# Walking in Praise with Pope Francis: Day Six
*2015-08-30*

> Bill Young reflects on St. Jerome’s feast day and explores Pope Francis’ call to care for our common home, urging personal conversion before we can change the world.

## St. Jerome’s Feast Day

Good afternoon. This is Bill Young, welcome to Prayer in Lunch. Today is Wednesday, September 30th, the feast day of St. Jerome. For those who may not know him, St. Jerome was a great scholar of the 5th century. He mastered four languages—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and his native tongue—and translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Latin. Let us pray that, like St. Jerome, we may learn to understand the Bible’s teachings more deeply in our own languages.

## Walking in Praise – Day Six

Today we continue our series “Walking in Praise” with Pope Francis, focusing on our care for our common home. This is day six, and the theme is “It begins with us. Before we can change things, we need to change us.” As a species we have lost sight of our interdependence. We are not merely producers and consumers, but human beings sharing dignity, called to live together as one family of God.

## Personal Conversion and Ecological Responsibility

When we change how we treat the world, the world changes with us. Pope Francis reminds us that concentrating only on the present blinds us to our responsibilities for the future. I ask myself: How much of what I buy, where I eat, and what I read each day is produced locally? How much of my life depends on people I have never met? Let us pray: “God of creation, help me remember that all people everywhere are your children and my family.” Amen.

## Closing Prayer

May God bless you all. Let us now pray the two prayers for day two of our series.

*True ecological conversion starts with personal change, because the world changes when we change.*