The first chapter of Jeremiah warns the people of Judah of the impending doom that is about to befall the southern kingdom. The Babylonians would invade Judah, resulting in a loss of land, the burning of the Holy City, Jerusalem, and the devastation of the Temple in 587 B.C.E. as well as the deportation of Judah’s king into Babylon. Without its king, land, and Temple, Judah would have no future because the people that was once holy and faithful has become estranged from God.

Walter Brueggemann calls Jeremiah’s prophetic message a “classic indictment, asserting that Israel has forfeited the relationship with Yahweh.” The people of Judah did not heed Jeremiah’s prophetic message. It was only after the destruction of the Temple that the captured peoples in exile reflected on their experience of disaster. The reflection arose from the community that restored hope in God’s promise to write the law on their hearts; God will make a new covenant with God’s people. (Jer. 31:33).

Similar to the destruction of the Temple, the devastation of the environment shocks us. Forests are decimated, rivers are polluted, mines and other natural resources are exploited in such massive proportions that so often render them depleted, and innumerable species become extinct. The world that we know today has been characterized by the effects of climate change – typhoons are becoming stronger and changes in weather patterns are happening. We have been warned that if we continue with the massive destruction that we inflict on Earth, our children would have no future.

I am in mission in the Philippines, where fast disappearance of the forest cover has caused flash floods. Logs have been exported to colonial economic centers that preserve their own forests at the expense of developing countries.

Typhoons in September and October resulted in more than 1,000 deaths in Luzon. Metro Manila was 80 percent flooded; thousands living along Laguna de Bay were rendered homeless; more than 500 people in the Cordillera bioregion perished in landslides which also claimed houses, livelihoods, roads and bridges.

Human practices constitute a major cause of the devastation: the rapid disappearance of forest cover; the deteriorating vigilance of residents along floodways and the lack of adequate spillways that drain river water into the ocean; and mindless solid waste management causing blockage of drainage systems. We have been negligent in protecting the environment.

Reflecting on these recent calamities juxtaposed with the Temple’s destruction in the 6th century B.C.E., we learn valuable lessons. Just as the community in Judah and those deported to Babylon reflected on the destruction of the Temple, we, too, reflect on the environmental destruction around us.

Numerous warnings from local indigenous and international prophets about the disastrous future of Planet Earth remain unheeded. Loss of lives, livelihood, and ecological refugees prompt us to reflect on our failure to develop a nurturing relationship with the environment. The God who appointed Jeremiah also calls us “to build and to plant” out of exile, which are invitations to a hope-filled future.

Let me offer three points:

Community-building is anchored on the kind of love described in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians. Calamities have a way of building a sense of community. Countless acts of heroic bravery and neighborliness were witnessed in flooded and landslide sites. Neighbors helped one another; people donated relief goods, volunteers packed and delivered them to needy victims facilitated by churches, TV stations, and government agencies.

An 18-year-old construction worker, a good swimmer, risked his life to save 30 people when he heard a distress call from a helpless mother to save her baby. Heeding yet another call, he went to save them but that was to be his last act of love. Calamities have a way of evoking love that is kind and patient, that bears all things and endures all things for others.

Devastation has a way of inspiring a positive response from people. One example was the people’s response to their experience of loss due to landslides in Atok, Benguet, which destroyed 50 houses and farms. The devastation prompted the community’s leaders to think of planting 100,000 trees that would mitigate future occurrences of flooding and landslides. The plan by women leaders is to set up a seedling program to reforest their balding mountainous region.

The innovative response to Earth’s need for rehabilitation emerged as a result of the devastation. These leaders manifest the Psalmist response: “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth, you will bring me up again (Ps. 71).

A universal response is urgently needed to address climate change today. The call is for the Earth community, human and other-than-human, to go beyond national boundaries. Among other means, the human species could develop alternative low-carbon lifestyles, reduce energy consumption, improve its efficiency, and use renewable sources of energy.

In the fourth chapter of Luke, Jesus read that the Spirit of the Lord sent him “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” This means to celebrate the jubilee for the land, to celebrate the jubilee for the Earth.

Observing jubilee is observing God’s statutes to “faithfully keep my ordinances, so that you may live on the land securely. The land will yield its fruit and you will eat your fill and live on it securely” (Lev. 25:18).

In asserting his mission, however, Jesus was questioned for being merely Joseph’s son. When he reasoned that he was sent to fulfill a universal mission, Jesus was driven out of town and was almost hurled off the cliff. We know that Jesus’ strong commitment to build the Kingdom of God led him to his Passion and death.

Jeremiah offered a word of hope performed through his life and the choices he made. God’s final word is not destruction and annihilation; it is restoration and reunion: reunion with God, reunion with one another, reunion with the land, reunion with the Earth community.

God’s call is for us to restore a caring relationship with creation. We are called to universal mission to nurture Earth, echoing Pope Benedict XVI’s World Peace Day message: “If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation.”

The call for universal solidarity invokes intergenerational responsibility for the future. The Pope calls on “all (to be) responsible for the protection of the environment. This responsibility knows no boundaries.” (#11)

Protecting the natural environment in order to build a world of peace is thus a duty incumbent upon each and all. (#14)

– Sister Teresa Dagdag, MM