The Season of Creation is the annual worldwide celebration, an opportunity to pray and respond together to the cry of Creation. During this season, the ecumenical family around the world unites to contemplate and care for our common home. The Season begins on September 1st the World Day of Prayer the Care of Creation, and ends on October 4th, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.
This year, we will unite around the theme “Living Water” inspired by Ezekiel 47:9 and 12. Faith leaders from across the world, including Pope Leo, are inviting us to prayer and act during this special season. Here is Pope Leo’s message to us for this Season of Creation, with the exhortation to “seek peace and care for creation”. As always, Pope Leo addresses the whole of the human condition, the intertwining impacts of war and discord, and the need for all of us to become collaborators in God’s work of renewal.
Join us in reading, reflecting, and praying for our common home each week.
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4)
WEEK 4 - Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
In the Gospel today, the work in the vineyard may be compared to the urgent work of caring for our common home, this sacred planet, and all of its forms which live in delicate ecosystems where everything is connected. Like the first son in Jesus’ parable, we must change our minds, turn around our lives if we are to go to work in the vineyard today, and help create the reign of God.
We do this in many ways; there are a myriad of different ways to show our love for God’s creation, and each of us can reflect and consider what ways we can respond. Some of us can learn about particular issues and raise our voice to work for change at a political level, others can reach out and take practical steps to improve our local area.
We each have an individual response, but we are part of many communities, and when things are done in community, we sow seeds of hope and change, causing ripple effects for many to benefit. In reaching out towards others, we are part of the living water in Ezekiel’s vision for the earth, bringing life, renewal and healing for all creatures, human and non-human that share this gift of creation, planet Earth.
The second reading from Philippians urges us to look out for the interests of others – in Laudato Si', on care for our Common Home, Pope Francis noted that we must transform the public policies that govern our societies and shape the lives of young people today and tomorrow. Economic policies that promote scandalous wealth for a privileged few and degrading conditions for many others, spell the end of peace and justice. It is clear that the richer nations have contracted an “ecological debt” that must be paid. We read in Laudato Si’: “A true ‘ecological debt’ exists, particularly between the global north and south, connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time” (Laudato Si’, 51).
According to the commitments undertaken in the Paris Agreement to restrain global warming, it is absurd to permit the continued exploration and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructures. During the last year, bishops across the Global South wrote a manifesto calling for a transition away from fossil fuels that honours local communities and doesn’t burden them with impossible debt. Ireland is involved in co-hosting the TAFF (Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels) conference in the next six months with Tuvalu, a Pacific-island nation that is directly impacted by rising seas, and where the education curriculum must include skills for living abroad, as climate change is such an imminent threat.
Let us raise our voices to halt this injustice towards the poor and towards our children, who will bear the worst effects of climate change. In listening to the cry of the earth, and the cry of the poor, in the way climate change contributes to loss of life, livelihoods, environmental 18 destruction, habitability, we are called to respond in love and justice, in solidarity for brothers and sisters around the world, and future generations.
This has real potential for overwhelm, and that’s where we need to ask for grace, to slow down and contemplate the book of nature, where we are reminded that we are held in love by the Creator; “the entire material universe speaks of God’s love, God’s boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains, everything is a caress of God” (Laudato Si', 84). When we allow ourselves time for noticing, to see and love our world, to spend time in nature, we are reminded that “The world sings of an infinite Love: how can we fail to care for it?” (Laudate Deum, 65) That headspace and heart space, allowing time for reflection and contemplation can help us then discern our place and response to the invitation to participate in restoring and renewing creation, contributing to a flourishing world where justice and dignity for all humans and more-than- human creatures can live in harmony and peace.
With this year’s theme for the Season of Creation on Living Water, we might well ask how we can focus on water and tend for water in spaces around us locally; this could be by learning more about how much water we consume, with a mind for how over-consumption can affect others around the world. It might inspire us to join in a river or beach clean-up, so that together with others, we contribute to improving our waterways. There are many ways we can inform ourselves to see where our gifts can be used to create and restore. In these hands-on ways, we are also like the sons in the vineyard of today’s gospel, making a choice to work towards a healthy and flourishing world to pass on to future generations.
From Róisín Alexander-Pye, Laudato Si’ Officer, Trócaire