Renewing the OIKOS of God
Once again, Pope Francis calls on the Catholic faithful to join the Season of Creation, which begins with the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Our Common Home (Sept. 1) and ends on St. Francis Day (Oct. 4). This is an ecumenical initiative that seeks to strengthen awareness for the care of Creation and echoes the spirit of Laudato Si: “The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home.” (13).
The Vatican Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development has called on dioceses and Christian communities to continue raising awareness of the urgency and seriousness of the environmental reality to restore the relationship between man and earth.
In the same vein, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Pope has also invited the Church and all religious communities and ecclesial entities to advance on the path of integral ecology through the Laudato Si Platform for Action. This is a Vatican initiative that promotes a shared space to address the urgent ecological crisis from the perspective of our faith. It also seeks to “achieve total sustainability in the holistic spirit of integral ecology” (see https://plataformadeaccionlaudatosi.org).
In this way, ecological awareness is growing in the collective consciousness of Redemptorists. The appeal of the last General Chapter has helped us to identify and name some of the wounds of the world: pollution, degradation of biodiversity, water, soil and environment; extinction of animal and plant species; global warming, etc. All of this, of course, is also linked to the suffering and wounds of the poorest people, because here the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor become one. In this way, the causes and consequences of the ecological crisis are becoming so great that they also challenge our Christian faith and our Redemptorist charism. We believe that our common home is also the recipient of the abundant redemption to which we Redemptorists are witnesses.
We invite you to continue to explore paths of ecological conversion within our Redemptorist context. The Guide for celebrating the Season of Creation 2021 (see here) is entitled “A Home for All? Renewing the OIKOS of Go”.
General Secretariat for Evangelisation
General Commission for Social Ministry – Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (SM-JPIC)
see also other resources: https://seasonofcreation.org
