Care for our home, as God intended, archbishop urges

We’re called to be “Eden-dwellers,” according to Archbishop Michael G. McGovern.

Eden-dwellers live “at ease” with one another, with God and with Creation, he said at an outdoor Mass on a warm Sept. 13 morning at Miller Park in north Omaha.

The occasion was a Pilgrimage of Hope for Creation coordinated by the Historic 24th Street Family of Parishes: Sacred Heart, St. Benedict the Moor and St. John on the Creighton University campus.

About 100 people participated in the Mass and a walk that followed.

Other Pilgrimages of Hope for Creation, like the one held in Omaha, are being celebrated around the world as part of the Jubilee Year. The pilgrimages also mark the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ – which calls for “care for our common home” – and the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Creatures.”

In his homily, the archbishop talked about the Book of Genesis. “There’s a kind of ease,” in the Garden of Eden, he said, “where no one is fighting for control,” and Adam and Eve are at peace with Creation and God.

“Unfortunately,” Archbishop McGovern said, “original sin upends things.”

But more importantly, God restores, he said.

“We’re here as disciples of Jesus Christ, Who has come in order to restore what was upended by original sin and the consequences of sin” – through His Cross, death and Resurrection – “so that we can live as children of God.

We can live in a beautiful way with one another and with all the gifts that God has entrusted to us.”

The Earth is “not a personal possession,” the archbishop said, but “a treasure to be shared.”

He prayed that hearts will change and people will be resolved to “use well the gifts that God has entrusted to us for the glory of God and for the good of one another.”

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