A prayer resource has been produced by the Vatican and a group of collaborators, including the Columbans, to help local communities celebrate the Season of Creation which takes place this month.
The Season of Creation unites the world’s 2.6 billion Christians in prayer and action to protect Earth, our common home and to discern the guidance it offers us for bringing about the New Creation.
The annual celebration takes place from September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, to October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
“The Season of Creation is a liturgical season dedicated to prayer, reflection, and celebration of God as Creator. It also celebrates and reflects prayerfully on the gifts of creation and the mission given us by God to care for creation and respond to its needs and crises today,” the resource’s introduction says.
The Season of Creation has been added to the Catholic calendar by Pope Francis over the last several years as a way to collaborate with the global ecumenical community on this critical matter and to implement the faith vision, analysis and mission laid out in his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Sí.
In 2021, the Vatican launched the Laudato Sí Action Platform (LSAP) designed to call all parts of the global Catholic community — from families to parishes to businesses, schools, healthcare institutions, religious communities, and more — into extensive coordinated action over many years to address the complex socio-ecological crisis facing Earth at this time and to restore reverent respect and care for the sacredness of creation.
At the time, the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development wrote that the world needs, above all, “a peoples’ movement” from below, an alliance of all people of good will.
Action plans from around the world are being posted on the LSAP website to offer ideas, encouragement, and to help build that global “peoples’ movement.” Information on how to take part is also available on the Laudato Sí Action Platform website.
“The identification of the Season of Creation as a new liturgical season invites the whole Christian community into focused prayer and action. The Catholic community, however, does not yet have official seasonal liturgical texts proper to the Season of Creation, and many pastors may not feel free to use the ecumenical texts of other participating Christian communities. The materials in this booklet have been prepared to help Catholic communities read and pray with the scriptures of the Catholic lectionary for the Sundays in Ordinary Time during this period through the lens of the Season of Creation. This year, 2023, this period includes the 22nd through 26th Sundays in Ordinary Time for Cycle A,” the resource’s authors say.
The 2023 theme takes up the cry of the prophets to Let Justice and Peace Flow…
In a brief “Invitation to Join Season of Creation 2023”, ecumenical leaders state simply and forcefully: “The world humans have known, enjoyed and celebrated is changing rapidly beyond repair. Biodiversity is being lost at a rate not seen since the last mass extinction. The hope of keeping average temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius is fading. The futures of young people are threatened by the cascading impacts of the loss of biodiversity and a changing climate. Industrialization, colonization and the extraction and consumption of resources have created great wealth, unequally distributed.
“We are presently more aware than ever of the link between fossil fuels, and violence and war. The urgency grows and we must make visible peace with Earth and on Earth, at the same time that justice calls us to repentance and a change of attitude and actions. Instead of despair, hope can be created if we work together as the People of God. By the Creator’s infinite love and mercy, streams can rise in the desert. An economy of peace can be built instead of an economy based on conflict. The changing world and the growing ecological crisis threatening us and all who share Earth are the fruits of injustice and violence.
“The Cry of Earth and the Cry of the Poor are desperate calls for justice and the peace that it can bring. The wisdom and courage of the prophetic Spirit must flow in us and through us…. As we enter into this Season of Creation, we are invited, then, to listen again to these thematic messages with deeply contemplative seriousness.”
The prayer resource for the Season of Creation is available from the website of the Australian Columbans.