Quoted from the address by Jesús Guzmán O.S.A. at the Augustinian international meeting for young adults at Guadarrama, Madrid, Spain in July 2003.
Finally, promote a relationship with nature, that is, become more contemplative and find your place in nature, relating all creation with your own faith and religious convictions.
For Roman Catholics, the Bible provides many ideas for discovering God in creation, beginning in the first book, Genesis, with the simple and beautiful description of the creation of all the things.
There we can find many songs and prayers full of admiration and gratitude for the harmony with which God created all things.
As in the Book of the Wisdom 13: 1-9, a reproach for deifying nature and ignoring the one that created it.
Or in the same book, 7: 16 - 21, Solomon praises wisdom and placing it at the service of others; in Psalm 8; mainly the song of gratitude in Psalm 65 (64): 6-14 one of the many ecological poems that we find in this collection of prayers and praise to God which are the Psalms, with which the Jewish people recognises the wisdom of God in placing them in the midst of all creation for the good of all peoples of the earth.
Jesus himself teaches his disciples the value of life, the foundation of their priorities and the great responsibility for promoting true values which include the care and protection of all that is needed to live a worthy life, in the Gospel of Luke 12: 22-31.
Saint Augustine, who knew well the Bible, comments in his Confessions X, 15: "People go to admire lofty mountains, and huge breakers at sea, and crashing waterfalls, and vast stretches of ocean, and the dance of the stars, but they leave themselves behind out of sight."
The respected Augustinian scholar from Holland and member of the Augustinian Province of Belgium, Tarcisus van Bavel, comments: "Time after time, in his works, Augustine sings the praises of the goodness and beauty of creation."
"He praises the goodness of substantive things, of the body, with its health and fruitfulness in procreation, the beauty of the entrails of a lowly animal, of the feather of a bird, of a lowly meadow flower, of the leaf of a tree. Nothing in creation may be rejected".
Pope John Paul II wrote to the Ecumenical Patriarch from Constantinople, Bartholomew I, in a message that he sent on the occasion of the V Symposium of the Project of Religion, Science and Environment: "However it is imperative that the true nature of the ecological crisis be understood.
The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment, can never be considered outside of their relationship with God."
"When an individual turns away from the plan of the Creator, the individual causes disorder that has unavoidable repercussions in the rest of the created order (Message for the World Day of the Peace, 5).
The lack of ecological responsibility is at the centre of a moral problem - founded on an anthropological error - that arises when humans forget that their ability to transform the world should always respect God's design for creation" (Centesimus annus, 37).
"Christians should always be prepared to assume their responsibility in the design of God for creation, a responsibility that leads to a vast field of ecumenical and inter-religious cooperation. As we see it, a solution to ecological challenges demands more than simply economic and technological proposals.
It requires an interior change of heart that leads to the rejection of consumer habits and consumer-driven production. It demands an ethical behaviour that respects the principles of universal solidarity, of social justice and of responsibility." ID2054
