Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Earth Day is April 22nd

April 16, 2025

Earth Day is April 22nd

The theme for Earth Day 2025 is OUR POWER, OUR PLANET, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy, and to triple the global generation of clean electricity by 2030.

Our environmental legacy is a testament to the power of collective action, and it calls upon individuals, businesses, governments, and the private sector to join hands in safeguarding our planet. Now, more than ever, we must step up our efforts to combat climate change, protect biodiversity, and preserve our ecosystems.
To learn more visit the official Earth Day website

This Earth Week…Saving the Earth Requires New Perspectives

April 24, 2024

~ by Heidi Schlumpf for EarthBeat, National Catholic Reporter
Elizabeth Johnson has spent her entire life – or at least her decades-long theological career – trying to get people to think differently about God. Her award-winning 1992 book She Who Is is credited for bringing attention to the need for feminine images of the Divine. Johnson is a Sister of St. Joseph and one of the most prominent theologians in the United States.

Now Johnson is again broadening her view of God, in the hopes that it will help Christians see their connection to nature and the need to save it. She has written a new book, Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth which explores God as a lover of the Earth who is in relationship with creation.

Her new book’s title refers to Jesus’ words to the disciples during a post-Resurrection appearance near the end of John’s Gospel. It reminded Johnson that Jesus enjoyed material things and was often taking care of people’s material needs, like feeding them.

A God intimately involved in the material world has implications for how we treat it, Johnson said.

Taking care of creation is not just “one more issue” that can be seen as extrinsic to our own being, she said. Instead, it involves our understanding of God, of ourselves as made in the image and likeness of God, and of creation, which reflects the goodness of God.

Instead of a pyramid with humans near the top, Johnson sees a circle of kinship among the reality of creation. “We’re fundamentally interrelated with each other. So, when we care for the earth, we’re not ‘up here’ caring for creation ‘down there.’ We care for one another as members of the same community.”

She quotes Pope Francis in Laudato Si which affirms that “eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place.” To read the full article, please click here

April 22nd is Earth Day!

April 19, 2023

Laudato Si’ is Pope Francis’s encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home.” The Holy Father’s message is loud and clear: caring for our environment is a fundamental tenet of our Catholic faith. As such, Earth Day presents a golden opportunity for teaching about Laudato Si’ as well as the Catholic principle of Care for God’s Creation, one of the seven principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

1. Give praise to our Creator. In the Nicene Creed, we say, “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” How appropriate that the first sentence of our Creed mentions the fact that all of creation comes from God! Pray the Creed. Sing songs of praise such as “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” “How Great Thou Art,” and “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.”

2. Contemplate the wonders of God’s creation. Contemplation, (i.e. resting in God’s presence) is an authentically Catholic practice and a way of coming to a deeper appreciation of finding God in all of creation. Take some time to contemplate outdoors. Pope John Paul II said, “Faced with the glory of the Trinity in creation, we must contemplate, sing, and rediscover awe.”

3. Pray, pray, pray. Pray for those who are at risk from exposure to environmental hazards. Pray for social justice for those who are poor and who suffer disproportionately from environmental destruction. Pray for those with an excess of wealth that they (we) may come to share with others more generously. Pray for future generations that they may benefit from a healthy environment.

4. Create a garden. Participate in God’s ongoing creation by planting a garden. Consider planting a vegetable garden and sharing your harvest with those less fortunate. Create a “Mary Garden,” a tradition going back to medieval times that dedicates the garden to the Blessed Virgin Mary and is populated with plants that bear her name.

5. Read and study Church documents on caring for God’s creation. Considering creation as sacred is not new to Catholics. The Church has a long tradition of respecting God’s creation. Read up on what both Scripture and Tradition have to say about ecology and the environment.

6. Learn about and teach others about the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Kateri Tekakwitha. These two saints are the patron and patroness of ecology. Children especially love to learn the stories of these two saints.

7. Learn six ways to help your parish or community “go green.” Here are some wonderful ideas from Darcy Osby about helping children learn about care for God’s creation.

8. Take the St. Francis Pledge to care for creation and the poor. The St. Francis Pledge, initiated by the Catholic Climate Covenant, is a solemn commitment made by Catholic individuals, groups, and institutions to honor God’s creation and to serve those who are poor.

9. Make a donation to Catholic Relief Services. CRS, the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community, promotes caring for the environment in the U.S. and abroad. Visit their website to learn more about their work and how you can help.

10. Read Laudato Si’. Pope Francis’s encyclical on how we need to care for our common home takes the notion of care for the environment out of the political arena and links it to our Catholic faith.

To learn more click here ~ Catechist’s Journey website

For Catholic Sisters, Eco-missionary Activity is Integral to their Work

April 21, 2022

~ Sr. Susan Smith for EarthBeat

NEW ZEALAND – When most 19th century apostolic congregations of Catholic sisters were founded, responding to and being directed by bishops was the name of the game. But after the Second Vatican Council that mindset began to change as other criteria such as “reading the signs of the times” became important in discerning new missionary imperatives. Today, Catholic sisters all over the world are prioritizing care for creation as integral to their work.

In the years immediately following Vatican II, conciliar documents, Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio and the bishops’ 1971 synod on justice in the world generated an enthusiastic response from many sisters to step up and respond to the cry of the poor, and not long afterward to the cry of the earth, too.

From the 1970s onward, Catholic sisters were influenced not only by bishops’ environmental statements and scientific publications about environmental degradation, but also by the works of theologians such as Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Columban Fr. Sean McDonagh and more recent eco-feminist publications such as St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson’s Women, Earth and Creator Spirit and Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love and the publications of Franciscan Sr. Ilia Delio and more.

Such eco-feminist publications encourage movement beyond earlier hierarchical, dualistic theologies that position humans at the apex of creation with all other creatures deemed subordinate. A pyramidal understanding of creation has meant a real pecking order in the life of planet Earth – the higher up the pyramid one is positioned, the more they can dominate and exploit those relegated to lower positions.

Long aware of the damage patriarchal and hierarchical ideologies cause, Catholic sisters understand that theologies grounded in those ideologies should be replaced by theologies that encourage mutuality, inclusivity and interdependence. We know that we need Mother Earth more than she needs us.

Growing numbers of sisters, along with millions of others, are aware of what is happening in our world today. Sisters who are directly involved in ministries with the economically and politically disenfranchised poor can easily see how environmental degradation more severely impacts oppressed communities. Climate change means more droughts, more cyclones, more forest fires, more exploitation of natural resources leading to deforestation, more invasions of land of indigenous people. Not only are Catholic sisters focusing on people living in poverty: they also are focusing on an impoverished Earth.

Earth Day is April 22 – “Invest in Our Planet”

April 21, 2022

~ by Julia Gerwe, Global Sisters Report

This year’s Earth Day theme is “Invest in Our Planet.” EarthDay.org which sets the annual theme and serves as the “world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement,” elaborates:

Earth day is the day to take action not just because you care about the
natural world, but because we all live on it.
Every one of us needs a healthy Earth to support our jobs, livelihoods,
health and survival, and happiness. A healthy planet is not an option –
it is a necessity.

I firmly believe that we all carry a responsibility to live more sustainably on this Earth.

“Sustainability” has its origins as an ecological concept referring to how biological systems endure, remaining divers. Now, however, sustainability is commonly used “to describe the viability of interdependent human and natural systems over time,” as the North American Association for Environmental Education writes in its “Guidelines for Excellence: Community Engagement

Further, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [9] asserts, “Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment.” Sustainability is, in short, living responsibly and living well.

Unfortunately, the science has been telling us for decades that our pace of life and rate of growth are not sustainable. This is the world we inherit. Besides metaphorically hard to swallow, our contributions to the current climate crisis as a species (however unintentional they may be) can also be difficult to comprehend amid the haze of a hundred-billion-dollar fossil fuel industry and sympathetic structures and systems that bolster extractive ways of life.

However, the story of the day and the narrative promoted by this year’s Earth Day theme is simple: Individuals have power.

fact, a September 2020 report [10] from the Stockholm Environment Institute and Oxfam cited that the world’s wealthiest 10% were responsible for almost half of global emissions in 2015. Who are the world’s wealthiest 10%?

Anyone with an annual income of at least $38,000

What can the world’s wealthiest do with their power?

On a macro level, companies, governments, policies and practices need to change. We know that as individuals, we voted not lonely with our ballots, but with our wallets. This is what investing in our planet looks like.

Investing in our planet can also look like simplicity, connection and hope. By living more simply – namely, consuming and traveling less – we directly and indirectly emit less greenhouse gases.

But what about connection? What about hope?

Because I am connected to my local community, I prioritize buying locally grown and made products. Because I love my global community, I try to do conscious research before buying new clothing to ensure that those making the clothing are treated justly and the materials are sourced sustainably,

In this way connection lends itself to hope, which inspires action.

This Earth Day, I challenge everyone to follow this trajectory from connection to hope and to action. Just start by getting some dirt under your fingernails!

To read the entire article, please click here

On Earth Day, U.S. Bishops Call Upon Catholics to do Their Part

April 21, 2021

On Earth Day, U.S. Bishops
call upon Catholics
to do their part
~ by Brian Rowe, National Catholic Reporter

In the days leading up to Earth Day, several U.S. bishops took to church pulpits and Zoom rooms to call Catholics to do their part in ushering in the societal changes needed to counter climate change and other ecological calamities – and not just on days like Earth Day.

Three bishops over four days spoke out on the need for more than technology and policy to stunt rising global temperatures and slow destruction of ecosystems and species, saying there must be changes in lifestyles and even how living a good life is defined.

Next month, the Vatican is set to launch its Laudato Si’ Action Platform, a global grassroots effort to galvanize wider portions of the Catholic Church to work toward sustainability in the mold outlined in his 2015 encyclical.

Vatican officials have called the worldwide rebuilding effort from the coronavirus pandemic as the opportunity to reorient the globe toward a more just and sustainable future. To read the full account, please click here