Herr, Édouard <br/><br/>
Crises and the crisis 

 -  2009.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 13 
<br/><br/> On a global scale, we are currently experiencing three crises: the financial and economic one, the food crisis with a billion people suffering from hunger, and the environmental crisis: depletion of primary resources and climate deterioration due to greenhouse gases. These crises concern three fundamental relationships involving humanity: economic relations, social relations and the relationship to nature. These are crises that touch directly on sustainable development, which in turn affects these three relationships as well. The hypothesis being proposed here is that these crises are symptoms of an ethical and spiritual crisis, which constitutes the fourth relationship, the relationship to transcendence. Human beings seem unable to situate themselves adequately in the Covenant with God: they take the role either of master or of slave. But Christian spirituality is marginalised by many people today, as it is a part of western culture that is rightly held responsible for the aforementioned crises. We present here an overview of four other spiritualities in order to identify their contributions and their deficiencies. But none of the four involves recognition of the individual human person. The sacrament of the Eucharist, on the other hand, brings the human person into communion with others (the social dimension) in a single body (economic dimension), and also involves a spiritual integration of the environment. Therefore, this sacrament can be seen as a response to the ethical and spiritual crisis which lies at the root of the three global crises facing the world today.