In today’s prophecy from Jeremiah, God denounces the shepherds of God’s people – those who lead the people socially, politically and religiously. God promises to give God’s people a true shepherd whose name shall be: “The Lord our justice.” As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the perfect shepherd of God’s people who has shown us what the justice of God requires. It requires that we acknowledge that we are all brother and sister to each other as we all receive the gift of life from the same God. As brother and sister to each other, “we are all really responsible for all” (John Paul II), that is, we have an obligation to serve the needs of all of our brothers and sisters. But we have a particular obligation to be concerned with the poor as the conditions in which they live compromise the dignity with which God gifted every human person. When the dignity of any of our brothers or sisters is threatened or compromised, we have an obligation to act to protect their dignity because, again, we are all really responsible for all.
In his latest encyclical, Laudato Si, Pope Francis draws a direct connection between the degradation of our natural environment and the increasingly dire conditions in which too many of the world’s poor are forced to live. “Human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation.” (No. 48). In other words, both the deterioration of our natural and our human environment stem from the same evils: predatory capitalism, an emphasis on technology that does not adequately consider the consequences to persons and the environment, and an emphasis on immediate gratification that ignores long-term needs and consequences. Pope Francis is challenging all persons – not just Catholics but all persons of good-will – to consider how we can work together to reform our economic, social and political systems so that they work to protect both the natural and the human environment. It is a bold challenge to all of us, but one that we must hear and to which we must respond.