December 22, 2015

Pope connects Sunday keeping with a better environment

Posted on June 18 - 2015 |

Pope Francis delivered his encyclical on the environment this morning.

“The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth”, he said in his encyclical called “ Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home “.
Acknowledging that the environment is getting worse, Pope Francis is addressing this message to “every person living on this planet” and urges us to make improvements for the environment. President Barack Obama commended this message fully!

Toward the end, the Pope connects the environment with Sunday keeping:

“On Sunday, our participation in the Eucharist has special importance. Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world. Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the “first day” of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. It also proclaims “man’s eternal rest in God”.168 In this way, Christian spirituality incorporates the value of relaxation and festivity. We tend to demean contemplative rest as something unproductive and unnecessary, but this is to do away with the very thing which is most important about work: its meaning. We are called to include in our work a dimension of receptivity and gratuity, which is quite different from mere inactivity. Rather, it is another way of working, which forms part of our very essence. It protects human action from becoming empty activism; it also prevents that unfettered greed and sense of isolation which make us seek personal gain to the detriment of all else. The law of weekly rest forbade work on the seventh day, “so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your maidservant, and the stranger, may be refreshed” ( Ex 23:12). Rest opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others. And so the day of rest, centered on the Eucharist, sheds it light on the whole week, and motivates us to greater concern for nature and the poor.”

Is the Sabbath Jewish?
Pope Francis likens Sunday with what he calls the “Jewish Sabbath”. However, God gave the Sabbath to mankind, not to the Jews.

Click on Link:
http://www.empowermissions.org/pope-connects-sunday-keeping-with-a-better-environment/