This Lent, CRA offers the opportunity for you to reflect on and transform your relationship to God’s creation through simple daily gestures and commitments contained in its Lenten Carbon Fast Calendar.

“Take this time as an opportunity to live more wisely, think more deeply and love more generously,” the calendar’s introduction urges.

Lent is a good time to look at ways of cutting back in practical ways which will help build up our fragile earth, God’s creation (Image: Shutterstock).

The Lenten Carbon Fast Calendar has suggestions of practical steps to take for each day of Lent.

They include:

· Transport makes up 18 per cent of all greenhouse gas pollution in Australia. Commit to having one car-free day each week.

· Each Friday in Lent, tape over one light switch in your home to avoid using it and to remind you of your commitment.

· Capture your joy in creation. Start a daily or weekly journal to reflect on how creation strengthens your spirit and how you can protect it.

· Start a meat-free Monday pledge. Eating less meat could be the single most effective way to reduce your carbon footprint.

· Before throwing something out, consider if it can be recycled or used by someone else.

· How long could you go without buying any new clothing? Make a pledge for 3 months, 6 months or a year, and encourage friends or family to join you.

The Lenten Carbon Fast calendar is a practical way that each of us can use these 40 days of prayer, fasting and alms-giving to live out Pope Francis’ vision set forth in his encyclical Laudato Si’: Care for our Common Home.

“Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience,” he says.

Download a PDF of the Lenten Carbon Fast Calendar here.