Climate Change to Climate Crisis

Leave a reply

Last year, on the Feast of St. Francis, Pope Francis spoke, not just of climate change, but climate crisis.“The world in which we live is collapsing and may be near the breaking point.” You can’t miss the urgency for action in his letter. “No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought and other cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone.”

Some ridicule the claims of danger; Francis takes them seriously, laying  out the facts the scientific world provides. He also pointed out the responsibility of the richer countries for this situation and deals with the arguments for inaction that are raised, even by members of the Church.

“ I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church. Yet we can no longer doubt that the reason for the unusual rapidity of these dangerous changes is a fact that cannot be concealed: the enormous novelties that have to do with unchecked human intervention on nature in the past two centuries.”

There’s a growing belief, the pope says, that thinks “as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such”. [14] As a logical consequence, it then becomes easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology”.

Pope Francis outlined the efforts the nations of the world have made so far to deal with the crisis and finds them lacking. He called for a new level of power to arise, from the grassroots, to energize the situation of political inertia. At the same time, he calls for the nations of the world to fulfill their responsibilities at the upcoming meeting on the climate,  COP28 in Dubai.

One interesting point for us in the United States. The pope began his exhortation quoting from the US Bishops: “This is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life. The Bishops of the United States have expressed very well this social meaning of our concern about climate change, which goes beyond a merely ecological approach, because ‘our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together. Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community. The effects of climate change are borne by the most vulnerable people, whether at home or around the world’”.

He ended his exhortation with this observation: “If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, [44] we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact.”

Are we changing our lifestyles?

Letter to the Galatians

2 Replies

Our first readings this week at Mass are from the Letter to the Galatians, who were non-Jews St. Paul converted probably on his second missionary journey through Asia Minor. When Paul left, some Jewish Christians arrived and were enticing the new converts to adopt Jewish practices, especially that of circumcision. They also called Paul’s authority into question, saying he wasn’t among the original witnesses to Jesus’ life and resurrection.

Paul responds in this emotional letter written in 54 or 55 AD in which he voices amazement that the Galatians are listening to the newcomers and losing sight of the faith they’ve learned. Paul gives an account of his own call; he defends his authority to preach the gospel and his communion with the other apostles.

But the theme of his letter is belief in Jesus Christ, who was crucified. “Stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” ( Gal 3,1) Don’t lose sight of what’s most important, what’s central to your faith–Jesus Christ!

Of course, the Galatians are not the only ones who lose sight of what’s most important ; we do too. That’s especially true in times like ours today.

Some of Paul’s most beautiful expressions of his own faith are found in this letter.  He describes his own conversion as a “revelation of Jesus Christ,” a grace by which God “revealed his Son to me.” It wasn’t a book he read or a blinding light.  Jesus revealed himself to him and that revelation continued. “I have been crucified with Christ,yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.” (Gal 2,19-20)

Do  we need to remember too the Lord’s revelation of himself to us today?

Living in Christ means living in his Spirit, Paul continues. The Galatians are enticed by practices of the Jewish law; Paul reminds them of the law Jesus taught. “The whole law is fulfilled in one statement,’ You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Gal 5,14) Bearing one another’s burdens is the way you fulfill the law of Christ, by sharing good things with one another you fulfill his law. Don’t tire of doing good, keep doing it, Paul says to his children in faith. (Gal 6,2;6:9)

Paul doesn’t give the Galatians a book he wrote once about Jesus, he speaks to them from his own faith in Jesus which is living and constantly growing. He’s likely just read the verse from the Old Testament about the curse one bears who hangs on the tree. The Son of God took on that cursed condition of hanging on a tree! What greater love can there be? Paul’s thinking too of the promise Abraham embraced who lived long before the mosaic law existed. That was the promise Abraham saw in faith and that’s the revelation the gentiles see in the Crucified Christ.

The Letter to the Galatians is about forgotten essentials that are replaced by something else. Paul recalls the essentials. “I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”

Keep before your eyes Jesus crucified.

Contemplating the Face of Christ With Mary

Leave a reply
“Contemplating the Face of Christ With Mary”
Our Lady of the Rosary
A reflection on Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Apostolic Letter of St. Pope John Paul II
©️2024 Gloria M. Chang

The Rosary: A Christocentric Prayer

The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn.”

The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.”

Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae of St. Pope John Paul II, 1

Our Lady of the Rosary with Saints, 18th century (Brooklyn Museum)

Saints who pray the Holy Rosary
Adore the face of Christ with Mary.


This content by Gloria M. Chang was originally published online at Shalom Snail: Journey to Wholeness. 

27th Sunday Cycle B: Marriage

2 Replies

For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

Rejected By His Own: Luke 10: 13-16

Leave a reply

“And as for you, Capernaum, ‘Will you be exalted to heaven?

You will go down to the netherworld.” Luke 10,13-16

The mystery of unbelief is hard to understand. Why was he rejected by the people of Capernaum who received him so enthusiastically when he began his ministry there? They saw him expel a demon in their synagogue. They marveled at his teaching. He cured Peter’s mother in law and made a paralyzed man walk. People came to the town from everywhere with their sick to have him cure them. They flocked around the door of the house where he stay. 

I’m sure some of Luke’s gentile readers (He wrote with them in mind) also wondered what happened in the land where Jesus was born and taught and died and rose again. Why was Jesus rejected in  Capernaum, Nazareth, Bethsaida– centers of Jesus’ life and ministry?

 “He came to his own and his own received him not,’ John’s gospel says. The mystery of unbelief was there from the beginning. Paul writes extensively about this mystery in the 9th chapter of this Letter to the Romans. Hope in the mystery of God’s mercy, Paul writes, Israel will have its day of belief.

The rejection of Jesus by his own people was a mystery  Christians could not understand then. We cannot understand it nows  as we see people abandoning Christianity and its churches. We wonder about the future of Christianity, especially among the young.

The mystery of unbelief is a mystery which calls us, not to believe less, but to believe more strongly. Believe in him with all your strength, preach him as well as you know how, Luke’s gospel says. Believing in a world of unbelief is one of the ways we enter into the mystery of the cross and resurrection.

World of Vapor

4 Replies
“World of Vapor”
A reflection on Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
©️2024 Gloria M. Chang

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-8 (ESV)

What is the Meaning of Life?

Qoheleth, the “Preacher,” writing in the name of Solomon, the son of David, wrestles with the absolute in the book of Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew word Qoheleth (from qahal, a root that means “assembly” or “congregation”) is Ekklesiastes in Greek, which names the book. Early traditions attribute the book’s authorship to Solomon, but philological evidence dates the book to no earlier than the mid-fifth century B.C., a half-millennium after Solomon’s reign. Thus, Qoheleth, a Hebrew sage, critiques the world through the eyes of King Solomon, the wisest, wealthiest, and most powerful man in the world. He investigates the patterns of nature and human striving, hoping to discover an ultimate purpose behind it all.  

World of Vapor

Qoheleth begins by lamenting that all is “vanity” (in Hebrew hebel, “vapor, breath”), which he pronounces five times in a single utterance (1:2). Finding no ultimate profit in the drudgery of human toil, he rhetorically asks, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”

Ephemeral phenomena and superficial impressions shift and slide incessantly “under the sun,” where nothing is constant. The rising and setting of the sun, and the circuitous currents of wind go “round and round” ceaselessly in a futile loop. The sea, too, like human ambition and appetite, never finds fulfillment despite continuous filling: “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full” (1:7). Jaded by familiarity, Qoheleth deplores the predictable motions of the earth.

“All things are full of weariness,” he despairs, “a man cannot utter it.” “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (1:8). Ever restless, human desire insatiably consumes the panorama of sight and sound—representative of all sensory and intellectual stimuli. All impressions eventually evaporate like steam (hebel).

Nothing New Under the Sun

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (ESV)

Ecclesiastes affirms the truism that “history repeats itself.” As civilizations rise and fall, human nature remains the same. War and peace, joy and sorrow, strength and weakness, freedom and slavery, profit and loss—the same old human affairs cycle round and round, generation after generation, world without end. A keen observer of human nature and historical recurrence, Qoheleth bleakly concludes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Puff of the Past

There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:11 (ESV)

As the sands of time fade away, so does human “remembrance of former things.” Stars and galaxies, fossils, and artifacts provide clues to the mystery of the 13.8 billion-year-old universe and human evolution. Yet billions of ancestors lie buried in the ground, forgotten by their descendants. Apart from cave paintings, oral traditions, scrolls, books, annals, chronicles, and even modern audiovisual media, which capture only fragments from limited perspectives, the past vanishes like vapor “under the sun.” Can fragmentary memories preserve an unbroken, unified recollection of the past? Can mortals achieve immortality in the minds of posterity? 

The Value of Struggle

Ecclesiastes challenges the assembly of wisdom seekers to find ultimate purpose and profit “under the sun.” Like Job, Qoheleth embraces disputation and wrestling with elemental questions. Sometimes described as “unorthodox,” these books goad the pious to “struggle with God,” the meaning of Israel’s name (Genesis 32:28). Questions do not threaten religion but expand its horizons. 

Without being an atheist, Qoheleth journeys to the edge of human striving to discover its peaks and valleys apart from God. His experiment confirms Paul’s observation that, on account of Adam’s departure from God’s will, “the creation was subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20; Genesis 3:17). The Greek word for futility, mataiotés (“vanity,” “emptiness”), translates the Hebrew word hebel (“vapor,” “breath”) in the Septuagint. Ecclesiastes allows every seeker of meaning to feel the emptiness of a life and vision that never rises above the sun. 

I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind.

Ecclesiastes 1:14 (NABRE)

All is vanity, a chase after wind.
Series and cycles—these I examined.
Under the sun, seasons whirl like vapor.
What do humans gain by all their labor?


This content by Gloria M. Chang was originally published online at Shalom Snail: Journey to Wholeness.

Learning from Job

1 Reply

St. Gregory the Great, one the greatest of the popes, was called to that position in the 6th century, when Rome was under siege and in decline.  He didn’t want the job and for spiritual guidance he read from the Book of Job.  We would never know the greatness of Job, if suffering didn’t reveal it, he said.  Here are a few lines from his commentary on Job, our first reading this week:

“Paul saw the riches of wisdom within himself though his outward body was corruptible, and so he says ‘ We have this treasure in earthen vessels.  In Job, then, the earthen vessel had gaping sores, while an interior treasure of wisdom remained unchanged. Gaping outward wounds did not stop a treasure of wisdom from welling up within, for he said: ‘If we have received good things at the hand of the Lord, shall we not receive evil?’

By good things Job means the good things given by God, both temporal and eternal; by evil he means the blows he presently suffers.

When we’re afflicted, let’s remember our Maker’s gifts to us. Suffering will not depress us if we quickly remember the gifts we’ve been given. As Scripture says, ‘In the day of prosperity do not forget affliction, and in the day of affliction, do not forget prosperity.’”

The love of God for us was proven through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ who, like Job, was tested by suffering and death.

Guardian Angels

3 Replies

We usually associate Guardian Angels with children. In the gospel reading for the Feast of Guardian Angels, October 2, Jesus says we can’t get to heaven unless we become like little children whose “angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”  (Matthew 18,1-5,10)

Artists, like the above, usually picture children with Guardian Angels, protecting and guiding them as they go on their way in a dangerous world.

Yet, the angels we read about  in the Bible are more than guardians of children; they’re signs of God’s guardianship of the whole world. They bring God’s message to Mary and Joseph and the prophets. They bring bread to Elijah in the desert and save Daniel in the lion’s den. Angels are part of God’s providential hand dealing with the world. They’re guardians and guides of nations, the human family and creation itself.  They’re everywhere instruments of God’s power and love and justice. 

This week’s news will be dominated, as usual,  by politics, wars, human tragedies and scandals, but here we are reading about guardian angels, who will never make the news of the day, yet are powerfully present in our world.  However smart or independent or grown-up we think are, God knows we’re still little children. We never outgrow God’s guidance and care: we have “loyal, prudent, powerful protectors and guides. They  keep us so our ways cannot be overpowered or led astray.” So that’s us in the picture above.

I think of the “principle of subsidiarity” on the feastday of the Guardian Angels. God spreads his  power around. I also remember that sometime ago I nearly hit a truck ahead of me but something suddenly stopped me. “Thanks.”

O God,
in your infinite providence you deign to send your holy angels to be our guardians. Grant to us who pray to you
that we may be defended by them in this life
and rejoice with them in the next.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son.

Luke 9:51-18:14: The Journey

Leave a reply

We begin reading this week from the long portion of Luke’s gospel describing Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem–chapters 9,51-18:14. 

“When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled,

he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51)

One sentence dominates this part of Luke’s gospel. “Follow me,” Another sentence we hear repeatedly: “Don’t look back.”

“Follow me,” Jesus says on his way to glory, but not all hear and there are obstacles along the way, like the Samaritan village in today’s gospel. Things get in the way,  Jesus says, In Lot’s day “they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting , building on the day Lot left Sodom.” A hard world to leave.  Lot’s wife was one of those looking back.

Jesus gives other examples in Luke’s journey narrative. The rich fool building bigger barns, (Luke 12,16-21) the rich man absorbed in himself and his riches, (Luke 16, 19-31) the man absorbed in a lawsuit with his brother, (Luke 12,13-15) the disciples absorbed in maneuvering politically for first place.(Luke 18,15-17) How can they make the journey?

Notice how Jesus’ miracles on this journey help people stuck in one place move on. So, he cures the ten lepers confined outside a village in Samaria and sets them free. “Stand up and go,” Jesus says to them. (Luke 17,11-19) The blind man begging beside the road outside Jericho seems doomed to sit there forever. Jesus immediately gives him his sight and getting up he “followed him, giving glory to God.” {Luke 18, 35-43)

His healing miracles were great, but greater still is the final gift he gives for following him.  After his resurrection, two disciples leave Jerusalem for Emmaus and Jesus walked with them, renewing their hope by recalling the scriptures to them. Then he broke bread with them and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread.

On our journey Jesus is with us in the breaking of the Bread. He is Bread for our journey. He is Bread for the journey this world of ours is making.  We must keep close to this gift.  

St. Therese of Lisieux: October 1

3 Replies

therese
St. Therese of Lisieux was born in Alencon, France in 1873, the youngest of 9 children. The year she was born the economies of Europe and the United States failed; historians call it the Long Depression; it lasted for 6 years, till 1879. France was hit the hardest.

During this time, her mother died, when Therese was 4 year’s old. Her family was never poverty stricken, but her biographers say she experienced a sense of helplessness and suffering as a child.

She had a spiritual experience on Christmas day 1886, when she was 13. She would always have a special devotion to the Child Jesus. She entered the Carmelite convent when she was 15 and for the next 7 years she lived the simple, routine life of a Carmelite nun until her death of tuberculosis on September 30, 1897. She was only 24.

She kept a notebook of her reflections on the spiritual life and after she died her two sisters who were also Carmelite nuns made the notebook public. They called it The Story of a Soul and it became a spiritual classic among Catholics. Therese called her spirituality “the little way.”

She had a great desire for God and she wanted to die for God if she could. In The Story of a Soul she recalls her envy of people who did great things for God, who built hospitals or were great theologians or who traveled as missionaries to other continents.

Emerging from its depression, France embarked on what it called a “civilizing mission” into Asia and Africa, and one way it tried to civilize places like Vietnam (French Indo-China) was to send Catholic missionaries there. In exciting times like these, Therese thought of herself, living unknown in a convent, as a nobody.

But she made a spiritual discovery:

“Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.
I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.
When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In a word, that love is everlasting.
Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.”

Her love transformed all she did, however small, into a gift for God.