The merciful love of the Lord fills the whole earth...Introit

This last week:

EARTH DAY

ARBOR DAY

AND

TODAY:

GOOD

SHEPHERD

SUNDAY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last week we celebrated EARTH DAY.

We also celebrated ARBOR DAY which originated in Nebraska with th planting of trees.

Joyce Kilmer wrote that he would "never see anything so lovely as a tree."

And it is true if we take care of trees, they will take care of us.

I live in the midst of the desert, and yet where I live, I am shaded by old growth trees. What good friends they are when the temperature reaches 110 degrees which it will this summer.

This is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Jesus chose the image of a shepherd to show his caretaking mission.

" I am the Good Shepherd..." he tells us today.

No one relies on the EARTH more than the shepherd.The most popular Psalm of all: PS 23 describes the shepherd'a path:

...fresh and green are the pastures,

where he gives me repose.

Near restful waters he leads me..."

There is and ought to be a rising consciousness among Christians that we are meant to be shepherds of the earth itself. Environmentalist/Christian should be one word.  Jesus of Nazareth was not a giver of death and destruction but a giver of life.

And his very body's life did NOT come from heaven. It came out of the earth. It was nourished by the earth. The fertile grapes of Galilee, the goat's milk, the abundant figs became his body, his, hands, his mind.

The greatest abortion the world has ever seen is our attack on the primal womb of all life:the earth!

The "Consumer Society" is an oxymoron.

There is no "society" possible if we mindlessly consume the earth with no heed to conservation and moderation. Mildless drilling, fracking, garbage disposal turns the nest of life into a stinking tomb.

Right now in the middle of the Pacific a mountain of plastic is ever groowing, expanding made up of the plastic bottles we mindlessly bequeath to the sea!

Yet it is precisely WATER that Jesus chose to give us new life when it is poured over us at baptism.

And so we pray:

We have come forth from the Easter Waters,

renewed earth creatures.

Come Holy Spirit.

fill the hearts of your faithful.

Enkindle inus the fire of your love.

Help us to be good shepherds of the hills and valleys,

care takers of the rivers and oceans,

so that we might renew the face of the earth..

Amen