“Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain.
We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth.
The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change
Has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our
Contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is,
can only precipitate catastrophes…
The effects of the present imbalance can only be reduced
By our decisive action here and now.”
- Laudato si’ #161
The Third Sunday of the Season of Creation, remind us that God’s ways are not our ways. The Scriptures invite us to contemplate some of God’s Jubilee ways of living on Earth, giving birth to the New Creation. The planet is warming dangerously because of our use of fossil fuels and our systems of production and consumption. The ways our economies function and the values they serve are depleting and wasting Earth’s resources, creating great inequalities, suffering and injustice, and exceeding Earth’s regenerative capacity. Earth is crying out, the poor are crying out, the existence and wellbeing of future generations is threatened.
Opening Prayer
Our loving God most high, Your ways are not our ways, for Your kindness and love are lavished equally upon all and guide all creation. Teach us to welcome Your mercy toward others even as we hope to receive Your mercy ourselves. Teach us to love and care for all creation, Your gift to us all, wisely and well. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.
The Prophet Isaiah We enter into contemplative reverence in the midst of creation before the greatness of God, the source of Earth and all the universe. Love of God’s creation in all its beauty, intricacy, and lavish goodness can spark love in our hearts and guide us in caring for creation as it needs to be cared for. Isaiah’s urgent call to seek God while God is near and can be found resonates deeply with the warnings of climate experts for these times: that “only with rapid and far-reaching transitions in the world economy on a scale and at a rate without historical precedent” can humanity avoid the tipping points that will bring great devastation to life around Earth.
The Parable of the Landowner and the Worker God’s ways are not our ways. The parable in the gospel in which the owner of the vineyard gives a full day’s wage to all, regardless of how long they worked often stirs complaints about fairness.
But those who worked the longest, the whole day, received what they had agreed was a just wage.
The wages of day laborers are often all that their family has to survive on for a given day; and so the generosity of the vineyard owner served to meet the people’s basic daily needs.
This parable shows us a compensation system based on the agreed-upon value of certain work and care to meet the basic needs of all workers. It is not based upon comparative, competitive, unlimited accumulation.
God’s ways challenge us. A central belief of the Catholic Social Tradition confesses that the Earth is God’s and everything in it. Creation is a gift of God to all people and living creatures, a gift to provide for the needs of all for survival, growth, and flourishing.
Intercessory Prayer
That we may grow in consciousness, awe, and praise of the mystery of God in creation and of the great gift of creation and all of its elements, we pray….
That we may deepen our gratitude for nature’s rich Web of Life within which we live and may grow in openness to wiser and more just ways of caring for it and sharing it, we pray….
That we may take up our prophetic responsibility in this time of crisis to speak God’s Truth to each other and to call each other into ways of living within creation wisely, sustainably, justly, and reverently we pray….
For a deep sense of urgency in responding to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, we pray….
That the nations of the world will find ways together to rebuild from the Covid-19 pandemic and economic declines in accord with God’s ways, God’s vision of economic, social and ecological justice, we pray…
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