World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
'The times we live in show that we are not relating to the Earth as a gift from our Creator, but rather as a resource to be used.
Only when we work together with Creation can the first fruits of hope be born. '
Today marks the beginning of the Season of Creation where we are called into an awareness of our planet’s growing ecological crisis. Humans have impacted the natural world most negatively in the past 200 years. Yet the crisis also conveys a deeper message of humanity’s fractured relationship with God’s creation. At the heart of the ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis. We have become disconnected from the earth, our relationship with God’s creation has become fractured. Pope Francis reminds us, ‘We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it’ (LS, §139). We cannot separate our relationship with God from our relationship with God’s creation. A radical change of heart, is essential if we are to begin to repair our relationship with the natural world. In today’s Gospel Jesus challenges us to examine our relationships with ourselves and others:
What human traditions or worldly things do we ‘cling’ to?
Do we recognise our inherent connectedness with the world around us, not separate from it but a part of it?
Our interior awareness, the love we cultivate in our hearts for creation and humanity, will be evident in our relationship to other creatures and to the world around us. May we use this time to rekindle a sense of awe and wonder for God’s creation and discern where we are being called to in order to protect it.
Jane Mellett
Adapted from “The Deep End – A Journey through the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Matthew”
(Messenger Publications, Dublin, 2002).
Join others in preparing for the season by reading the Season of Creation Prayer Card
Read the Message from Pope Francis fot today's Day of Prayer for Creation