope Francis wrote.
Can we hear the groan of our sister nature which has been desecrated to the extent that we will be unable to live in our home nature because of the drastic climate change in the last few decades.
It is significant to treat our nature as our own home. It is not fair to think the public land does not belong to me, hence, I can do whatever I like on that land. It is simple logic, as the Pope says, if we consider nature and its creatures as our own family members, I am sure we will be caring for it by keeping it spruce and healthy.
This way we can be happy to get the utmost from the ecosystem. We need to upkeep our ecosystem because we are mutually dependable. The life cycle needs every creature and each one us. Therefore, we have to keep our natural diversity alive by caring for it. Our nature home needs to keep clean just like our own home. We cannot live in the filth for a long time. By doing this we contribute significantly towards a healthy ecosystem.
We have been trying our best in different ways to keep our nature alive by various means but as the Pope says: we have to do some serious work and a serious debate as to how we can control global climate change.

FR. JERRY MELWIN DIAS, SJ
Diocese of Georgetown