God Gave Us Our Common Home: “To get from here to there!”

Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si or Praise Be, wrote, “The divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God's creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet.” (Laudato Si', 9). Pope Francis continues, “The entire material universe speaks of God's love, God's boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is a caress of God.” (Laudato Si', 84).

Pope Francis loves creation. In this  encyclical, he calls creation, “Our Common Home,” i.e., creation is a home belonging to all God’s people.  Pope Francis wants everyone to remember that this earth is not the personal possession of any one race, person, class, or culture.  It belongs to God. We might see it as on loan to us to make our journey easier.

Certainly, God created the world for us to enjoy. But as my mother used to say, “This world is our passageway from here to heaven.” My mom said it this way: “We are placed here to get all the help we need to get from here to there.”  What she was proclaiming is the most profound theology we can ever learn.

She believed wholeheartedly  that God put us on earth to “to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world, and to be with Him in the next.” We learned this convincingly  in our beginning years as fledgling Catholics! 

Pope Francis  preached: “We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with people.”   

Pope Francis believes that we are intimately united with all of God’s creations. “If we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.  By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously.” 

Pope Francis wants “Our living of our vocation to be also as protectors of God’s handiwork as essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” For Pope Francis, our light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. ‘When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of a genuine culture of care for the environment.” 

Like Pope Francis, my mother knew how deep God’s desire is that we arrive home with him when our life is over.  What Pope Francis wants us to keep in mind is that for God it is equally important that those traveling beside us get there too!  Always remember  we walk with one another in the direction of heaven, helping one another when they cry out in need. 

The Pope asks us to remember to live mindfully of those who need and want some of what we enjoy so readily.  Indeed, this common home shows how passionate our God is that we live “…loving and serving Him now and later live with Him in heaven.”  He wants everyone to be on that same journey!

Throughout the pages of Laudato Si, Pope Francis is reminding us to help God fulfill this dream, so that one-day when we arrive safely, we can say “Laudato Si. Praise be to You, My Lord!”