ACBC Reflection for Laudato Si’ Week – Day Eight

23 May 2022
Image: ACBC/Supplied

 

Laudato Si’ Week, a celebration of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ and a call to action for Catholics around the world, is being celebrated 16-24 May, 2022.

Throughout Laudato Si’ Week, you and your community are encouraged to join us in reflecting and acting to bring Laudato Si’ to life. 

 


Goal 7 – Community Resilience and Empowerment

 

From the Encyclical

“We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.” Laudato Si’ n.14.

 

For Reflection

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged us to creatively reimagine our ways of connecting and living community. We have sung in virtual choirs, attended Mass livestreamed into our homes on social media platforms, taught and studied in online classes, delivered groceries to people required to isolate, constructed phone trees to check on neighbours, and parishioners gathered across international boundaries in virtual spaces to pray together, support one another, and to advocate for change.

We have been learning about resilience and what can be achieved by communities. We have also been learning that at times communities need support and coordination.

Laudato Si’ calls us to be communities of action at the local, regional, national, and international levels. Everyone’s participation is needed if we are to care effectively for our common home. Pope Francis encourages us over and over, reassuring us that ‘local individuals and groups can make a real difference’ (LS 179). We are on a journey together.

Community building is one of the pillars of the Laudato Si‘ Action Platform together with resource sharing, and guides to assist in making a seven-year Laudato Si’ Action Plan. The Platform will create opportunities to connect directly with communities around the world. It will also provide resources to build community locally.

If our community involvement and participatory action are animated by a sense of synodality, or journeying together as the pilgrim people of God, then our struggle for justice, ecology and peace will surely bear fruit.

 

Prayer

Triune God,

you take delight in your people, you draw us into a web of relationships.

Bless our families, bless our educational institutions,

bless our parishes and dioceses,

bless our hospitals and health centres,

bless our business and farming enterprises,

bless members of our religious orders and communities.

Invite us to develop a spirituality of global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity (LS n 240).

We make this prayer in the name of Jesus, our risen Lord, through the power of the Holy Spirit, now and forever.

Amen.

 

Action

Head: Investigate principles and practices of discernment in common to ensure that all voices are heard in planning processes.

Heart: Pray with the daily readings in the approach to Pentecost, asking the Holy Spirit to guide our communal discernment and planning through the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

Hands: Connect with other people and local groups to support one another in moving towards the Laudato Si’ Goals using the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. Advocate where you can to respond to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

In the Diocese of Parramatta, Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv, Bishop of Parramatta invites all parishes, schools, organisations and families to respond to his invitation to take action on the care of our common home. See the video about this project and find out more here. 

With thanks to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s Office for Justice, Ecology and Peace.

 

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