Daily Climate Change and Hope

Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus tells us — and in the original Greek, that word eirenopoioi doesn't mean people who simply keep the peace. It means people who make peace, who actively stitch the world back together where it has been torn.

Consider Sister Dorothy Stang, the Catholic nun from Ohio who spent thirty years in the Brazilian Amazon, walking muddy roads in her sandals, teaching poor farmers how to harvest without destroying the forest that gave them life. She carried a Bible in one hand and seedlings in the other. She understood something profound: that caring for creation and caring for the poor are not two separate missions — they are one mission with one Author.

Pope Francis reminds us in Laudato Si' that "the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are one cry." When rising seas swallow the villages of Bangladesh, when drought empties the wells in sub-Saharan Africa, it is always the poorest who suffer first and longest. The peacemaker cannot look away.

So what does Matthew 5:9 ask of you today? Perhaps it is as simple as this: plant something. Consume less. Speak up at the parish council. Teach a child that the maple tree in the backyard is not just wood and leaves but a hymn the Creator is still singing.