Most Catholics are familiar with seven spiritual and seven corporal works of mercy. Although none of them is an act of contemplation, no small number of them might flow out of our contemplation, particularly of Christ in our neighbour. Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead can all be rooted explicitly or implicitly in the same parable of the Gospel that thunders: “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me” (Mt 25:40).

But important as that is, it isn’t what this post is about.

This post is about the eighth work of mercy, the spiritual face of which is Christian contemplation, and the corporal face of which is the practical result of that contemplation.

Mercy for our common home

This story starts either with the encyclical letter Laudato Si’ or with the Year of Mercy (December 2015 – November 2016), whichever way we want to think of it. I’ll take the latter approach and bring in the former.

Pope Francis has been trying to get us, as Catholics, to re-centre the important virtue of mercy. The Holy Father never ceases to quote Saint Thomas Aquinas: mercy is the greatest virtue that can be shown to a human being.[1] It, not even charity, is the greatest virtue God shows to us. Charity must have a human face to remain charity, and that face is mercy (e.g., Evangelii Gaudium 37; Misericordiae Vultus 6; Gaudete et Exsultate 106).

To this end, Pope Francis gave an important message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation during that jubilee year. This is where the environment, or our common home, comes into it. But this is no mere arbitrary, loose convergence of ideas. The catechesis of the pope first offers a deep theological vision of the works of mercy as a whole, and only then, with that established, does it add an eighth, environment-based work of mercy to the list.

Quoting one of his own addresses earlier in the Year of Mercy, the pope articulates his overall theological vision of the works of mercy as follows:

We usually think of the works of mercy individually and in relation to a specific initiative: hospitals for the sick, soup kitchens for the hungry, shelters for the homeless, schools for those to be educated, the confessional and spiritual direction for those needing counsel and forgiveness… But if we look at the works of mercy as a whole, we see that the object of mercy is human life itself and everything it embraces.[2]

Speaking this way gives us what could be called a bird’s-eye view. We see the whole thing. But at the same time, we don’t lose the up-close intimacy of each of the acts of mercy that the Holy Father wants to spur us on to. Pope Francis continues:

Obviously “human life itself and everything it embraces” includes care for our common home. So let me propose a complement to the two traditional sets of seven: may the works of mercy also include care for our common home.

This follows logically. Concern for the earth, our little planet, its ecology, the way it functions: these are part of concern for human life.

Detractors, critics, and naysayers will almost certainly assert that Francis’ proposal is illogical. Mercy is shown directly to human beings, they will surely say, not indirectly or in a chain of causes. In this reductive logic, you don’t show mercy to people by acting for the planet. The ideas don’t gel together. But actually—they do. Pope Francis spells out his reasoning explicitly. Indeed, his is a far more logical, deductive presentation of new Christian devotion or practical activity than was, for example, John Paul II’s introduction of a new set of mysteries of the Rosary. If we don’t reject the Luminous Mysteries, I don’t see why anyone would reject the eighth work of mercy. Both are within the purview of the pope. Of the two, one is more reasonable in itself. And that is not the one that has been so widely adopted.

Pope Francis zooms out to the big picture and grabs an intuition of the whole. From that intuition, he proposes a new item that fits the general description. After this, the pope divides that new item into two subsets. To this work of mercy for our common home, there are two aspects, one spiritual, the other corporal:

As a spiritual work of mercy, care for our common home calls for a “grateful contemplation of God’s world” (LS 214) which “allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us” (ibid., 85). As a corporal work of mercy, care for our common home requires “simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness” and “makes itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world” (ibid., 230-31).[3]

The eighth spiritual work of mercy, then, is grateful contemplation of Creation, and the corresponding corporal work of mercy is any expression, however simple or basic, of taking care of Creation, to guard and renew it, rather than tending to instrumentalize it.

Apparently, the pope had intended to more explicitly discuss this work of mercy in Laudato Si’, or at least this kind of discussion was part of his intention in writing the encyclical.[4] At any rate, he came back to it a year later. The twofold eighth work of mercy concerns our common home, because mercy is directed towards human life in its integrity.

The eighth spiritual and corporal works of mercy are interconnected

One of the standout themes of Laudato Si’ is “everything is connected” (e.g., LS 16, 91–92, 111, 117, 120, 137–162, 240). It is only appropriate, then, that the eighth spiritual work of mercy is connected to the eighth corporal work of mercy (and vice versa). This is not a feature of the traditional seven spiritual and seven corporal works of mercy. Tight interconnection, indeed a cause–effect relationship, only appears with regard to mercy directed towards our common home.

In a catechesis two weeks after opening the Season of Creation in the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis stressed: “The best antidote against this misuse of our common home is contemplation.”[5] This little papal teaching is worth reading in full—at least once. Some of the highlights include the following:

What is the antidote against the sickness of not taking care of our common home? It is contemplation. “If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple” (LS 215). Also in terms of “disposable” objects. However, our common home, creation, is not a mere “resource”. Creatures have a value in themselves and each one “reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 339). This value and this ray of divine light must be discovered and, in order to discover it, we need to be silent; we need to listen; we need to contemplate. Contemplation also heals the soul.

And:

Therefore, it is important to recover the contemplative dimension, that is, to look at the earth, creation, as a gift, not as something to exploit for profit. When we contemplate, we discover in others and in nature something much greater than their usefulness. Here is the heart of the issue: contemplating is going beyond the usefulness of something. Contemplating the beautiful does not mean exploiting it: contemplating is free. We discover the intrinsic value of things given to them by God.[6]

Not neglecting:

Those who contemplate in this way experience wonder not only at what they see, but also because they feel they are an integral part of this beauty; and they also feel called to guard it and to protect it. And there is one thing we must not forget: those who cannot contemplate nature and creation cannot contemplate people in their true wealth. And those who live to exploit nature end up exploiting people and treating them like slaves. This is a universal law. If you cannot contemplate nature it will be very difficult for you to contemplate people, the beauty of people, your brother, your sister.[7]

We can clearly see that the pope considers contemplation a precursor to taking action for our planet. If we do not contemplate our common home, it is far too easy to treat it, not as something good in itself, but just as a means to some other end. Everything tends to be seen, not as beautiful and good, but merely as useful. Pushed far enough, we can become exploitative without cultivating a contemplative gaze.

And yet it is a Christian contemplation

To a superficial eye, it may seem that the pope has capitulated to some sort of newfangled, pseudo-spiritual, hippy-dippy meditation technique ungrounded in Christian prayer. In reality, however, Pope Francis hasn’t given up Christian prayer, and he hasn’t given in to what he has called “ersatz spirituality” (EG 111). His ideas here are deeply Christian and, in a sense, only Christian. The entire way he phrases this catechesis in the Year of Mercy speaks of his great vision for Christian contemplation rooted in its long history, but propounded for the new millennium with the power of evangelical simplicity.

Contemplation, for Pope Francis, is of beauty. It targets mind and heart, knowing and loving—together. This is true of contemplation of God, of Jesus, of Christ in others, and of Creation. An experience of beauty is involved in Christian contemplation—always for Francis. And an experience of something beautiful is never a technique, newfangled or otherwise. It bypasses the technical dimension and its concern for usefulness and alternative ends. Regard for beauty rests in the beautiful thing itself.

Moreover, for this to be prayer and not just some other aesthetic event, the beauty in question has to be the beauty of God, whether that be the Divinity Itself or the Person and Body of Christ (in historical Palestine, in Heaven, or spread out in time and space in the age of the People of God). Thus, we don’t just appreciate the beauty of ecological nature. We appreciate it in gratitude towards God. This transforms aesthetics into prayerful contemplation. We know that the beauty we can see originates in God, and we love, not just that created beauty, but the Creator of it.

There are three ways that Pope Francis says we can exercise gratefulness regarding our common home: (1) directly to God as Creator from our own position here and now; (2) from within the gaze that Jesus had for Creation, either in the explicit words of the Gospels or what we imagine; and (3) consideration of the experience of Christ in his vulnerable members, that is, concern for those whom the environmental crisis affects as a social crisis. The first of these is emphasized in the eighth spiritual work of mercy as it appears on paper, and the last of these is downplayed. But if we think things through carefully, we remember that the purpose of the works of mercy is to care for human life. Thus, the third mode of Christian contemplation of Creation is not to be excluded. Probably all three focus points (Creator, gaze of Jesus, ecological-social crisis) bounce around all together in any genuinely focused eighth spiritual work of mercy.

Practising the eighth work of mercy

So, as contemplatives in the mud of the earth, we have a twofold task. At one pole, there is contemplation of the Creator, the gaze of Jesus, and the vulnerable members of Christ in the ecological-social crisis—essentially Christian contemplation in its diverse forms, all connected through the shared reference point that is our common home. But there is also another pole: action. Both go together. The first informs the second, and we can be sure that the second then informs the first. Caring enough to act so as to guard something of value in itself, we then care all the more to sit with it as something valuable, good, and beautiful. The eighth work of mercy implies an involution of causes.

At the same 2016 General Audience that I have been quoting from, Pope Francis gives us some ideas on how this happens and what we can do:

Those who know how to contemplate will more easily set to work to change what produces degradation and damage to health. They will strive to educate and promote new habits of production and consumption, to contribute to a new model of economic growth that guarantees respect for our common home and respect for people. The contemplative in action tends to become a guardian of the environment: this is good! Each one of us should be a guardian of the environment, of the purity of the environment, seeking to combine ancestral knowledge of millennia-long cultures with new technical knowledge, so that our lifestyle may always be sustainable.[8]

Our lives cannot remain the same. If they are enmeshed in consumerist attitudes and activities, that will need to be rethought. If we have the opportunity to do small acts of alleviating stress on our common home (and its vulnerable inhabitants), we will progressively take more of them. Concern for indigenous ways of life and those who practice them will not leave us untouched. Neither will the efforts of scientists, technologists, and engineers, when they are rooted in appreciation for nature in itself and not its mere use. These are some ways we will hear and heed “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (LS 49; Querida Amazonia 8, 52). There are of course more besides.

Pope Francis already gave us all this in the Season of Creation seven years ago. This year, the opportunity presents itself again, if we can take it up and start anew.

[1] Summa Theologiae II-II , q. 30, a. 4.

[2] Pope Francis, “Message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” (September 1, 2016), which can be read here.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Elise Harris, “Pope Francis declares care for creation a new work of mercy,” Catholic News Agency (September 1, 2016), which can be read here.

[5] Pope Francis, “General Audience” (September 16, 2016), which can be read here.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.