September 1 - October 4
A Home for All?
Renewing the Oikos of God
Join Us for a Season of Creation
Each year from September
1 to October 4, the Christian family unites for a worldwide celebration of prayer
and action to protect our Common Home.
As followers of Christ
from around the globe, we share a common role as caretakers of God’s creation. We
realize that our wellbeing is interwoven with wellbeing of our Common Home. We rejoice
in this opportunity to care for our Common Home and the sisters and brothers who
share it.
This year,
the theme for the season is:
A home for
all? Renewing the Oikos of God
symbolizing, “A home for all”
Abraham and Sarah opened their tent as a home for three strangers, who turned out to be God’s angels (Genesis 18). By creating a home for all, their act of radical hospitality became a source of great blessing.
Abraham’s tent is a symbol of our ecumenical call to practice creation care as an act of radical hospitality, safeguarding a place for all creatures,
human and more human, in our common home,
the household (oikos) of God.
Human relationships also have ecological significance. Economic, social and political relationships affect the balance of creation. Everything that we fabricate, use and produce has its origin in Earth, whether mineral, plant or animal based. Our habits of consuming energy and goods affect the resilience of planetary systems, and the capacity of Earth to heal itself and sustain life. Economic and political relationships have direct effects on the human family and the more-than human members of God’s oikos. Genesis 2:15 - "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." reminds us that among our co-creatures, the Creator has given humans a special vocation to tend and keep the oikos of God.
Faith gives us trust that God’s Spirit is constantly renewing the face of the Earth. Within this horizon of hope, our baptismal call frees us to return to our human vocation to till and keep God’s garden. In Christ, God calls us to participate in renewing the whole inhabited Earth, safeguarding a place for every creature, and reform just relationships among all creation.
During this Month-Long Liturgical Season of Creation, the Christian family calls every household and society to repent and reshape our political, social and economic systems towards more just, sustainable economies of life, which respect the life-giving ecological limits of our common home.
Season of Creation 2021 Prayer
We are grateful that from your communion of love you created our planet to be a home for all. By your Holy Wisdom you made the Earth to bring forth a diversity of living beings that filled the soil, water and air. Each part of creation praises you in their being, and cares for one another from our place in the web of life.
With the Psalmist, we sing your praise that in your house “even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young.” We remember that you call human beings to keep your garden in ways that honor the dignity of each creature and conserve their place in the abundance of life on Earth.
But we know that our will to power pushes the planet beyond her limits. Our consumption is out of harmony and rhythm with Earth’s capacity to heal herself. Habitats are left barren or lost. Species are lost and systems fail. Where reefs and burrows, mountaintops and ocean deeps once teemed with life and relationships, wet and dry deserts lie empty, as if uncreated. Human families are displaced by insecurity and conflict, migrating in search of peace. Animals flee fires, deforestation and famine, wandering in search of a new place to find a home to lay their young and live.
In this Season of Creation, we pray that the breath of your creative Word would move our hearts, as in the waters of our birth and baptism. Give us faith to follow Christ to our just place in the beloved community. Enlighten us with the grace to respond to your covenant and call to care for our common home. In our tilling and keeping, gladden our hearts to know that we participate with your Holy Spirit to renew the face of your Earth, and safeguard a home for all.
In the name of the One who came to proclaim Good News to all creation, Jesus Christ. Amen.
