As she welcomes in the new year of 2024, she remembers New Year's morning at the senior welfare facility where she worked a few years ago. It was established on a small hill surrounded by forests, a small comfort zone in a small town with a predominantly elderly population.
One New Year's morning, the moment she opened the front door of the convent to go to the nursing home, wow! The entire world was covered with a white blanket of snow. She picked up a broom because she needed to make a path to the nursing home, but hesitated for a moment because it felt like she was damaging the New Year's gift that God had given her.
She brought up the subject in a group meeting— "The environment and the Earth are getting hotter, so shouldn’t we save Mother Earth?" The moment she boldly expressed her opinion, many participants sympathized and did not hesitate to support her. Then the discussion began and the results were reached. The opinions of "We should do something, let’s do it, reduce its use, and the like were overwhelming, but there was no concrete resolve on what to do." Although the results were not as good as expected, the disappointment was alleviated by the fact that the awareness of ‘environmental protection’ was planted in people’s minds.
The natural environment that God gave to mankind cannot be maintained by enjoying it to our heart's content, as we received it for free out of love for people. However, there is still a lack of action on how to use and preserve it well.
Although we have raised our voices to reduce disposable containers, disposable cups, plates, and cutlery, they are piled up in homes, parishes, various stores, and even at national events. This is because it is convenient with their use and inconvenient and difficult without their use. We are conflicted between convenience and inconvenience. Perhaps a bigger reason is that you don't feel like you're destroying the environment by using disposable utensils, and you don't immediately see changes in the environment if you don't use them. Sometimes it feels like the efforts of countless environmental defenders, environmental activists, and zero waste practitioners, as well as the efforts of the movement to protect our common home through activities at the parish, are meaningless.
"I brought you into this fertile land to eat its fruit and its good things. But you have come in here and defiled my land and made my inheritance an abomination" (Jer 2:7).
It was as if God's wrath was digging into his heart. You have told us to take good care of the creations you have given us, but we must deeply reflect on whether we, the people, are just being seduced by convenience and less effort and are trying to ignore our duty to protect and care for the environment. When we look ahead to the future in the next few years, it is bleak. She is afraid because she cannot let go of the thought that the day will inevitably come when we pass on a miserable environment to generations to come.
The demands of market consumers and multinational companies for renewable energy have now become a global trend, but it cannot be denied that our society is not yet keeping up with the demands. Even if policies to deal with climate change are left to the government, we must continue to make small efforts to protect our common home through environmental preservation campaigns. Together, we must once again strive to create a ‘clean, green society’ where life and joy coexist in a sustainable and eco-friendly manner even in cramped urban spaces.
