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2025 Season of Creation: Sacred Heart Church, Oakland, CA Celebrates October 9th, 2025
(Contributed by Fr. Jack Lau OMI, Sacred Heart Church, Oakland, CA)
The last weekends of the Season of Creation were one of pilgrimage, planting and blessing. On Saturday, September 27th members of the Green Team at Sacred Heart Church, Oakland, joined the Laudato Si California Pilgrimage from the Newman Hall/Holy Spirit Parish at U.C. Berkeley to St. Mary Magdalen Parish to celebrate a Mass presided by Fr. Wilson Adelakasami SVD, cousin of Fr. Martin Savarimutu, OMI (India), who gave a sermon/class on Laudato Si and the prophet Amos.
On October 4th, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, we had a relic of St. Francis at the weekend Masses at Sacred Heart and that evening watched the movie “Brother Sun Sister Moon“. On Sunday, October 5th we hosted the annual blessing of animals and the planting of native milkweed seeds.
From beginning to end, we remained mindful of our vocation to care for our common home as we listened to the cry of the poor and of Mother Earth.
(Photos courtesy of Carrie Lee McClish)
Concluding the 2025 Season of Creation – “Seeds of Peace and Hope” October 8th, 2025
(By Maurice Lange, Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
“An integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness.” (Laudato Si #230)
READ: 9th (final) part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation (view PDF)
Photo: “La Vista” from bluffs overlooking the mile-wide Mississippi River – home of Oblate Ecological Initiative & La Vista Ecological Learning Center
REFLECTION: “Among the Church’s initiatives that are like seeds sown in this field…”. In this critical time, I am SO heartened to see the Church sowing the seeds of ecological initiatives. In addition to the Borgo Laudato Si project, examples from the Laudato Si Movement and Catholic Climate Covenant inspire! These ministries are the fruits started as seed from Pope John Paul II in 1990: “A new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which, rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives.”
* What integral ecology project, initiative or ministry inspires & challenges you?
ACTION: This Season of Creation has been completed, and, our work continues: as there are plenty of models out there of anything but integral ecology. Why not become the change you wish to see in the world? Encourage and join with others as models in becoming seeds of peace and hope which will indeed multiply… and bear much fruit
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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
- Week 6: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 7: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 8: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 9: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
2025 Season of Creation: “Seeds of Peace and Hope” Reflection #6 October 1st, 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: 6th part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation (view PDF)
Maurice tills his garden
REFLECTION: “The biblical texts…tell us to ‘till and keep’ the garden of the world.” Pope Leo quotes or references Pope Francis’ legacy 10 times in this letter! Here we read from Laudato Si (paragraph 67-Reflection Page 2) about tilling and keeping. When I till my garden, I am working with it. I know that neither I nor my garden would exist without microbes.
That kind of recognition humbles one. > (humbles = humus = brought back to Earth)
Thomas Berry calls for humans to be in a mutually-enhancing relationship with Earth. Francis and Leo both set forth Thomas Berry’s call as implied in the sustainable wisdom of the Bible.
ACTION: Tyrants don’t consider microbes. We should! If we are to be effective in our ecological vocations, tilling and keeping, we should engage in wonder and awe at the billions of microbes in one teaspoon of healthy soil. Learn what is literally beneath your feet, and what you owe your life to, by watching this short video from the BBC: “Why Soil is One of Most Amazing Things on Earth”.
(Image 1: Garden: Maurice Lange)
(Image 2: Soil on a Farm: by Meganelford0, Pixabay)
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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
- Week 6: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
- Week 7: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
- Week 8: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
- Week 9: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
2025 Season of Creation: “Seeds of Peace and Hope” Reflection #5 September 25th, 2025
(By Maurice Lange, Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
“For (indigenous communities), land is not a commodity but rather a gift from God and from their ancestors who rest there, a sacred space with which they need to interact if they are to maintain their identity and values.” (Laudato Si #146)
READ: 5th part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation (view PDF)
REFLECTION: : “Nature itself is reduced at times to a bargaining chip, a commodity…”
Pope Leo does not mince words. Neither does this photo.
- Where have you experienced Creation being reduced to a commodity?
- How is such denigration of Earth, which “is like a sister…and mother” to us, akin to misogyny? to rape?
- What within myself prefers to remain unconscious in terms of how I relate with Earth?
ACTION: Pick up and sit with Elizabeth Johnson’s powerful words in the updated (2022) small but classic work “Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit”.
(PHOTO CREDIT: Vlad Chetan, Pexels.com)
“…our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.” (Laudato Si #1)
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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
- Week 6: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
- Week 7: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection – COMING SOON
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
