News Archives » Laudato Si
Friends & Community Gather at Three Part Harmony (3PH) Farm’s Annual Fall Festival November 5th, 2024
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- Preparing garlic for planting
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- Preparing garlic for planting
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- Fr. Séamus Finn, OMI prepares garlic for planting
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- Gail Taylor, Proprietor & Farmer of Three Part Harmony & Fr. Séamus Finn, OMI find rest under a tree
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- Janice Cooke (middle) poses with friends
A New Heaven & a New Earth Multi-Artist Album Released October 16th, 2024
Celebrating the Season of Creation at Sacred Heart Church: Oakland, CA October 2nd, 2024
Contributed by Fr. Jack Lau, OMI
International World Day of Peace for a city wide clean up “From Creek to Bay.” We joined with 35 other groups from all over the city, over 500 volunteers! For our part, we collected over 250 Gallons of trash.
Final – 2024 Season of Creation – “To Hope & Act with Creation” October 1st, 2024
(By Maurice Lange, current Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
Reflection #7: September 29 – October 3
READ:
7th part of Pope Francis’ letter for the 2024 Season of Creation (next page) “The Spirit of God has filled the universe with possibilities and therefore, from the very heart of things, something new can always emerge.” (Laudato Si #80)
REFLECTION:
Constant accompaniment. That’s the abiding nature of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis has continually referred to the Spirit throughout his message for this Season of Creation. In this time of polarization, what could ever come along to “radically change the way we think”? Francis writes that such a change would result from our listening to (“obedience to”) the Holy Spirit. We are called to leave behind “arrogant, intoxicated” notions of
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
ourselves, relating to Creation as “predators”. It would be radical to think of ourselves in the West instead as “tillers”. Can we avail ourselves to “the link between matter & spirit” that physics is revealing for us? My sense is: within that link is precisely the constant accompaniment of the Spirit. In response to such abiding, why not listen…and till?
READ FULL REFLECTION
ACTION: Listen to the Spirit … heed your “ecological vocation”. * Encourage and evoke the same from others. Why not become an ecological vocation director?! As far as tilling goes (working with Earth) … have some first-hand, conscious, direct (not virtual) experience of Earth this week: dig into actual soil, prepare a meal of mostly locally-grown foods, take a hike and feel the leaves of Autumn…
“Holy Spirit, by your light you guide this world towards the Father’s love and accompany creation as it groans in travail. You also dwell in our hearts and you inspire us to do what is good. Praise be to you!” (Laudato Si 2nd closing prayer #246)
Week 4 – 2024 Season of Creation: “To Hope & Act with Creation” September 24th, 2024
(By Maurice Lange, current Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
Reflection #4: September 8 – 14
READ: 4th part of Pope Francis’ letter for the 2024 Season of Creation (below)
REFLECTION:
Image by Sohail Sattar, Pixabay
What is the dominant worldview that we swim within here in the West? It is that we humans are separate from “nature”, that we are superior to it and can do to it what we wish. This perspective is pervasive. It gets preached to us in countless ways by so many means. And, this worldview is deadly. In Laudato Si, Pope Francis stresses an opposite paradigm time and again: that “everything is related” and “everything is interconnected”.
In this year’s Season of Creation Francis calls us “to contemplate in hope the bond of solidarity between human beings and all other creatures”. How have you stepped out and away from the dominant Western worldview? To what are you being called to embrace/let-go-of, so as to live more deeply in solidarity with all other creatures?
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ACTION: Ponder those who have lived from a paradigm that everything is interconnected: Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis of Assisi, Chief Seattle, Rachel Carson, Sr. Dorothy Stang. What did each embrace? What did each let go of?
“Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity. (Laudato Si #240)
