“If he is not the custodian of the garden, the human being becomes its destroyer”. Leo XIV sounded the alarm in today’s catechesis, dedicated to the relationship between Christ’s Resurrection and integral ecology. “Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources”, he warned, borrowing the words of Pope Francis’ ‘Laudato si’: “There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational program, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance”. Hence, the urgent need to launch “an ecological conversion, which Christians cannot separate from the reversal of course that Jesus asks of them”.
“Cultivating and keeping the garden is the original task that Jesus brought to fulfillment”,
began the Pope, quoting Mary Magdalene who “weeping near the empty tomb, did not immediately recognize the risen Jesus, but thought he was the gardener”. Mary Magdalene, he continued, “was not entirely mistaken then, believing she had encountered the gardener! Indeed, she had to hear her own name again and understand her task from the new Man, the one who in another text of John says: ‘Behold, I make all things new’ (Rev 21:5)”.
“Christian hope therefore responds to the challenges to which all humanity is exposed today by dwelling in the garden where the Crucified One was laid as a seed, to rise again and bear much fruit”,
the Pontiff explained: “Paradise is not lost, but found again. In this way, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the foundation of a spirituality of integral ecology, outside of which the words of faith have no hold on reality and the words of science remain outside the heart”,
because ecological conversion “begins in the heart and is spiritual, changes history, engages us publicly, and activates solidarity that now protects people and creatures from the longings of wolves,
in the name and power of the Lamb-Shepherd. In this way, the sons and daughters of the Church can now meet millions of young people and other men and women of good will who have heard the cry of the poor and the earth, letting it touch their hearts”. “There are also many people who desire, through a more direct relationship with creation, a new harmony that will lead them beyond so many divisions”, the Pope noted: “May the Spirit give us the ability to listen to the voice of those who have no voice. We will see, then, what the eyes do not yet see: that garden, or Paradise, which we will only reach by welcoming and fulfilling our own task”.
