Small lifestyle changes that will help you realize ‘the cry of the Earth is the cry of the poor’

By Friar Victor Treminio, OFM

My name is Victor Treminio, but many know me as Friar Victor. I have been a Franciscan friar since 2016, and I have been happy to serve God with all my heart.

I feel happy within the Franciscan charism, which has helped me to live my relationship with God as never before.

I had learned to pray in chapels or in closed temples in front of sacred images, sometimes with prayers given in sacramental instruction.

Friar Victor Treminio
But the more I lived the Franciscan charism, the more I began to pray with the beauty of
the sunsets and to contemplate the tenderness of God in the song of the birds.

With the friars I learned to work the land and to experience, with patience, the beautiful process of sowing the corn in our sister, Mother Earth. A sign of God’s love.

However, even with everything, I was not fully attending to a true ecological conversion for conversion is integral, since it is a force that attends to all the dimensions of our life.

It is true that I had begun with the spiritual, but the other necessary dimensions were missing: the human, the economic, and the political.

Those facets of our life that involve our brothers, the most needy, who are the body of Christ. It was little by little that I was able to understand that “the cry of the earth is the cry of the poor.”

The mission that we carried out with my fraternity towards World Youth Day in January 2019 helped me a lot in this. There I was able to meet many young people from Global Catholic Climate Movement, from whom I was able to learn about so many initiatives inspired by the Pope’s message, and we were able to join in launching the Laudato Si’ Generation.

I was so filled with this experience that, from that meeting on, I decided to take my ecological conversion seriously in every way.

I organized myself with my brothers and sisters and we began to use and sell bamboo brushes from our fraternity, as well as natural shampoos. We managed to classify the garbage, and recycle all the paper from the house.

We were also able to plant and compost at home. We were able to take another step forward when we joined, with the youth of the university, to participate on Fridays in the climate strikes with recycled posters, my brothers with guitars and I with ukulele to be able to sing that song of “Francisco: Laudato Si’”, with much more strength on the anniversary of the encyclical.

I have seen the passage of God in so many young people who are joining in the love for creation and for the poor.

Together we managed to take ecological walks, to bless animals and seeds, and to provide formation for the Season of Creation and for ecological spirituality. Today I live my dream of being a son of Francis of Assisi and I hope to continue singing until I see new heavens and a new Earth.