World Day of Prayer for Creation

Collect for Care of Creation

 Lectionary: 432

We have not received the spirit of the world
but the Spirit who is from God,
so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.
And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom,
but with words taught by the Spirit,
describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.

Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV has called for the Church to join all nations in prayer for the Care of Creation. Today's first reading from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians reminds us that we speak as the Holy Spirit teaches us, and not simply with worldly wisdom. 

(Information about this World Day of Prayer is found here, with suggestion for our today's readings: Wisdom 13: 1-9; Colossians 1:15-20; and Mt 6, 24-34, or Mt 8, 23-27.)

There is a basic agreement between our concern for spiritual things and the world's growing concern for the planet on which we live. We regard the Earth and its living things with "words taught by the Holy Spirit," as Saint Paul says; and not simply in economic, scientific, or ideological terms. Those languages may be used to identify issues and raise alarms; but they cannot comprehend the origins or the full complexity of the crisis. 

King Solomon, regarded as the Divine Author of the Book of Wisdom, names the problem in Chapter 13: 

Foolish by nature were all who were in ignorance of God,

and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing the one who is,

and from studying the works did not discern the artisan....

Without that foundational belief in God who is Truth -- and Truth who is God -- we cannot agree on anything, regardless of its importance. Our languages are scrambled by different expectation and needs; not even the international language of science, with its facts, hypotheses, and theories, can overcome the curse of Babel. That very illusion is romantic, at best, and we all know how romantic stories end. 

Saint Paul's song of creation, as we find in Colossians 1: 15-20, identifies Jesus' role in creation:  

for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,

the visible and the invisible,

If have issue with others, ourselves, and our world, they are reconciled in him, 

For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,

and through him to reconcile all things for him,

making peace by the blood of his cross.

 

And finally, the Lord speaks reassuring words to us in Saint Matthew's Gospel:

Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

The ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis, and demands far-reaching spiritual change. If that seems like an endless, hopeless quest -- as promising as Sir Gawain's Quest for the Holy Grail -- every attempt to "fix the problem" politically, economically, and scientific sounds even more implausible. 

Realistic solutions to infrastructural problems are always partial, controversial, expensive, time consuming, and finally unsatisfactory. But everyone on Earth can find reassurance in the Lord's authority to rebuke the wind and seas. Long before the crisis is resolved the Faithful find peace in our amazement at Him.