Living in Harmony with God’s Creation

By KS3 Group Entry (11 –14) from Living in Harmony with God’s Creation

The theme for Catholic Schools Week 2020 was, ‘Living in Harmoney with God’s Creation’. Inspired by Laudato Si, and Pope Francis’ urge to ‘see and appreciate beauty’, we created this wall display in our RE room.

As a class, we studied Laudato Si’, Pope Francis reminds us that we are stewards of God’s creation. We are simply looking after it for each other and for future generations. In Christus Vivit, Pope Francis describes us, young people, as the ‘now’ of God. He goes on to say that we ‘are the work of his hands.’ Pope Francis acknowledges that we can, in fact, change the world and that is what we are called to do!

We decided that in order to look outwards and make a change to our external environment, we needed to first look inwards. With this in mind, we each chose a butterfly to represent ourselves. We examined our own lifestyles and asked ourselves the difficult questions: ‘How do I care for the planet?; What part do I play in distribution of the earth’s goods?:  Am I fair?; In what way do I show my solidarity with others?; In what way do I destroy God’s planet? On the back of our individual butterflies, we made a pledge to the environment. Through completing this display and the discussions that we had, we recognised that we all must change our ways in order to ensure the survival of the earth.

We strive, just like the butterflies, to bring beauty and hope to those around us, rather than destruction and pollution. Each butterfly has its own unique beauty. It told us that we can be different and still be beautiful; different but still part of the team. We chose the quote, ‘until you spread your wings, you have no idea how far you can fly’. This remains as a constant reminder to us, to realise how powerful each and every one of us is and that even the smallest changes can have the biggest impact.