Environmental Justice at the Urban Stations of the Cross

On Good Friday, April 22nd, IHM Social Justice committee member Chris Boyle took part in the 25th annual “Urban Stations of the Cross” where he delivered an impassioned talk on environmental justice.  Participants in the Urban Stations of the Cross walked to 14 sites in the city of Atlanta and reflected upon contemporary social issues like rights of workers, homelessness, pro-life issues, immigration and other topics. Participants remembered the sufferings of Jesus on the way to Calvary and his suffering personified in the marginalized of today’s world.

Speaking at the King Center Peace Plaza for station 11 “Jesus is nailed to the cross”, Chris led participants in the following prayer:

“    Lord, we can’t even imagine the pain of having nails being driven through our hands and feet.  Three nails, massive enough to support the weight of a man on a cross.  But we ask ourselves, what caused you more pain?  The physical torture, or the anguish of being betrayed and abandoned by your creatures?  Our first thoughts go to those who actually hung you to the cross.  But where were the disciples to be found when you most needed their support?  They were hiding.

    Three nails.  The first into your left hand.  It’s the oil spill in the Gulf, the exploration of pristine areas, and drilling in unstable foreign lands.    The second nail is driven into your right hand.  It’s the dirty coal plants that continue to be built, the mountaintops that are removed to supply the coal, and the nuclear plants that go on despite the latest warnings from Japan.  The third nail is driven into your feet.  It’s the rainforests that are cleared at an alarming pace.

    We are quick to see the evil-doers that drive these nails against your creation.  It’s BP and Exxon and the rest of Big Oil.  When 200 million gallons of oil were spilled last year, Americans were quick to boycott BP gas stations.  How many of us changed our transportation patterns?  How much more did we carpool, plan trips in advance, bike, and walk?

    Who’s responsible for the second nail?  It’s the utilities and our government.  Or is it we, who need our larger homes to be cold in the summer, our big screen TV’s to be always on, our dryers running hot even when the sun shines outside, and our light bulbs that use technology from 100 years ago?

    And who drives in the third nail?  Is it the farmers who stand to gain more from chopping down the trees so that they can feed cattle?  Or is it we, who now feel entitled to have meat as the main course of every meal, even as our waistlines bulge and diabetes and heart disease become more commonplace?

    We pray today for those who are already affected by climate change but have done little to cause it.  Because, while we Americans are 4% of the world’s population, we contribute 25% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  But we are not the ones who first feel the effects – it is the world’s poor.  They are the ones who have little protection from increased droughts, floods, and more intense storms and hurricanes.  They will increasingly be the world’s hungry.  They will be the ones who face more widespread shortages of clean drinking water and more occurrences of mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue fever and malaria.

    We pray that we may show others, by our example, that you have given us all that we need on this Earth to be truly happy, but that when we consume too much it only leads to misery for all.  We pray that our actions and our votes will help our leaders to realize that what we have done to your creation is a sin against you and against all mankind.  We have inherited a world of awesome beauty, Lord.  We thank you and we pray that we will preserve it for all of your people.”