What is our responsibility as children of God?

Our Twofold Responsibility

•God is the Loving Creator and Sustainer of all that exists. •God has given every human person and society a twofold responsibility: to have dominion over creation and to be a good steward of creation.•All creation belongs to God.•We are responsible for taking care of creation and keeping it safe from harm.

What is our responsibility as children of God?

Taking Our Responsibility for the Environment Seriously

Pope Benedict XVI in an encyclical reminds us that the environment is:

God’s gift to everyone and in our use of it we have a responsibility toward the poor, toward future generations and toward humanity as a whole.

Caritas in Veritate (Charity is Truth), no. 48

What is our responsibility as children of God?

All Creation Comes from God

•The ‘creation spirituality’ of the ancient Israelites is proclaimed loudly in the Psalms.•The ancient people of Israel came to believe in God as Father.•They saw the Creator manifested in the created order. •They saw all of creation, even inanimate things, as existing in order to give glory to God.

Understanding and talkingabout God

Guidelines for Talking about God

• It is impossible to describe God fully.

• All human language for God only points to him.

• Metaphors help communicate meaning in strong and often visual ways; they help us grasp the truth of what is being communicated.

• Yet, no metaphor captures the full reality of God.

Understanding and talkingabout God

Psalm 18

The LORD is my rock, myfortress, and my deliverer,

my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,my shield, and the horn of my

salvation, my stronghold.Psalm 18:2

•What metaphors for God do you hear in this psalm verse?•What do they say about God?•What metaphors of your own do you have or use for God?

God Our Loving Father

God’s Very Being Is Everlasting Love

•Jesus clearly reveals God’s unconditional love for all people. •In his constant references to God as his ‘Father’, Jesus reveals God as a loving Father, who is our Father too.•God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood (CCC, no. 239).•If we can imagine the greatest parental love possible, we would get but a faint hint of who God is and what his love for us is like.

God Our Loving Father

The Parable of the Two Sons and Their Forgiving Father•Jesus’ core message in this parable is the incomprehensible mystery of the ‘prodigal’ love of God.•The word ‘prodigal’ means ‘with great abundance’ and, according to the limits of human understanding, ‘excessively’.•God’s love is not to be defined by the limits of human love; God’s ways are not human ways. •Jesus reveals God’s love to be far beyond human reason.•Jesus reveals that no one is outside the love and mercy of God. God’s love and mercy are prodigal and unconditional.

We are the adopted children of God

Adopted Children of God

• Through Baptism, Christians are united into Christ Jesus in a unique relationship with God—that of ‘adopted children’ of the Father.

• Paul writes: ‘[W]hen the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” ’ (Galatians 4:4−7)

We are the adopted children of God

God the Father of the Poor

•The Israelites first recognized God as Creator and then Father of the Poor.•Jesus’ teaching is clear: we will be judged by how we have cared for those most in need. Read Matthew 25:31−46.•Because we are created in the image and likeness of God, ‘the Father of the poor’, we have a responsibility to the poor and for the poor.•This is the foundation for the Catholic Church’s social teaching.•All Christians are to have ‘a preferential love’ and care for the poor.

Julian of Norwich (1342—c.1416)

• Julian lived most of her life as an anchorite, or hermit, on the grounds of the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, England.

• At 30 years of age, Julian experienced a vision in which she witnessed Jesus’ passion and Death on the Cross.

• As a result of this vision, she wrote Showings of Divine Love.

• Julian wanted people to know deeply that they are ‘endlessly loved with an endless love’.

• ‘God is all goodness and loves you tenderly.’