or ecological awareness. Social problems must be addressed by community networks and not simply
by the sum of individual good deeds. This task “will make such tremendous demands of man that he
could never achieve it by individual initiative or even by the united effort of men bred in an
individualistic way. The work of dominating the world calls for a union of skills and a unity of
achievement that can only grow from quite a different attitude”.
154
The ecological conversion needed
tobring about lasting change is also a community conversion.
220. This conversion calls for a number of attitudes which together foster a spirit of generous care,
full of tenderness. First, it entails gratitude and gratuitousness, a recognition that the world is God’s
loving gift, and that we are called quietly to imitate his generosity in self-sacrifice and good works:
“Do not let your left hand knowwhat your right hand is doing… and your Father who sees in secret
will reward you” (
Mt
6:3-4). It also entails a loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the
rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion. As believers, we do not look at the
world fromwithout but fromwithin, conscious of the bonds withwhich the Father has linked us to all
beings. Bydevelopingour individual, God-given capacities, an ecological conversion can inspire us to
greater creativity and enthusiasm in resolving the world’s problems and in offering ourselves to God
“as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable” (
Rom
12:1). We do not understand our superiority as a
reason for personal gloryor irresponsible dominion, but rather as a different capacitywhich, in its turn,
entails a serious responsibility stemming fromour faith.
221. Various convictions of our faith, developed at the beginning of this Encyclical can help us to
enrich the meaning of this conversion. These include the awareness that each creature reflects
something of God and has a message to convey to us, and the security that Christ has taken unto
himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his
affection and penetrating it withhis light. Then too, there is the recognition that God created theworld,
writing into it an order and a dynamism that human beings have no right to ignore. We read in the
Gospel that Jesus says of the birds of the air that “not one of them is forgotten before God” (
Lk
12:6).
How then can we possiblymistreat them or cause them harm? I ask all Christians to recognize and to
live fully this dimension of their conversion. May the power and the light of the grace we have
received also be evident in our relationship to other creatures and to the world around us. In this way,
154
ROMANOGUARDINI,
DasEndederNeuzeit
, 72 (
TheEndof theModernWorld
¸65-66).
