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Oblates Daily Prayer September 17th, 2025
Every day the Oblate Community and Family in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales publish a short reflective morning prayer video, created by members. Please join in daily from where you are.
Visit their Youtube channel for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOblates
2025 Season of Creation: “Seeds of Peace and Hope” Reflection #4 September 15th, 2025
(By Maurice Lange, Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
“(St. Francis) shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.” (Laudato Si #10)
READ: 4th part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation (view PDF)
REFLECTION: : “…we seem incapable of recognizing that the destruction of nature does not affect everyone in the same way.” Be it mountain-top removal in West Virginia or flooding in Thailand (pictured), our human mining, refining and changing of the climate impacts first and worst those made poor. Upon further pondering: are we indeed incapable of recognizing this…or, have we grown unfeeling? Between political 
polarization and our ever-increasing bonding with screens and machines, I fear that our culture is becoming exponentially insensate. Demonizing indigenous, immigrants and wilderness seemingly justifies our hard-heartedness. During this Season of Creation: how am I to be counter-cultural? What aspect of my prophetic calling from baptism needs to be realized?
(Photo: Flooded village in Thailand where
Presentation Sisters minister)
ACTION: Practice mercy – including Pope Francis’ addition to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Live simply – so that others may simply live. Grow in compassion – from the Latin “com-passio” or “to suffer with”. *
“Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.” (Laudato Si #48)
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Visit the Presentation Sisters, US Province’s WEBSITE
READ MORE OF MAURICE’S WEEKLY REFLECTIONS
- Week 1: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 2: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 3: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 4: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 5: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
- Week 6: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
- Week 7: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
Ministry in Motion: Fr. Talang & Br. Chiran Travel to Khasi Indigenous Village September 12th, 2025
Fr. Valentine Talang, OMI and Br. Jacob Chiran, an Oblate seminarian, walk 3 hours to Balarma Punjee, a Khasi indigenous village in Bangladesh to offer a Funeral Mass. Oblates run the parish in Sylhet Diocese.
2025 Season of Creation: “Seeds of Peace and Hope” Reflection #3 September 5th, 2025
(By Maurice Lange, Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
“The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God” (Laudato Si #84)
READ: 3rd part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation (view PDF)
Image by Adriano Gadini, Pixabay; Tatiana S. , Pixabay
REFLECTION: “…the prophet contrasts justice and law with the desolation of the desert …”. Indeed, Isaiah contrasts these quite well: justice provides peace and fecundity while injustice ravages and desolates. You’ve heard of “desertification”? (cf: Laudato Si #89) It is a process of ecological degradation in which fertile land becomes arid and loses or reduces its productivity. Much of Earth is currently undergoing a process of desertification due to human factors including climate change. Pope Benedict XVI once observed that: “the external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast”. What is fostering internal desertification?
ACTION: While working with the soil of my garden, I’ve thought that if more people had direct contact with Earth, they would be healthier. For God’s caress to be felt in our world, Pope Leo reminds us that together with prayer, both determination and concrete actions are necessary. *
“…reducing water consumption, planting trees, reusing…all of these reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings.” (Laudato Si #211)
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Visit the Presentation Sisters, US Province’s WEBSITE
READ MORE OF MAURICE’S WEEKLY REFLECTIONS
- Week 1: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 2: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 3: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 4: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
- Week 5: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
