Water for the World: A Reflection on World Water Day 2017

A fearsome question could well be on our lips at the end of our human days: “Lord, when was it that we saw you thirsty and did not care for you?”  And Christ may then have reason to answer: “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (Matt. 25: 44-45).  He may also ask us:  How come you in the 21st century did not read “the signs of the times,” did not take seriously the basic and universal right to water, and did not hear the cry of vulnerable peoples who “have no access to clean drinking water” (Laudato Si’, #28)?

How come you continued to drink bottled water (when you experienced no true emergency), and how come you wasted water and polluted it with your unneeded chemicals, while “each day a thousand children die[d] of water-related diseases” (Pope Francis, “The Human Right to Water,”Pontifical Academy of Sciences, February 24, 2017)? How come you did not alter your own lifestyle and your personal, institutional, and governmental habits?...