Throughout this semester and ultimately my entire life, I have been shaped into the man I am today by compassion and love. These are the most important ideals that you can impress on another being. In Merton’s Love and Need, Merton touches on the idea of opening yourself up to love and allowing yourself to feel love for another person. In Benedicts Verbum Domini, Benedict takes Merton’s ideas and connects them with a love for God and receiving loves god in turn. Finally, in Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, he touches on not only love for your fellow human beings but an interconnectedness to nature and affection for that which lives in harmony around us. The Christian ethic that I have fashioned is to truly live you must open yourself up to love,
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Throughout Laudato Si’ Pope Francis draws our attention to the need to care for nature. He states, “Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another” (Francis, Pope). Francis brings up two key points in this quote. The first is that all creatures are connected and thus deserve love and care. To often, people believe that they are worth more than many of these animals and plants and thus kill to sustain their own growth. We continue to have numerous problems throughout our ecosystems because humans are taking a larger slice of the world’s recourses than can be sustained. We are not keeping an ethic of love and compassion for the entire world in our minds. The second valid point that Pope Francis brings up is the fact that we are all connected and dependent on each other. Our world would be much more difficult for humans to live in if animals as small as bees or spiders were to go extinct. Many humans don’t understand how much we rely on the environment and nature as a whole to provide for our needs. We must as a people focus not only on a love for our fellow man but as Pope Francis states frequently in Laudato Si’, a love for everything on our
Throughout Laudato Si’ Pope Francis draws our attention to the need to care for nature. He states, “Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another” (Francis, Pope). Francis brings up two key points in this quote. The first is that all creatures are connected and thus deserve love and care. To often, people believe that they are worth more than many of these animals and plants and thus kill to sustain their own growth. We continue to have numerous problems throughout our ecosystems because humans are taking a larger slice of the world’s recourses than can be sustained. We are not keeping an ethic of love and compassion for the entire world in our minds. The second valid point that Pope Francis brings up is the fact that we are all connected and dependent on each other. Our world would be much more difficult for humans to live in if animals as small as bees or spiders were to go extinct. Many humans don’t understand how much we rely on the environment and nature as a whole to provide for our needs. We must as a people focus not only on a love for our fellow man but as Pope Francis states frequently in Laudato Si’, a love for everything on our