Read Matthew 4 as a point of reference.

Living in the United States in a culture heavily embedded in a consumer lifestyle, it is easy for many of us to distance ourselves from the products we buy in relation to the actual work and resources that go into these very products - a mentality very pertinent in our eating habits. Our constant embeddedness in a distanced consumerism allows us to eat and drink our daily meals without looking at where our food came from and the consequences these means of production have on our brothers, sisters, and environment.

In his encyclical Laudato Si (“On Care for Our Common Home”), Pope Francis continuously proposes the reality that there is an innate and interwoven connection within humanity and the environment and that this connection exists because of God’s love. This is what Pope Francis calls an “Integral Ecology.” He goes on to say, “The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation. In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet.’” (48) By continuously depleting fishing reserves or trying to get quick, cheap coffee, we are directly affecting our brothers and sisters in our world community.

In addition to this, it is easy for us to justify the mentality that we are rulers of nature where nature is something to be exploited and degraded. Pope Francis says, “Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.” (84) In this very distanced consumerism previously alluded, separating the beauty creation holds in our many animals and plants and minimizing them to a means of production and business for our nutritional needs helps contribute to our lack of care for our natural gift.

This apathetic mentality many of us possess, myself included, is an overt challenge for us to be more intentional about our eating habits and to spend more of our energy thinking sustainably about something we do usually three times a day, if not more. This is no doubt a very difficult challenge to uphold but taking small steps in the right direction can, over time, alleviate us from our poisoned mentality and sanctify our “integral ecology.”