Today, we celebrate the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. The ecumenical community has chosen Jubilee for this year’s theme. Unbeknownst to many, Pope Francis officially put this day on the Catholic liturgical calendar in 2019. Begun in 1989, when Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed September 1 as a day of prayer for creation in the Orthodox church, many Christian communities throughout the world followed his lead and began to extend the day into a full season running from September 1 to October 4th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
In his message today, Pope Francis said, “During this period, Christians worldwide renew their faith in the God of creation and join in prayer and work for the care of our common home.” Reiterating many themes from his 2015 Encyclical Laudato Si, he said “In the Holy Scriptures, a Jubilee is a sacred time to remember, return, rest, restore, and rejoice.” Francis encourages the following practices:
- REMEMBERING We re-member ourselves to the God of Creation, to the world-wide community of humans, and to the more-than-human world that blesses us in its multiplicity of life forms.
- RETURNING We return to God by examining our consciences and repenting of the destruction and desecration done by humans to this earth which has so generously and hospitably sustained us. With genuine remorse, we commit ourselves to living in kinship with the earth.
- RESTING We take this time, in the spirit of the ancient Hebrew people on the Sabbath, as well the practice during the season of Jubilee, to remind ourselves of the need to let the land on the earth lie fallow and replenish. It is also a time to let our hearts lie quiet and replenish. Pope Francis draws our attention to how the pandemic has forced us to change aspects of our daily living which has revealed “how the earth can recover if we allow it to rest: the air becomes cleaner, the waters clearer, and animals have returned to many places from where they had previously disappeared.”
- RESTORING We are urged to reconsider how we live with one another and with the whole earth community so that our relationships might be restored based on mutual reverence and care.
- REJOICING As the earth is replenished and restored, creation rejoices: as the prophet has it: “the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12) As will all those lovers and gardeners and guardians of the earth.
On this date in 2016, in his address “Show mercy to our common home,” Pope Francis showed how seriously he takes the issue–if it’s not too late–of restoring a right relationship with the earth by saying the Christian community should consider “care for our common home” as the eighth corporal work of mercy joining the traditional seven: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned or free the captive, and bury the dead.
Here is a poem-prayer from Pope Francis’ encycical Laudato Si:
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