As the New Eve and Mother of the Living, Mary calls us to attend to our common and increasingly fragile home. The nightly news with accounts of extreme weather, floods and flash floods, wildfire smoke that clouded the nation’s skies remind us that no one is exempt from the dangers of climate change or the obligation to care for all that God has given us. Despite citing climate change as a major concern, the Biden administration has released a plan to open 734,000 acres of public lands to fossil fuel extraction.
A federal court had ruled against the administration’s pausing the lease of public lands and waters; however, the court did not obligate immediate action. Care must be taken to protect land, water, and air. In other words, as Mary and our birth mothers would say, we must keep our house clean and in good order so that we may “live life to the full” as Jesus hoped.
