A few years ago I remember listening to a woman from Carteret Islands who came to speak to a group of us here in Lower Hutt. She had videos of her islands and spoke about how her people were negotiating for the evacuation of their communities. They were declared to be among the first environmental refugees. I remember her in the light of the recent dire report from the International Panel on Climate Change and in the readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. One of the most moving moments was when she spoke about how their island cemetery had already gone under water and they had been unable to recover any of the remains of their ancestors. I remember imagining the spirit of their ancestors calling out through the sea mists.
It reminds me of the words of Ezekiel whereby we can hear them saying to their descendants, “We will instil our spirit in you and you will live and we will settle you on new soil which you will come to know as your own.” I could also sense the pain of Jesus. These are his brothers and sisters, just like Martha and Mary and Lazarus. He continues to instil hope in peoples across the Pacific. “I am the resurrection and the life.” He will ask, “Where have you put them?” All of us can witness his tears and deep distress. “See how much he loves them.” They are not lost or forgotten. Jesus’ prayer will be one with the God of all creation as he cries out, “Unbind them, let them go free.”
The peoples of Carteret Islands and many other islands around the Pacific can no longer be gagged. They have the freedom and the right to speak, alongside the members of the IPCC, on behalf of the life of our planet. It is up to us to listen and to come to believe that we all share responsibility for the future. But we also say with Monsignor Oscar Romero, whose anniversary we celebrated recently, “We are prophets of a future not our own.” Let us trust that ultimately the future lies in the hands of God. Still, we have to play our part and, like Jesus, feel the pain and realise that those graves rightfully haunt us and demand we radically change the way we live so that our planet can breathe and cool off, our weather patterns can once again make sense, and the waters cease rising and people can be assured that their islands and the resting place of their ancestors will not be disturbed.
Fr Tom Rouse - Lower Hutt, New Zealand
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