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We are blessed with a Cardinal who loves to teach us.
Last month, this column featured the pastoral teaching
of His Eminence entitled “Weakness and sickness—the way
to fullness of life.” This week and the next few weeks,
I will share with you the Cardinal’s latest teaching,
Life is one!
Life is
one!
Disrespect for one is a disvalue for the rest of the
living.
By his
Eminence Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales
“The
forest is one big thing—it has people, animals and
plants. There is no point in saving the animals if the
forest is burned down. There is no point in saving the
forest if the animals and people are driven away. Those
trying to save the animals cannot win if the people
trying to save the forest lose.”
—(BEPKOROROTI, quoted in the Amazonian Oxfam’s Work in
the Amazon Basin)
It is
obvious that in the interconnectivity of life, one life
cannot escape being entwined with another. Clearly, all
earthly life depends on the energy of the sun which is
absorbed by plants and microorganisms through
photosynthesis.
Through
photosynthesis, green plants use the sun’s energy to
convert water and carbon dioxide into (life-supporting)
oxygen and produce energy-rich carbohydrates. The
primary consumers of photosynthetic organism (grass,
herbs and trees, etc.) are the herbivores (grasshoppers,
goats, cows, etc.). The secondary consumers are the
carnivores that consume the primary consumers. These
secondary consumers that eat the primary consumers are
carnivores-predators. But humans are unique consumers;
they eat all, including also the photosynthetic plants
and the primary consumers.
The
logic that science uses in order to explain the
dependency and interconnectedness of life in the
original and natural food chain coincides with the
narrative of creation in the Book of Genesis where God
was mentioned as having started first with the creation
of light. If that was the “Big Bang,” then, let it be.
Following it was the creation of water (Genesis 1:
9-11); then vegetation, plants and trees (Genesis 1:
11-13); then living creatures on land, animals; fish in
the sea; on air, birds (Genesis 1: 20-23).
Last of
all, the holy and good God had in mind to put a crown on
creation with his genius—the creation of humans, the
ones who would take care and protect the planet Earth.
Above all, we are the ones who should value life, its
support and the wealth of Earth for generations to come,
wasting and destroying nothing. Humans would be made in
the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1: 26-27). And
when God thought that He had made the first humans and
had entrusted to them the care, the use of everything on
Earth, “God looked at everything he had made and He
found it very good (Genesis 1: 31).”
Although
God loved and valued all His creatures, there was a
certain hierarchy in the treatment of the things He
made. The gradual creation in “six days” emphasized to
us that there was an intentional increased growth in the
importance of His creatures. (CCC, 342). Humans came
last not only because they were last in the phase of
evolution, but also because as creatures closest to the
Creator, as beings sharing in the dignity as “images and
likeness of God,” they could also be entrusted with the
responsibility of caring for, and not just be consumers
of, the limited resources the world reserved for its
inhabitants.
(to be
continued next issue)
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