This is NAIDOC (National Aboriginal Islander Day Observance Committee) Week. Events are being held across Australia to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Last week in Hobart I attended the annual meeting of leaders of religious institutes from around Australia. Our theme was 'Ecology and the following of Jesus'. Fr Denis Edwards from Adelaide recalled to us that Christ is our Eternal Word, through whom all of creation came into being and by whom all of creation is being redeemed. In Christ God entered into the deep tissue of the whole material world. Through his resurrection Christ has begun to transform and make divine the whole of creation. So we should reverence our physical bodies, and our physical world. It will be eternally transformed. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, and the chalice and bread are held up, we offer our lives and our world in the hope that the presence of Christ will fill them and make them new again. To give thanks to God for all God's blessings means that we deeply reverence life and the whole of creation.

Following General Congregation 35, the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific has affirmed reconciliation with creation as a key dimension of its mission. We are calling on Jesuit ministries in Australia to develop clear programs and initiatives to address environmental issues. At the international level, the General Curia's Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat has formed a task force to help implement Decree 3 of General Congregation 35. This decree encourages Jesuits ‘to appreciate more deeply our covenant with creation'.

On the international Jesuit website you will find the task force's overview of international Jesuit work for ecology. Recently we asked all the works of the Province to focus on this area in their planning and activities. Specifically we have asked each work to identify some key environmental initiatives it is currently undertaking, to ask what would help it take further steps in environmental awareness and sustainable operations, and to suggest ways in which those in their ministry can help others in this area.

As long ago as 1990, Pope John Paul II identified the integrity of creation as a moral issue. He called for ecological conversion insisting that our respect for life includes all of life and the whole of creation. Pope Benedict has spoken many times on the same theme. The poor are always the first and hardest hit victims of ecological damage caused by human activity. It is a moral issue for us and our descendants. It is now also an issue of justice and of survival for the world's poor, and will eventually be so for the whole human race.

Fr Steve Curtin SJ is the Provincial of the Australian Jesuits.

Posted 7 July 2010 at Province Express