From Philip Jakob, Director of Music | This Sunday is the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. It also marks the start of the annual Season of Creation, which continues until the Feast of St Francis of Assisi in October, with Francis serving as patron of Ecology and founder of the Order of Friars Minor who bless our church of Sacred Heart with their presence.
This year we are called to “to hope and act with creation.” The biblical image pictures the Earth as a Mother, groaning as in childbirth (Rom 8:22). St Francis understood this when he referred to the Earth as our sister and mother in his Canticle of the Creatures. Creation is surely groaning because of our selfishness and our unsustainable actions that harm her. This groaning teaches us that hope is present in the waiting, in the expectation of a better future.
The Season of Creation encourages us this year to be more prophetic in our actions and our words. When we are baptized we are named ‘priest, prophet and king.’ The second of these baptismal responsibilities is not about being able to predict the future, but reading the signs of our present time and speaking out when these indicate a direction which endangers God’s Creation.
Creator God, you made the world, and it is good. The trees, mountains, rivers and seas. The birds, lions, ants, and bees. Creator God, you made us to care for the world and for all people. Our planet is hurting. Many people are hurting. Help us to do what we can to bring healing to your creation and your people.
If Creation could send us a personal letter seeking a change in our care for God’s earth, what would the letter say? A good exercise would be to spend time writing that letter on behalf of Creation and addressing it to yourself and the way you live your life.
Having held ourselves to account, perhaps the next task would be to identify the decision-makers whose policies may endanger the earth and to write them a letter too! And where the decision-makers have policies which demonstrate laudable care for creation we might write them a letter of support!
God who is unchanging, God who is the creator of innovation, place our feet on your foundations. Place in us your prophetic imagination, dissatisfaction at the sight of injustice, determination to seek change. Place in us your enduring hope and your unceasing love. Amen.
Whatever we do this year during the Season of Creation, whether it includes planting trees, resisting single-use plastics, conserving biodiversity, seeking green technologies, treating our fellow creatures with compassion, or ensuring climate justice for all in our common home, we do these things not so that we can save the world, but as prophetic acts of worship in the hope that Christ will take our humble offerings and transform them as part of the glorious renewal and restoration of all things.
You can learn more about the Season of Creation by clicking here, or by viewing the live streamed prayer service scheduled for World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation below:
