Pope Leo’s Prayer Intention for September: For the cry of the Earth – For our relationship with all of creation. Let us pray that, inspired by Saint Francis, we might experience our interdependence with all creatures who are loved by God and worthy of love and respect.
September 1- October 4: Season of Creation: ‘Peace with Creation’
In southern Australia September introduces spring, with the greening of trees, the nesting of birds, flowers bursting into colour and lengthening of days. It is the season of nature at its most beautiful. For Christians it introduces the Season of Creation that comes to its climax on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi. We identify him with kindness to animals and birds and a simple way of life in which he found God in nature and in living close to the earth.
The late Pope Francis was inspired by the spirit of St Francis in his commitment to simple living and to nature. He saw this spirit as central to the respect for the Environment as our home to be treasured and respected. We owe the Pope’s intention for September to his inspiration. It is not surprising that in it he appeals to the spirit of St Francis in calling us to care for the world our home. He calls on us not to exploit the earth and treat it as our mine and our dustbin but to see it as a place to be treasured and respected. He sees this attitude as more than something to read about and to agree with in our minds. It is something to pray for and to expedience. The world of nature with all its rich connections is more than something to pray for, something out there. We are invited to experience, to feel the world as part of us and ourselves as part of the world. We shall then suffer if the physical world is wounded and exploited, if animals and birds are deprived of their habitat, and if forests are felled and their rich ecology destroyed for gain. When the rich and delicate relationships between plants and animals, wildflowers and insects, bees and honey, insecticides and propagation, are destroyed, we human beings also suffer.
The prayer refers to human beings together with animals, birds, insects, plants and microorganisms as loved by God. It sets them together in their relationships which show them to depend one another. This contrasts with the more usual Christian view of human beings above the world and all other things given to them to enjoy and to use. The human world is separated from the environment of which it is part. This implies that we can weep for the world devastated by exploitation and celebrate its preservation and nurturing. Not only other human beings deserve our respect and love but the whole of creation. Human beings are made in God’s images, certainly, but the whole world also images in its own way the beauty and the love of God.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ writes for Jesuit Communications and Jesuit Social Services.
