“Driving along, I notice a dead body by the roadside. No one has stopped. Could it be that no one has noticed. True, it doesn’t look like anyone we know wrapped up in a fur coat but it ahs the signs of a hit and run.
The adult badger did not go home last night. Impossible to think that he was not missed. Convenient to say that badgers spread disease and don’t feel like we do. Of course, we could equally say that we don’t feel like they do.
In my passing glance, he looked thrown there without a second thought as though life did not once flow as knowingly through his whole being as through ours. It occurred to me that few tears, if any, would be shed for a neighbour who lived locally, had raised a family, learnt to survive with a unique intelligence, praised God in his own way. Yet no Good Samaritan might be expected to stop to check his wounds or say a prayer. The Road Safety Authority would not add his death to their list.”
Hugh O’Donnell is a member of the Salesian community living in Dublin’s inner city. In his book, Eucharist and the Living Earth (Columba Press €12.99), he explores the connections between the Eucharist and our responsibilities for creation and the natural world. He believes that situating the Eucharist in the context of a threatened environment enlivens hope in a world degraded through ignorance and greed.
He calls on us to develop an ‘ecological self’ – a broadening and deepening of the self away from the gratification of insatiable ego, so as to embrace all life forms: “In essence, the call to conversion means not only coming to terms with the profound meaning of Eucharist as ‘the washing of the feet’ of the poorest, but of extending that gesture to every living being, especially those species under threat from mindless human activity. Graced with this insight, the Christian assembly then becomes a community of hope on behalf of all creation.”