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[av_heading heading=’ EDITORIAL | Let’s pain the Holy Week green’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
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AS CHRISTIAN Filipinos observe the time-honored tradition of Semana Santa (Holy Week), we plead for a more austere celebration that will not cause further environmental stress and degradation. We can have an earth-friendly and spiritually-nourishing week. The faithful can strip down to the basic human needs and voluntarily give up non-essentials, including tobacco, alcohol and junk food, at least for a week, to give Mother Nature a breather from wasteful and dispensable consumption.
Lent, a time for contemplation and renewal, is a fitting time to ponder about God’s creation and the gift of life. It is a time to simplify, strip down and give up what we really do not need. There is beauty in simplicity.
The Holy Week, in particular, offers a week-long opportunity for us to avoid wasteful activities that fritter away resources and defile nature with trash. Cut back on garbage and pollution as part of our spiritual works of penance, charity and reconciliation. Yes, faith and nature are linked. We are all morally-bound to respect and protect the integrity of God’s creation. Let’s do our part and start living simply and sustainably. Christians are environmental stewards.
Now, more than ever, there is a necessity to reconcile our faith-inspired activities with what is good for human health and the planet in the spirit of true reconciliation with the God of all Creation, our environment, our neighbors, our families and loved ones, and also ourselves. Enough of the wastefulness and greed blatantly trashing our fragile environment.
We can honor the Crucified Christ by deliberately stripping away old habits and attitudes that continue to destroy the environment and our social fabric, and resurrect as a more caring and responsible “earthchild.” Abstaining from wasteful consumption during Lent and beyond augurs well for both Mother Earth and the future of our climate change-threatened nation.
Let our Christian faith radiates in the way we relate and nurture the environment.
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