When Pope John Paul II named St. Francis of Assisi as patron saint of the environment in 1979, a great, historic step took place, putting ecology on the agenda of the church as a moral issue. As a friend of the smallest creatures who called them brothers and sisters, St. Francis was inspired to perceive God's infinite love and beauty that is all around us.
Later, in 1986 the pope invited all the world's religious leaders to a gathering in Assisi, Italy, to pray for world peace and the conservation of our environment, celebrating what is called today “The Spirit of Assisi.”
We know that over the centuries, the Bible has been critically important to people who seek to live in love and obedience to God. The Bible's importance continues today, not only for the church and home, but for the environment. It provides a powerful environmental teaching that can be thought of as a kind of ecological handbook on how to live rightly on Earth.
Among its teachings, the Bible helps us understand our privilege and responsibility for environmental stewardship for creation care, maintaining the integrity that God repeatedly calls “good” (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).
Moreover, since the Bible professes Jesus Christ as the one through whom all things are reconciled to God (Col. 1:20), we should expect it to decry creation's destruction, to call for creation's restoration and to look forward to the whole creation being made right again.
Our relationship to creation must be a loving, caring, keeping relationship. When we fulfill God's mandate to keep the creation, we make sure that the creatures and other living things under our care are maintained so that they can flourish. They must remain connected with members of the same species, with the many other species with which they interact, and with the soil, air and water they depend on.
One great empowering provision of God's love is the Earth's energy exchange with the sun and space. As our star, the sun radiates immense energy in all directions, heating whatever is in the path of its rays.
It is the one that brightens earthly life, as it energizes nearly everything we know on Earth: green plants and all creatures that eat them, great flows of water and air across the globe, movement of automobiles and aircraft, heating for homes and factories.
Our Earth also radiates energy, emitting not visible light but invisible infrared “light”— radiation below the red end of the spectrum. If the heat that Earth takes in from the sun is not balanced with heat radiated out by Earth into space, the Earth's temperature rises. If the Earth loses more heat than it gains, it cools. Earth's energy balance — its temperature — needs to be relatively constant for the planet to remain habitable.
This balance is being broken by the excess of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere that reflect the energy back to Earth that should be going out to space, warming our planet and endangering life.
We are called to protect and care for the Earth's energy exchange by reducing carbon dioxide emissions from our homes and cars and using fewer products that produce carbon dioxide in the way they are manufactured.
An example of this action is the Vatican City's decision to offset carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees in Hungary.
Here in San Antonio, we have an option available through the city-owned utility, CPS Energy, to use wind-powered electricity (by paying an extra premium).
This option could be used by all houses of prayer and serve as a model for citizens in their own homes who feel the heart of our creator is to protect precious life on Earth.
The Religious Campaign on Creation Care will meet Feb. 22 in Washington D.C. for a prayer breakfast with James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, as our keynote speaker. He maintains the scientific perspective on climate change and the need to go back carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere of 350 parts per million to keep the weather patterns as they are so life on Earth can flourish.
I propose that individuals take responsibility to reduce their energy consumption, use alternative energy sources and buy carbon dioxide emission offsets to aid forest conservation. Their actions can form the basis of a grass-roots campaign to influence Congress and the White House to reach the goal of lowering carbon dioxide.
I hope all our brothers and sisters worldwide could have the experience and knowledge of infinite love required to live in harmony as our creator intends for every creature in our universe.
Carlos Agnesi, a San Antonio resident, is a retired account executive for Lloyds in Mexico who has been involved in environmental work through religious organizations since 1995.
