This past week, all the quotes posted to social media (Facebook, Instagram, X) all spoke of the Christian eco-spirituality for Earth Month, starting with a quote about the Annunciation (celebrated on Monday past) and continuing on to the connection between virtue and social justice with contemplation, as well as the virtues of moderation and contemplative regard for nature:
God’s Word revealed Its power as it were by catching fire: the whole creation was roused by Him and grew incandescent when the Word became incarnate in the dawn and brilliance of maidenhood. — Saint Hildegard of Bingen
I would not want any other prayer than that which makes the virtues grow in me. — Saint Teresa of Avila
It is true that the love which becomes contemplation and that which leads us to the struggle for freedom are but one love. But the contemplative moment is the moment of clarity and vision and of the discovery of being in love. We must not ask of prayer anything more or less than this. — Arturo Paoli
To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfilment. Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack. This implies avoiding the dynamic of dominion and the mere accumulation of pleasures. — Pope Francis, Laudato Si’
Whereas material goods, the more they are sought for their own sake, tend to cause disunion among men, spiritual goods unite men more closely in proportion as they are more greatly loved. This principle helps us to appreciate how necessary is the interior life; and, incidentally, it virtually contains the solution of the social question and the economic crisis which afflicts the world today. — Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
Contemplative in the Mud 