Va. Beach parish notes multiple ways environment affects lives
The Future is Now. And it is Good.
Those words, full of a promising message, were the theme of a celebration held at Holy Family, Virginia Beach, April 22, as parishioners gathered on the 51st observation of Earth Day for the dedication and blessing of the church’s 645 newly-installed solar panels.
A crowd of around 85 assembled in the church parking lot, standing under a canopy of trees or sitting in socially-distanced folding chairs, to enjoy an evening of blue skies, music, prayer and reflection.
“We wanted to do something to celebrate the future and our efforts to protect our common home,” Brian Alexander, Holy Family social justice coordinator, said.
Holy Family is one of seven parishes in the Diocese of Richmond slated to go solar with the support of Catholic Energies, a service of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Catholic Climate Covenant that specializes in helping Catholic organizations to design, develop and fund energy-efficient projects.
“We will be saving money, but even more importantly, we will be saving energy,” Alexander said. The church’s new roof, he said, will spare approximately 7,100 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere over the next 25 years.
At the start of the dedication, Ed Marroni, chairperson of the parish’s environmental ministry, shared the story of the ministry’s six-year journey in working to attain the solar panels, inspired, in part, he said, by Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical “Laudato Si’: On the Care of Our Common Home.”
“As a faith community, we are heeding the call of the word of God to care for and preserve our Earth,” he said. “We have gradually become a greener church, and this evening we celebrate a major step in obtaining that goal.”
The care for creation
The dependence of human life on a clean Earth was a recurring theme of the evening, as representatives from several ministries spoke of how environmental issues affect their work. Ana Castellanos of the church’s migrant ministry explained, for example, how environmental degradation is a significant factor in forcing families to migrate.
“Climate change — and the increased frequency of extreme weather, forest fires and intensified storms — is displacing more people than at any time in human history,” she said. The resulting food scarcity and lack of access to clean water leave many with little choice but to look for a better life elsewhere, she said, despite the risks and lack of legal protection they might face.
A letter written for the occasion by Father Jean Ronel Bonnet, pastor of Holy Family’s “twin” parish, St. Jude in the Diocese of Hinche, and read aloud by Kathy Dowdy of the parish’s Haiti ministry, also emphasized how the Catholic Social Teaching of the care for creation is not a luxury, but rather a necessity for human life.
“Haiti has a tropical climate, dry, not humid, it was the pearl of the Antilles because of its natural beauty,” Father Romel wrote. But over the past few decades, Haiti has become a cautionary tale, struggling with historic deforestation and soil degradation, problems worsened by insufficient management of the country’s natural resources.
Coffee production has sparked several grassroots movements aiming to restore the country’s environment, Father Romel wrote, and it’s to these efforts that we look for hope for the future.
A message of hope
Julie Touhey, who participates in The Chosen, a group for people who experience disabilities, spoke about the efforts of one such small organization working to make a big difference: Bluebird Beach Bungalows, based in Virginia Beach.
Touhey said that her friend Stephen Todd started the company when he lost his job after the nearby Farm Fresh closed in 2018. He began to build bluebird houses made of reclaimed wood and ornamented with sea glass, selling them for $15 each and donating the profits to a different local charity each month.
“Their mission is to do good things,” she said, “with an emphasis on enhancing the lives of people with disabilities and protecting the environment.”
Since its founding, Touhey said, the organization has donated more than $60,000 to charities throughout Hampton Roads.
And God saw that it was good
As part of the celebration, seven children of the parish took turns reading from the book Genesis, recounting the story of creation.
After each verse, the crowd responded with the refrain, “And God saw that it was good,” a reminder that the Earth is good not only in what it gives to us, noted Xaverian Brother Charles Warthen, but in and of itself, as God’s handiwork, a “sacred space where God reveals to us the immense beauty of the Divine.”
“We continue to be thankful for the gift of the entire creation with which God has blessed all creatures,” Father René Castillo, pastor of Holy Family, said, and for “above all, the magnificent sun … providing light, heat and also illumination to our sometimes cloudy minds and spirits.”
The celebration concluded with a rendition of “The Canticle of the Sun” as parishioners gathered to plant bright cardboard signs in the church garden, each bearing a word of hope and encouragement.
“The Earth is a gift from God, and it’s worth celebrating,” Alexander said. “The young kids understand it. Well. We all understand it, really.”