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Pope’s message for the World day of Prayer for the Season of Creation, 1 September 2020.
Photo: Egor Kamelev.
RENATE welcomes Pope Francis’ call for just and sustainable societies, able to take care of one another and the environment. His message is of particular relevance at this time, when we are seeing the extended reach of human traffickers and exploiters by means of the Internet and social media, capturing an increasingly younger audience, housebound during the time of COVID-19.
In his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Season of Creation, Pope Francis urges all of us to make sure the world’s poorest people are not forgotten as countries begin to rebuild, despite the ongoing presence of COVID-19.
Below is an excerpt from Pope Francis’ opening statement, followed by a link to the entire text.
Source: Vatican News
‘You will declare the fiftieth year holy and you will proclaim the liberation in the earth for all its inhabitants. It will be a jubilee for you’ (Lv 25,10)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Every year, particularly since the publication of the Encyclical Letter Laudato si ‘ ( LS , 24 May 2015), the first day of September marks the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation for the Christian family, with which the Time of Creation begins, which ends on 4 October, in memory of St Francis of Assisi. In this period, Christians throughout the world renew their faith in God the Creator and unite in a special way in prayer and action for the safeguard of the common home.
I am pleased that the theme chosen by the ecumenical family for the celebration of the Time of Creation 2020 is “Jubilee for the Earth”, precisely in the year in which the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day occurs.
In Sacred Scripture, the Jubilee is a sacred time to remember, return, rest, repair and rejoice.
1. A time to remember
We are invited to remember above all that the ultimate destiny of creation is to enter into God’s eternal Sabbath. It is a journey that takes place in time, embracing the rhythm of the seven days of the week, the cycle of seven years and the great Jubilee Year that comes to the end of seven sabbatical years.
The Jubilee is also a time of grace to commemorate the original vocation of creation to be and prosper as a community of love. We exist only through relationships: with God the creator, with brothers and sisters as members of a common family, and with all creatures who inhabit our own home. “Everything is related, and all of us human beings are united as brothers and sisters in a wonderful pilgrimage, linked by the love that God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us among us, with tender affection, to our brother sun, to sister moon, to brother river and to mother earth “( LS , 92).
The Jubilee, therefore, is a time for remembrance, where to keep the memory of our inter-relational existence. We constantly need to remember that “everything is related, and that the authentic care of our own life and of our relations with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and fidelity to others” ( LS , 70).