News Archives » oblate ecological initiative
La Vista Hosts Autumnal Equinox Event October 2nd, 2024
At La Vista Ecological Learning Center’s September 21 Autumnal Equinox event, there was buzz around a special champion tree recently discovered on the property at the Missionary Oblates Novitiate.
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?
READ FULL REFLECTION
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)
La Vista Hosts Inter-Community Novitiate May 11th, 2023
On April 26th La Vista hosted Inter-Community Novitiate Program in St. Louis, MO. The focus was on how ecological restoration projects on the OMI Novitiate land help to preserve biodiversity. There were nine novices and three formators present.
VIDEO: JPIC’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform Report September 16th, 2022
Caring for our common home is essential to Missionary Oblate’s mission to the poor, because they are the ones most affected by the devastation to the planet.
The seven-year Laudato Si’ Action Platform offers a fresh opportunity for each of us to commit to complete sustainability in the spirit of Laudato Si. Oblates JPIC is promoting the following works from Oblates and allies in the province as a step toward integral ecology.
In the Spirit of Laudato Si: Missionary Oblates Connect Communities with the Environment September 7th, 2022
In his encyclical Laudato Si’– On Care for Our Common Home (2015), Pope Francis wrote, “Whether believers or not, we are agreed today that the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone. For believers, this becomes a question of fidelity to the Creator, since God created the world for everyone. Hence, every ecological approach needs to incorporate a social perspective which takes into account the fundamental rights of the poor and the underprivileged.” View the Vatican’s Laudato Si Action Platform online.
The COVID 19 epidemic has shown that our lives and actions are inextricably linked to those around us, including the environment. The seven-year Laudato Si‘ Action Platform offers a fresh opportunity for each of us to commit to complete sustainability in the spirit of Laudato Si. Oblates JPIC is promoting the following works from Oblates and allies in the province as a step toward integral ecology.
Watch a video introducing OMI JPIC’s Laudato Si Action Report.
Use arrows below 
to scroll through OMI JPIC’s Laudato Si Action Report.
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