The “Green Patriarch” and the Sin Against Creation

Reflections on this year’s Message of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for the Protection of the Natural Environment

By Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne PANAGIOTIS KAPODISTRIAS

Every September 1st, as we mark the beginning of the Indiction and the opening of a new ecclesiastical year, the Great Church of Christ calls us to look at the world around us: the earth beneath our feet, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the trees, the animals, the seas — the whole of that creation which God saw as “very good” and entrusted to humankind both as a blessing and as a responsibility. Since 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has dedicated this day to prayer for the protection of the natural environment, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has served this cause with such remarkable consistency that the title “Green Patriarch” has become internationally associated with his ecological witness.

Reading this year’s Patriarchal Message, I find myself particularly drawn to one of its central insights. The ecological crisis, the Patriarch tells us, is a “crisis of human freedom.” Here, I believe, lies the key to the entire text. We usually speak about the environment in terms of figures and measurements: rising temperatures, greenhouse-gas emissions, acres of burned forest, tonnes of waste, rising sea levels. All these are essential, and scientists rightly have the primary role in recording and interpreting them. Yet the Church asks another question, one that goes deeper: What has happened within the human person that has led us to treat the world that sustains us in this way?

The Patriarch identifies an inner distortion that precedes the outward destruction. First comes the “negative transformation” of our freedom, our estrangement and alienation from the Source of Life; destructive behaviour towards the natural environment follows. This is a profoundly theological reading of the ecological problem. Once human beings cease to experience the world as a gift, they can easily begin to regard it merely as a possession. Possession then becomes raw material, and raw material becomes an object for relentless exploitation.

This is why the Gospel figure invoked by the Patriarch is so strikingly appropriate: the rich fool. “I will pull down my barns and build greater ones.” How contemporary this man sounds! Larger barns, more possessions, greater consumption, ever-increasing accumulation — a life constantly measured by “more.” And beneath it all lies an illusion: that resources are inexhaustible, that the earth will endure indefinitely, that nature will somehow heal by itself every wound we inflict upon it.

At this point, the Patriarchal Message becomes unusually severe. It employs, in fact, a formidable word: “geocide.” The modern human being, imagining himself to be a kind of “man-god,” persists in the destruction of the earth, driven by geopolitical agendas, economic interests, consumerism and insatiable desires. The word may unsettle us; perhaps it should. It deprives us of the comfort of regarding ecological devastation as some distant scientific problem. The earth itself bears the wounds of our choices.

And during these days of prolonged heat, such reflections cease to be abstract. The oppressive temperatures weighing upon our towns and villages, the anxiety over wildfires, water scarcity in many regions, and increasingly extreme weather patterns bring the environmental question directly into our everyday experience. At times, Creation itself seems to return to us the echo of our actions.

There is, however, another point in the Message that I consider even more significant. The Patriarch speaks of the human person as a “priest of creation.” This expression radically changes our perspective. A priest is one who offers. He receives the gifts of creation and offers them back to the Creator in thanksgiving: “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.” The world then ceases to be a warehouse of materials available for consumption and becomes a Eucharistic gift. Bread, wine, water, oil, the fruits of the earth — all can become blessing when received with gratitude and with a sense of measure.

Perhaps this is where Orthodoxy can make one of its most substantial contributions to the ecological conversation. Our tradition contains within itself an entire ecological ethos, long before the modern term “ecology” came into use. Fasting teaches restraint. Asceticism limits our demands. Thanksgiving heals greed. Doxology transforms possession into gratitude. The ascetic needs very little and experiences abundance; consumerist man continually acquires more and yet continues to feel impoverished.

Here, too, lies one of the great contributions of Patriarch Bartholomew throughout the more than three decades of his patriarchal ministry. He has persistently brought the environmental question into theological discourse while, at the same time, bringing a theological vision into the global ecological conversation. Symposia held on seas and rivers, encounters between scientists and theologians, inter-Christian and interfaith initiatives, and interventions addressed to governments and international organisations have together formed a remarkably consistent course of action. There was a time when such initiatives were sometimes received with condescension. Today, reality itself has dramatically vindicated that persistence.

Finally, from this year’s Message I retain above all the word “responsibility.” The Patriarch takes it from the global level to the national, from the national to the local, and from there to the personal. At this point, every one of us is included. Ecology ceases to be a concern solely for governments, international conferences, activists or scientists. It concerns our homes, our parishes, our neighbourhoods; the way we consume, the way we dispose of what we no longer need, the way we use water, the way we respect even a single tree.

September 1st, therefore, is something more than yet another “international day” in an already crowded calendar. It is a liturgical day of repentance for our relationship with Creation. We pray for the environment because we believe in its Creator. And that prayer becomes true when it moves from our lips to our hands, to our choices, to our habits and to the measure by which we live.

The “Green Patriarch” reminds us of this once again, with characteristic persistence: the earth is our common home, but first and foremost it is God’s creation. It has been entrusted to us so that we may live within it, cultivate it, cherish it and, one day, hand it on to those who come after us. As far as it lies within our power, a little more beautiful than we received it.