Summary of a Fr. Gerry Creedon homily from October 1, 2006, Señor de Los Milagros
TODAY OUR LATIN AMERICAN Community brings to our parish their devotion to Senor de Los Milagros. The Lord, depicted in a crucified painting by a freed slave from Lima, is credited with the protection of Lima's people from three deadly natural disasters, including what they call a seaquake.
In the light of Katrina all Americans can sense the fragility of creation and the need for us to turn anew to the Lord of Creation, who has given us the miracle of life. We recognize anew how dependent human life is on our vulnerable habitat.
Some feel that when society does not care adequately for the unborn, the disabled and the poor, it will not reach out to protect creation itself.
Even in fair weather we have come to recognize that something is amiss in our relationship to nature.
As a boy with my friends I loved to swim in the Long Reach, a long expanse of the River Lee that flowed out of Lough Allua. I still swim there in the summertime. However, I now have to shower following a swim. I leave the river with a coat of slime and filth. There is little industry along its banks. Some attribute the contamination to the increased use of fertilizers. Others worry about sewer treatment by the next village. We lament the change.
I also think of another river, the Artibonito that divides Haiti and the Dominican Republic, on whose eastern banks lies the parish of San Francisco de Asis where I served. The western bank is denuded of trees while the forests in the DR also disappear. Without trees we do not have rain. With drought comes hunger. The river is contaminated and a major source of sickness to those who cannot boil its water.
The connection between faith and life was brought home when I baptized infants in the waters of everlasting life and buried them not many months later because of malnutrition and waterborne diseases. Bishop Grullon, ordinary of our sister diocese, San Juan de la Maguana, has published a pastoral on the environment, calling for reforestation, water projects, sustainable agriculture and family gardens. He calls for a movement away from a utilitarian approach to creation toward a contemplative perspective. We know what he means when we glory in a sunrise or sunset.
Let us do something practical ourselves to protect our environment. Let us begin to recycle at our parish center. Let us walk to church in carbon dioxide-less pilgrimage.
On this Sunday when our church calls for Respect for Life, let us make our own the attitude and spirituality of Francis whom we honor this week. He celebrated the miracle, the Milagro, of all life;
"Praised be you, My Lord, with all your creatures
especially Brother Sun , who is the day and through whom you give us light.
Praised be to you , my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to your creatures.
Praise be to you , my Lord, through Sister Water, which is very useful and precious and chaste.
Praised be to you through our sister, the Earth, our mother,
who sustains and governs us, and who produces varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give Him thanks and serve Him with great humility."