We have known from an early age that we have four seasons of the year – spring, summer, autumn, winter.
We have known most of our lives that we have liturgical seasons – Lent, Easter, Advent, Christmas.
We are currently in the liturgical Season of Creation which will run till the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi on 4 October. This is a new liturgical Season for us, from 1 September – 4 October; it was called for by Pope Francis in 2015 when he issued his encyclical Laudato Si.
I very much appreciated the lines early in Laudato Si in which Pope Francis quoted Patriarch Bartholomew. The Patriarch was reminding us to look for solutions to environmental problems not only in technology but in a change of humanity; in other words, it’s a call to everyday conversion for everyone. Patriarch Bartholomew said,
“we are asked to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which entails learning to give and not simply to give up. It is a way of living, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs”. (LS 9)
We all are asked to make efforts to protect and care for “Our Common Home,” to act with responsibility, to be creative in the way that we engage with others and dialogue on how we can acknowledge the challenges we face globally and about what we as individuals we can do to make a difference. This Season of Creation calls us to deep prayer and reflection; there are many resources available, many prayers produced. Perhaps what is needed is for each one of us to pause, to step aside and listen carefully to the created world around us, to stand in admiration at a daffodil or a jonquil, to hear the song of a tui, to be still and to know God.
In the remaining days of the Season of Creation what are you going to do, not just as a one off effort, but in a serious long-term effort to care for and protect “our common home”?