Andrew Conradi, Langford, BC

Season of Creation is the annual Christian celebration that calls us together each year to pray and respond jointly to the cry of Creation: the ecumenical family from around the world comes together to listen to and care for our common home. The “Celebration” begins on September 1st, the Feast of Creation, and concludes on October 4th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology beloved by many Christian denominations.

Orthodox Christians have been marking the Season of Creation for decades. It started in 1989, when Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed September 1 a day of prayer for the environment. That day actually marks the beginning of the Eastern Orthodox church year.

Around that time, focus on the environment was ratcheting up worldwide; e.g. Greenpeace had launched the anti-whaling campaign from Vancouver, BC in 1975. In 1987, the World Commission on the Environment and Development released its Our Common Future report, from which developed the Earth Charter — a declaration outlining the ethical principles for sustainable development throughout the world. The charter was a central focus of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which formed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This was when a young 12 year old Canadian, Severn Cullis Suzuki, made her famous address which I have linked here https://search.app/CEEdnK4uycNSjP2bA .

In 2015, negotiations stemming from this process produced the Paris Agreement, which charts a global plan to limit the planet’s rising temperatures.

Over time, the single day of prayer expanded to a full season, with the World Council of Churches playing a leading role. One of the first organized celebrations of the season was held in 2000 at a Lutheran church in Adelaide, Australia. In 2003, the Catholic Church in the Philippines began asking Catholics to observe Creation Time.

More recently, the Season of Creation has become a more ecumenical celebration among all Christians. And the past few years have seen it gain traction among Catholics. For that, you can point to Pope Francis.

Just months after publishing his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si‘, on Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis formally added the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to the Catholic calendar as an annual day of prayer. He officially invited Catholics to celebrate the full season.

“Now is the time to rediscover our vocation as children of God, brothers and sisters, and stewards of creation. Now is the time to repent, to be converted and to return to our roots,” he wrote in a letter. “We are beloved creatures of God, who in his goodness calls us to love life and live it in communion with the rest of creation. For this reason, I strongly encourage the faithful to pray in these days that, as the result of a timely ecumenical initiative, are being celebrated as a Season of Creation.”

SOC 2024 guided by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans

The biblical image depicts the Earth as a mother groaning as if giving birth (Rom 8:22). St. Francis of Assisi understood it this way when he referred to the Earth as our sister and our mother in his Canticle of the Creatures. The times we live in demonstrate that we do not relate to the Earth as a gift from our Creator, but as a resource to be used.

“Creation groans” (Rom 8:22) because of our selfishness and unsustainable actions that harm it. Together with our Sister, Mother Earth, creatures of all kinds, including humans, cry out because of our destructive actions that cause climate crises, biodiversity loss and human suffering, as well as Creation’s suffering.

However, Creation teaches us that hope is present in waiting, in the expectation of a better future (cf. Rom 8:20-21). To hope in the biblical context does not mean to remain still and silent, but to groan, to cry out and actively strive for a new life in the midst of difficulties. Creation and all of us are called to worship the Creator, working together for a dynamic future based on hope and action. Only when we work together with Creation can the first fruits of hope spring forth. As in childbirth, we go through a period of intense pain, but new life emerges.

To delve deeper into the theological reflection that guides the 2024 theme and symbol, find more information at: 2024 SoC Theme and Symbol Presentation.

Transiting the “Preparation” stage

In February, following the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity celebrated in the northern hemisphere, the “Preparation” stage of the ecumenical season – a stage in which ecumenical leaders meet and convene their communities to discern how to listen and respond together to the cry of Creation – begins.

Visit the SeasonOfCreation.org website, where you will find the Religious Leaders’ invitation message and the available resources to be completed with the official Celebration Guide, available starting in June, after celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in the southern hemisphere.

Here is the link to Pope Francis’ message for the September 1, 2024 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
https://search.app/Cbouh8GGHixy4xT1A in which he repeated his calls for an ecological conversion that “entails leaving behind the arrogance of those who want to exercise dominion over others and nature itself.”

“To claim the right to possess and dominate nature, manipulating it at will, thus represents a form of idolatry,” the pope wrote, “a Promethean version of humanity who, intoxicated by its technocratic power, arrogantly places the earth in a ‘dis-graced’ condition, deprived of God’s grace.”

In his own message, issued Aug. 28, Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, known as the “green patriarch,” said that respecting the God-given dignity of the human person and the integrity of God’s creation “are inseparable.”

Here is the link to Pope Francis’ two-minute video from his Worldwide Prayer Network
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybxtLFNHCw.

Rising global temperatures are a sign not just of climate change but a signal the planet is sick, Pope Francis said in the video announcing his prayer intention for the month of September.

The pope has requested that prayers in the coming month be focused “for the Cry of the Earth” — a reference to an oft-quoted passage from his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si‘, on Care for Our Common Home.” In that papal teaching document, Francis wrote that “we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a so­cial approach; it must integrate questions of jus­tice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

“If we took the planet’s temperature, it will tell us that the Earth has a fever. And it is sick, just like anyone who’s sick. But are we listening to this pain?” Francis asks.

“Do we hear the pain of the millions of victims of environmental catastrophes? The ones suffering most from the consequences of these disasters are the poor, those who are forced to leave their homes because of floods, heat waves or drought,” he said.

For more info in English go to:
https://www.humandevelopment.va/en/news/2024/messaggio-papa-francesco-giornata-mondiale-di-preghiera-per-creato.html and
https://www.humandevelopment.va/content/dam/sviluppoumano/news/2024-news/04-aprile/tempo-del-creato/infografico/pdf/2024-Infografiia-JMOCC-EN.pdf