The newly-enthroned Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Michael Jackson, calls us to live a life “of loving responsibility for creation and for others”.
“Salvation is not for humanity alone,” he writes in the editorial of the May issue of Church Review. “There is every bit as much an ecology of salvation which we often miss. The creation itself is restored and reunited across dividing lines which have brought a fracturing and a distancing.”
He says that we concentrate in religious terms on sin and understand salvation as the action of God which sets us free from sin and that, while this is “ entirely right and proper”, we must also expand our understanding to the whole of creation.
“The language of the Collect for Easter Day point us firmly in this direction,” he says. “God, through Jesus Christ, has overcome death and opened the gate of everlasting life. This life flows abundantly through all of creation and changes our focus on reality as God continues to show us what is real.”
The Most Rev Michael Jackson’s Service of Enthronement took place in Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday 8th May.