From the Parish House

Pope Leo’s special prayer intention for the month of September is: “For the Care of Water“.

It is a theme that resonates deeply with my early years of life.  As some of you might have heard, my family made its living from agriculture, and one of the crops we harvested every year was coffee.  In fact, some of my siblings still own coffee farms.  The size of the farms we are talking about here are just a few hectares, not a few thousand, as one might expect in Australian farming.  It was quite “primitive” in the way we laboured back then; manual methods were used that relied much more on muscle than on mechanical machinery powered by fuel or electricity.

It was the same with the way we provided food for our family when we worked on the farms.  While my older siblings worked hard to care for the crops – clearing the weeds, fertilising the trees, and irrigating them; they always assigned the youngest (me) to prepare lunch.  Even though I was reluctant to go, I had to obey my older siblings.

I remember that we owned a farm about 30 km from home.  It was quite hilly, and in order to cook, I had to walk down to the bottom of the hill to draw water from a little natural lake with a 30-litre bucket.  I would then carry it on my shoulder and walk back up to the top of the hill, where the tent was.  After gathering tinder and kindling, followed by larger pieces of hardwood, I would start preparing the meal.  It would take a couple of hours to cook the rice and a couple of dishes for everyone.

Truth be told, carrying that bucket of water from the bottom of the hill to the top in the heat was not the most pleasant trip of the day.  The effort required to do so taught me a very important lesson about using water with absolute care and appreciation.  It was certainly not simply a matter of turning on a tap.  It was about going to draw water from a natural source of life, and it required a great deal of effort.

This memory resonates with Pope Leo’s prayer message for the month of September: that we cannot treat water merely as a commodity but rather embrace it as a universal gift that is the “source of fruitfulness, freshness, and hope“.  His prayer expresses and points to the reality of many of our sisters and brothers who are struggling without clean water in other parts of the world.  They “walk for miles to find it and become ill due to its scarcity“.  His prayer also prompts and urges us to defend everyone’s right to water, so that all may drink “without fear and without inequality”.

The Holy Father invokes the Holy Spirit to make us Christians “pilgrims of the essential” who should embrace a simple way of life, avoiding waste and pollution.  The prayer intention concludes: “May our care for water be a sign of love for the Creator and a commitment to the lives of the poor, educating new generations to value and protect the Earth’s resources”.

The Pope’s prayer intention, “For the Care of Water” also reminds us of another kind of thirst, not a physical thirst, but the thirst for justice for those who have been terribly harmed within the Church or elsewhere in our wider society.  This week’s Gospel, in the context of Safeguarding Sunday, highlights the theme of the immense mercy of God.  Yet, interwoven into the text is a counterpoint theme that urges its audience to embrace the message of justice: when wrongs have been committed, they must be righted so that justice may be restored.

This counterpoint theme of the Gospel encourages each member of a faith community to stand for what is right, to have the courage to tell the truth, and never to allow silence to stand in for safety.  This is at the heart of a safeguarding culture that is uncompromised and non-negotiable, especially when it comes to the protection of children, vulnerable young adults, and elderly people.

The theme for Safeguarding Sunday this year “Love Protects” is derived from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13.  It highlights the importance of safeguarding in the spirit of love; a love that is not merely passive goodwill or a feeling, but rather a set of actions that enable us to care for and protect one another.

These actions of love help to build a strong culture in which every member, when gathering to participate in communal life, feels and experiences a deep sense of safety, of being valued, respected, and kept safe in mind, body, and spirit.

By Fr Sang Ho

Parish Priest