Celebrating the Season of Creation is relatively new to us Catholics. Though other Christian traditions have been celebrating this Season since 2008, it was not until 2019 that Pope Francis announced that we would join them. Its origin actually dates back to 1998 when Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed September 1 as a day of prayer for creation for the Orthodox. The Orthodox Church year actually begins on September 1, the day they celebrate God’s creating the world. How fitting!
According to the Season’s website, “The Season is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment together. During the Season of Creation, we join our sisters and brothers in the ecumenical family in prayer and action for our common home.”
Each season is graced with a theme, and this year’s theme is Peace with Creation. So apt when we are obviously waging war against the planet herself and the life she supports. There is much to say and already said by many of us over a growing number of years about humanity’s suicidal choices, so there is no need to mention them here. We grieve, sometimes despair, and still find the hope that moves us to tears and to action.
In this reflection, I offer a few thoughts on the three elements offered above: the Season of Creation is a time of celebration, conversion, and commitment together.
Celebration
It is not too many generations back that our ancestors would have scratched their heads over a five-week focus on the integrity and beauty of creation. Rightfully so. They knew themselves as an intimate part of the whole and celebrated it throughout the year with regular feast days and rituals and times of worship. They did not need to be reminded that they should live and work as responsible members of the Earth community and to regularly rejoice in the bounty of God’s Earth.
We, particularly in the West, have lost that connection and so need to reinstate into our calendars specific times to remind us. Earth Day, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Season of Creation. Though this five week focus is certainly more than one day, the Season ends on October 4th, with a plea to keep it before us all year. Do we?
Our challenge is not to try to remember to do so. It is to find whatever ways work for each of us to reconnect with the rest of the Earth community, to re-member ourselves into the whole community of life, to literally immerse ourselves in that intimate relationship every day. Then, as we celebrate events such as the Season of Creation, they become authentic expressions of our genuine relationship with God, with Earth, with one another.
Conversion
Another challenge we face is living in a world that isolates us from much of the rest of the natural world. For some of us, our only time outdoors might be the walk to and from our cars to our next destination. Rain is an inconvenience. The glory of autumn leaves goes unnoticed as we rush to get where we are going. Winter is barely tolerated and wished ended before it has actually begun. We acknowledge the change of seasons but are often out of tune with their rhythm. And though our bodies recognize the change in rhythm, our minds are often on the holiday events the new season brings. We are not in tune with the gifts each season brings and often bemoan losing the one we love or entering another we don’t.
For years after moving to Illinois, I struggled mightily with the season of winter, in what I perceived as its bare and blustery drabness. That changed for me when I moved to Jubilee Farm, our congregation’s 164 acres of woods and wild flowers and grasses. I have since learned the true beauty of the season. Without summer’s leaves, I see the trees in their intricate patterns of limbs. Without the tall grasses, the creek and gently-sloped hillsides are readily visible. And everything slows down. Even in the chaos of human activity, there is a very different rhythm to the days and weeks of winter. I feel it within me. And I am grateful. Winter has become my favorite season.
Commitment Together
At a time when the planet’s crises are escalating, there is a concomitant convergence of movements of people working together to address many of the ecological issues threatening life as we have known it. These movements are global and too numerous to count! They are not just signs of hope for the world, they are themselves hope in action.
This year’s annual Season of Creation does not stand alone but connects with this Year of Jubilee, appropriately themed Pilgrims of Hope. They connect with Pilgrims of Hope for Creation, a collaborative effort initiated in the United States this year. We also celebrate the ten year anniversary of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home. It is the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures.
There is a synchronicity here that is not accidental but the result of the natural rhythm in creation itself that holds both destruction and birthing in equilibrium. Without the breakdown of the old, nothing new emerges. As we witness and experience that breakdown, we know instinctively to work together to rebuild a world we wish all to inhabit. Every effort of every person to do what each can to bring healing, goodness, and wholeness to the world is needed to restore the balance that promotes life’s flourishing.
Sharon Zayac is a Dominican Sister of Springfield, Illinois. She is co-founder of Jubilee Farm, her congregation’s 164-acre center for ecology and spirituality, which lies just west of Springfield, Illinois. In 2001, Sharon received a Masters in Earth Literacy from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana, becoming that program’s first graduate. Sharon writes, speaks, and leads retreats on ecology, spirituality, Laudato Si’, and the climate crisis. She has a particular passion for sharing the Cosmic Creation Story and its implications for life and faith.