2022 Season of Creation: Love of Creation Impels Us!
Providence Community Celebrates Season of Creation 2022
Note: We are celebrating the Season of Creation (Sept. 1, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation through Oct. 4, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi). The Sisters of Providence Climate Change Task Force will share 10 blogs throughout this time. We hope you enjoy them.
We began by celebrating the opening of the Season of Creation and the World Day of Prayer at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods and in our local communities.
We continued as we invited the Holy Spirit to inflame our hearts with extraordinary love for all creation so that love, mercy and justice will overflow into the lives of all who seek shelter from climate disasters and gunfire.
We came together in our care for agriculture and its impact on climate change as we explored food relationships and committed to the spirit of Meatless Meals and more.
We prepared to celebrate the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi as we reflected on how Saint Francis ministered to the disadvantaged and underserved people of his time and embraced all of creation, poverty and nonviolence.
We probed a list of resources that enable us to be further informed about climate justice and how we can adjust our individual lifestyles as well as our corporate commitments to be in line with the seven goals of Laudato Si’ Action Platform.
We recognized how Eco-Spirituality calls us to recover a religious vision of God’s creation and encourages greater contact with the natural world in a spirit of wonder, praise, joy and gratitude.
We checked our Fair Trade and its impact on farmers who choose to make a difference as they work to protect the environment. We noted the array of resources available from Fair Trade to enable us to choose to adjust our lifestyles.
We explored ways in which we can make a difference as we respond to the cries from Earth, species facing extinction, people who experience the impacts of climate change, Indigenous communities whose ancestral lands have been invaded and destroyed by greed and colonization, and young people who cry out to the adult community to act now to limit the collapse of Earth’s ecosystems.
As we near the conclusion of this Season of Creation 2022, we are called to consciously, actively and fully renew our commitment to respond to the cry of Earth and to the cry of the poor, build ecological economies, adopt simple lifestyles, promote ecological education, interiorize ecological spirituality, and engage in community action and advocacy. We do this as we re-commit to the LSAP Commitment Statement proclaimed during our 2021 Chapter by General Superior Sister Dawn Tomaszewski.
We, the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, and our wider Providence community, publicly commit to join the worldwide Catholic community in responding to Pope Francis’ appeal to participate in a seven-year journey toward sustainability and integral ecology by developing a Laudato Si’ Action Platform.
This commitment marks our willingness:
- To take up the “urgent appeal” of Laudato Si’ to listen and respond to the lurings of Providence to attend to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor by making it a Community priority;
- To Further our ongoing ecological conversion by fostering greater understanding of our socio-ecological vocation within the spirit of our Providence charism;
- To integrate each of the seven Laudato Si’ goals into our lives and apostolates by developing a systematic process to transition to an integral ecology;
- To take bold concrete actions, both corporately and individually, in the spirit of Laudato Si’, to address the multiple crises afflicting our common home – the planet and its people; and
- To practice nonviolence, as we reconcile and heal the pain in creation and sow hope for peace.
This commitment is made in love, mercy and justice, knowing that we are participating in God’s providential work of transformation and trusting “in that Providence which so far has never failed us.”
(Laudato Si’ Action Platform SP Commitment Statement – 10/22/2021)
Pray, Reflect, Act
Pray that our hearts be transformed as we respond to the cry of Earth and that of the poor. Periodically reflect on quotes from Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. Join in celebrating the closing of the Season of Creation 2022 by joining in a Mass in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi either locally or at Saint Mary-of-the-Wood via in-person, television or livestream (Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022, 11:30 a.m., EST).
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