From summer comes the appeal to care for the environment, our common home

I was walking on a beautiful path of the Oclini pass, in the Dolomites, when a phone call from the director of “Tuscany Today ”He asked me to propose the editorial of this issue as bishop delegate for the pastoral care of tourism.

On the path of the Oclini pass… on a July afternoon.

Summer, mountains, coolness, vacation… pushed me to decline the invitation. “There is no time …” I thought. But the same coordinates that I was experiencing invited me to reflect and to feel the duty, because they asked me, to share them.

And so it is that one evening in early August, in the summer, I find myself writing and sharing these thoughts.

Summer, in the space of paths in the mountains, as well as on crowded beaches, without forgetting the beautiful experience of parish and association school camps that as bishops and priests we happen to attend, is an opportunity for encounters, bonds and friendships, faces and gazes , shared time, fraternity. It is in this experience of fraternity more lived than declaimed that the summer of 2022 becomes prophetic and speaks to us of the possibility of peace. There are many places on earth dramatically marked by the violence and injustice of war and, close to us, Ukraine.

The summer experience for us can therefore become, in the sign of fraternity, a seed of peace.

In the summer you are then enchanted in front of the sunset over the sea, in the most beautiful hours to enjoy on the beach when unfortunately the time comes to have to go and the landscapes that are given to us are enchanting when you live the mountain, walking and reaching destinations in the rarefied atmosphere of a sky that seems painted blue, how extraordinary is the starry sky at night, over the mountains. The summer weather thus gives us nature, the environment and we can contemplate it in its beauty, while the same environment today cries out to everyone the wounds of its disease. We contemplate the peaks or the harmony of the sea waves, but immediately we think of the drought we are experiencing, climate change, the increase in temperatures, the retreat of glaciers, the damage that we humans do to creation.

The looks that summer gives us then become an appeal, a cry to take care of our common home which is the environment. We see him beautiful, but he is sick and he asks us to be contemplated and kept.

In the noise of a day on the beach, as in the silence of the path on the mountains and even in the summer of those who stay at home, the summer experience offers unexpected spaces for themselves, such as the time for a good read or to listen to music, the time to do silence or put the thoughts of a year in order …

Summer thus gives us the experience and discovery of interiority, of the depth of ourselves, of spirituality and, for those who believe, of faith.

It is a bit like finding oneself and learning to listen to oneself… and one realizes that life is a gift. In a world of noise and racing, summer reminds us that we can stop… and enjoy listening, silence, reflection, wonder, gifts and gratuitousness, prayer.

But let’s go back to the Oclini pass … I’m reaching the goal, we will take the car back to the hotel and in a few days at home, at work as usual, yet summer, this summer gives us a prophetic message that speaks of peace, of care of the environment, of interiority and spirituality.

These are needs that accompany our time and the whole of humanity and the summer experience can suggest the steps to give you an answer: building fraternity, living the environment in a healthy way, cultivating listening that comes to hear the heart and soul. .

And even when the summer ends, these paths will remain tested and always passable, to leave a better world for the future than we found it.

Maybe… we can do it.

Andrea Migliavacca *

* bishop of San Miniato, Cet delegate for leisure, tourism and sport

(previously published in “Toscana Oggi”)

From summer comes the appeal to care for the environment, our common home