Fourth Sunday of the Season of Creation

 

From our JPIC Committee As this year’s Season of Creation draws to its end, the warnings from the scriptures grow stronger and more dire. They reflect and support again the sense of urgency about climate change that Popes Leo XIV and Francis, climate scientists, the young, and so many around the world have been declaring. Amos focuses attention on those who remain indifferent to the suffering of their sisters and brothers and promises them punishment. The psalmist again insists that God loves and will lift up the poor. Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, warning that the time can come when it will be too late for our conversion. We need instead to listen to Moses, the prophets of our time, and Jesus himself, the one who has indeed risen from the dead. Paul urges Timothy and us to remain faithful, living and preaching our faith through all that lies ahead. As we celebrate the Feast of St. Francis let us reignite our love and care for creation. May we always be instruments of God’s peace for all.

Third Sunday of the Season of Creation and International Day of Peace

     From the Ursuline JPIC Team

The liturgy today focuses attention first on the dishonesty and unscrupulous attitudes and practices of those caught up in the idolatry of wealth and consumption. They value their unjust financial pursuits more than their religious practices or beliefs. In the context of the Season of Creation, these include the people today who will subordinate the sacred mission of care for Creation to the economy” and the advance of their personal financial interests. It includes those who have no concern or scruples about what their economic activities are doing to the poor and to the whole web of life. And it certainly includes those who use their power and resources to spread false information and lies, to hide the truth about climate change and ecological crisis from people who will suffer most and those who could help bring about salvific change. The prophet Amos and the psalmist warn that God will not forget their actions. God has special care for the poor and power to raise them up and “seat them with princes.” In the gospel, Jesus reminds us through the parable of the unjust steward what is most important in life and what constitutes the true “good life.” Let us pray for peace and justice on the International Day of Peace.

Second Sunday of the Season of Creation - the Exhaltation of the Cross

 The 1st Sunday of this Season of Creation called us to humility before the vast and intricate web of Creation and laid out before us some of the costs of discipleship to Christ in this time of urgent global crisis.

The complex, integral ecological crisis confronting us in these times bears witness to humanity’s lack of humility in relating to the rest of Creation, our attitude of domination toward nature and the lack of attention to the challenging dimensions of discipleship to Christ.

The punishing natural consequences of those failures – the more frequent and severe fires, floods, and many other impacts of the warming of the planet – threaten the future of life on Earth in all its dimensions.

Today’s liturgy assures us of God’s readiness to forgive us and to welcome our conversion while warning us of the punishing natural consequences of sinful values and actions so visible in the sufferings of the crucified Christ. In these times we need to see them as well in the crucifying suffering of Earth and of the poor.

The First Sunday of the Season of Creation

From the Ursuline JPIC Team

In recent years, under the leadership of Pope Francis, the Season of Creation has taken its place in the Catholic liturgical calendar, uniting Catholics worldwide with the more than 35-year Ecumenical/Orthodox history of its celebration. The Season of Creation extends from September 1st, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, to October 4th, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

The Season focuses on God as Creator of the vast, cosmic Universe, God’s revelation in Creation, and our response to our calling to care for Creation and address the urgent need to protect its rich diversity and its capacity to sustain life as we know it.

The celebration of the Season of Creation, since its foundation, has come amid a complex environmental, social, political, and cultural crisis. The impacts of this crisis make it hard to ignore the urgency of its message and the importance of our prayer and work to address it: record-setting heat waves killing people by the thousands around the planet, severe and long-term droughts, famines, massive wild fires and a never-ending fire “season,” serious water shortages facing major cities, more violent storms and destructive flash floods, rising sea levels, millions of people driven from their homes as climate-change refugees, and so much more….

The theme serving as a focus for this year’s Season of Creation is “Peace with Creation.” This theme reminds us that many human activities amount to a “war against Creation.” Unsustainable lifestyles, exploitive business models, excessive consumption and throw-away cultures, thoughtless destruction of habitats, disregard for biodiversity loss, and the devastation of literal wars are just a few of the human dynamics threatening the web of life around planet Earth.

The mission before us as people of faith and members of the human community is to work for the justice and global solidarity that are essential to establishing “Peace with Creation.” Coming to understand and enter into this process is one of the most important challenges of the Season of Creation.

The first scripture reading, from the Book of Wisdom, in today’s liturgy calls us to humility before the great Mystery we call God and to prayer for God’s Spirit of Wisdom to guide us into right living within this vast Web of Creation upon which we depend and of which we are a part. The second reading from St. Paul urges us to welcome as brothers and sisters in Christ people whose wisdom about Creation has for ages been disregarded and who themselves have been marginalized and even enslaved. In the gospel, Jesus wants us to hear the seriousness and costs of discipleship in the face of these challenging conditions.