In Australia, September not only announces the coming of Spring and our national Wattle Day but also the Season of Creation when Christians around the world join with people of goodwill to contemplate the wonders of Creation.
During the month, from 1 September to the feast of St Francis of Assisi on 4 October, we once again pray and reflect on our stewardship of Earth, our common home. We look closely at our lifestyles, our use of the finite resources, the loss of biodiversity and the destructive effect they have on the created world.
During this month we could reflect on these opening lines of Laudato Si: Our Sister, Mother Earth,… now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.
The theme for this year’s commemoration is Peace with Creation, motivated by the words from the prophet Isaiah (32:14-18) The Spirit is poured upon us from on high and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field…. The work of righteousness will be peace.
This renewal is the goal, too, of the 2025 Jubilee Year of the Pilgrims of Hope.
We see this transformation captured in the season’s symbol, called Garden of Peace with Creation. The central figure of the tree, always symbolic of life, is fractured – brown and lifeless on one side and on the other, green and thriving. The dove is hovering with its olive branch of peace. What will be the condition of the planet that we will pass on to the next generation? Will it be brown and exploited or green and flourishing?
Recently Pope Leo wrote in his message for World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation that for ten years, the encyclical Laudato Si’ has accompanied the Catholic Church and many people of goodwill: may it continue to inspire us, and may integral ecology increasingly be chosen and shared as the path to follow.In this way, the seeds of hope will multiply, to be ‘guarded and cultivated’ through the grace of our great and unfailing Hope, the Risen Christ.
Maureen Salmon rsj
