Jesus Takes Up the Cross
We take responsibility for our Earth
Meditation
Just as Jesus embraced his burden, we lift up our burdened world. In 2020, 30.7 million people were displaced globally because of weather-related disasters, including 1.7 million Americans. By 2050, as many as 143 million people could be displaced globally due to climate-related reasons. When consumerism goes too far, short-sighted greed weighs heavily upon land and people. Humans are a part of Nature and a force of nature. Soils can be destroyed by human greed when land is rapaciously altered, mined for minerals, or industrially drained of nutrients. Precious water supplies, valuable plants and wildlife are impacted forever.
We Pray
Precious Lord, the good Earth is like you, suffering from our sins of thoughtlessness, wastefulness, and taking the easy way out. May we willingly pick up the challenge to examine our lives and find the courage to put down the things that are destroying your creation and your people, give us grace to be good denizens of this beautiful Planet. Amen.
♫ HYMN
Were you there when they sent Him to his death?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble;
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
The above is excerpted from a booklet prepared by the Franciscan Friars Conventual JPIC commission and a combined adaptation from a Catholic Climate Covenant (CCC) parish resource (from the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis’s 2022 ACCT) and a Jesuit Refugee Service resource (JRS Renew the Earth—Stations 2022).
The Stations will be posted individually over the next weeks of Lent. Check out our Resources page if you would like to view the entire document.
