The annual Season of Creation has started. It runs throughout September to the Feast of St. Francis on the 4th October. You will be seeing it celebrated in liturgies and actions ecumenically in Churches around the world.
In his message for the Season, ‘Hope and Act with Creation’, Pope Francis tells us that in the mission to protect “our common home” we join together with our sisters and brothers internationally in common purpose. We are called to hope but also to act. Pope Francis tells us that the Holy Spirit “keeps the believing community alert and continually instructs them, calls them to conversion in lifestyles, to resist human degradation of the environment.”
Columbans are responding to Pope Francis’ message with hope, prayer, and action and we invite our supporters to do the same. One starting point is our Autumn 2024 Vocation for Justice newsletter, ‘Jubilee: Pilgrims of Hope’ which contains articles to develop the ‘ecological conversion’ which Pope Francis called for in his 2015 encyclical ‘Laudato Si’.
In one article, Fr. Kevin McDonagh – an Irish Columban missionary in Britain, who had been based in Peru – explains his journey on the path to ‘Ecological Conversion’. Influences included a childhood in rural Ireland where, “there emerged love and concern for the whole spectrum of natural processes and cycles that were intimately interwoven into my daily world.” Then, as a Columban missionary in Peru, he found “my eyes opened” to such realities as droughts, overfishing and the retreating glaciers in the High Andes. From the late 1980s, he “came under the influence” of the ecological writings of Columban Fr. Sean McDonagh and other eco-theologians and learnt more about the climate and extinction emergencies. He believes theology and ecology are “intertwined and complementary with respect to the gift of life.” He now works to raise awareness about the climate crisis and how it impacts communities in the global south. And – just as important – what we can do about it.
The newsletter suggests advocacy on the Climate and Nature Bill, and to support initiatives such as Jesuit Missions’ lobby on climate change in the leadup to the COP29 UN Climate Conference in Azerbaijan during November. Columbans are part of the international Faiths for Biodiversity group planning to lobby the next UN Conference on Biodiversity – COP16 – to be held in Colombia from the 21st October. And in our local parishes and schools, CAFOD’S LiveSimply Award provides the opportunity for communities to work towards living simply, sustainably and in solidarity with the poor.
And, of course, Columbans are acting at the Solihull offices. In Vocation for Justice, the Justice, Peace and Ecology Coordinator in Britain, James Trewby, writes about the ‘rewilding’ of the grounds at St Columban’s. It has included installing bee hives in the gardens, planting 3,500 trees, helping local Catholic primary schools do a butterfly count, and making a learning visit to the Laudato Si’ Centre in Salford Diocese. There is a growing programme of schools visiting St. Columbans to raise young people’s awareness of the natural world and humanity’s dependence on its fruitfulness.
This week, Columbans are launching the seventh annual Columban Schools Competition during the Season of Creation, and it runs until the 7th February 2025. Please promote it with young people 13-18 years and in local Catholic schools. Cash prizes are offered. The students have five months in which to submit an original piece of writing or an original image on the theme: Jubilee: Pilgrims of Hope. This links into the Jubilee Year 2025, where Pope Francis urges Catholics to look for signs of hope in the world and work for peace and justice. In the Bible, a Jubilee is a special year of forgiveness and reconciliation, where right relationships with God, one another, and all of creation are restored. In fact, Jesus referred to it when he spoke of the ‘Year of Favour’ at the opening of his public ministry.
So, over the next five weeks look out for Christian Churches focusing on Care of Creation. There will be a ‘Pilgrimage for the Planet’ along the River Thames in London on the 14th September and pilgrimage walks organised by Christian Climate Action. Churches in Macclesfield have organised a Prayer Service at a Nature Reserve, a talk on bees at Macclesfield Methodist Church, a Creation Walk, a carbon footprint workshop at St Alban’s RC Church and, on the 4th October, St. Michael’s Anglican Church will host a Prayer Service.
On the 30th September, St. Columbans at our HQ in Solihull will join A Rocha UK’s ‘Partners in Action’ programme, their network of Christian land managers ‘caring for the biodiversity of their land’. The day will include students from a Catholic secondary school making boxes for swifts and a group of teachers and headteachers deepening their commitment to supporting tree-growing projects with indigenous people in the Philippines.
Use Vocation for Justice for ideas and contacts for getting involved. And be sure to have a look and join our new Facebook Group: ‘The Columban Justice, Peace and Ecology Group’, where initiatives and information can be shared. Ne sure to keep an eye out for the Season of Creation Catholic Liturgical Guide, which Columbans have helped to prepare, and which gives ideas for each Sunday worship, including bidding prayers and hymns.
Fr. Kevin McDonagh says: “As people of faith, our earthly journey is about lovingly participating in the ongoing creation of life and both the caring for and the sustaining of life as a God-given gift. A committed activism is called for in any authentic announcing of the ‘Good News’ in the face of the forces that are impelling us towards the extinction of life.”
