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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
2025 Season of Creation: “Seeds of Peace and Hope” Reflection #2 September 2nd, 2025
(By Maurice Lange, Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
“Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters, harming no one.”(Laudato Si #246)
READ: 2nd part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation (view PDF)
Image by Alexa, Pixabay
REFLECTION: “…a spirit from on high will be poured out on us…”. Like those unexpected seeds that blossom next to roadways, Pope Leo tells us that we too are seeds: of peace and hope. With God’s help I’ve created several fertile gardens over the years. With first some imagining and then digging, that which was seemingly lifeless sprang into fruitfulness. (Well… the addition of a little manure helped as well!) So too, God’s Spirit is poured onto us for fertilization. Those gifts within us which lie dormant are enabled to bear much fruit. The possibilities within our seed-ness are realized: the building of God’s reign of justice and peace
ACTION: Sept. 1 was the World Day of Prayer for Creation and the beginning of the Season of Creation. Just as the life within seeds is coaxed forth by soil, warmth and moisture…we pray for the creation of positive and healthy environments, so that the goodness of many people may be evoked.
“The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes ‘a seedbed for collective selfishness’ … …a change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power.” (Laudato Si #204,206)
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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 – COMING SOON
Preparing for the 2025 Season of Creation – “Seeds of Peace and Hope” August 26th, 2025
(By Maurice Lange, Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
“Hope would have us recognize that…we can always redirect our steps.” (Laudato Si #61)
READ: 1st part of Pope Leo’s letter for the 2025 Season of Creation
REFLECTION: “…the promise of new beginnings…”. In this, the first letter from Pope Leo for a Season of Creation, he invites us to ponder the unexpected. In examining the theme for this year as chosen by Pope Francis, I’m struck by various parts of the phrase “Seeds of Peace and Hope”. Throughout the next several weeks we’ll be examining this theme along with each segment of Pope Leo’s letter.
Leo is probably still pondering the unexpected himself as he has come to know this in his life quite well! During this Season of Creation: what unexpected seeds of peace and hope may be germinating in unlikely places around us?
ACTION: The Season of Creation begins September 1 and continues through October 4. Procure and keep a Season of Creation journal. You may wish to journal about the implications of sowing and caring for seeds of peace and hope. Notice blue “bachelor button” flowers blooming along roadsides this month!
“(Ecological) education plants seeds when we are young, and these continue to bear fruit throughout life.” (LS #213)
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Visit the Presentation Sisters, US Province’s WEBSITE
READ MORE OF MAURICE’S WEEKLY REFLECTIONS
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COMING SOON – Week 2: 2025 Season of Creation Reflection
Week 3 – 2024 Season of Creation: “To Hope & Act with Creation” September 18th, 2024
(By Maurice Lange, current Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
Reflection #3: September 2 – 7
READ: 3rd part of Pope Francis’ letter for the 2024 Season of Creation (below)
REFLECTION:
(Image by Almeida from Pixabay)
Hope. I ponder that with all the pushback Pope Francis has received, what he writes about hope in this Season of Creation is not removed from his own personal journey – with hope connoting: “remaining steadfast amidst adversity” and “not losing heart” in troubling times.
His reflection on hope leads Francis to ponder a medieval visionary who, despite violent times, proposed a new spirit of coexistence among peoples. Francis’ further writes that his own call for universal social harmony in Fratelli Tutii needs to be extended to Creation.
As such, Fr. Thomas Berry, the great, recent visionary, does not lose heart in setting forth the Ecozoic Era: a time of where humans and the rest of the natural world are mutually enhancing.
Let us choose life, then, so that we and the descendants of all species shall live. (cf Deuteronomy 30:19)
READ FULL REFLECTION
ACTION: I encourage you to remain steadfast…and even take on a new layer of hope. Each day this week sit with Thomas Berry as he illustrates the Ecozoic Era.
“Human life is incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures…” (Laudate Deum #67)
2024 Season of Creation Reflection – “To Hope & Act with Creation” September 3rd, 2024
(By Maurice Lange, current Justice & Peace Director at Presentation Sisters & founder of the Oblate Ecological Initiative)
These reflections are inspired by Pope Francis’ 2024 letter for the Season of Creation. Each ponders 1 of 9 topics in Francis’ writing, with focus given to the 2024 theme of “To Hope & Act with Creation.”
“We need only take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair. Hope would have us recognize that…we can always redirect our steps.” (Laudato Si #61)
READ: 1st part of Pope Francis’ letter for the 2024 Season of Creation (below)
(Image by Almeida, Pixabay)
REFLECTION: : How did we come to have faith? Pope Francis begins this Season with a basic question that prompts serious reflection. What is your response? In examining the theme for this year’s Season of Creation, I’m struck by various parts of the phrase “To Hope & Act with Creation”. Throughout the next several weeks we’ll be pondering this theme along with each segment of Francis’ letter. Three cheers for the Holy Spirit who gifts us with faith and evokes our creativity! During this Season, let us, along with Creation and our God of love, co-create a world of justice, a world at peace.
ACTION: The Season of Creation begins September 1 and continues through October 4. Procure and keep a Season of Creation journal. Ponder the implications of how truly hoping and acting “with Creation” might challenge, enhance and deepen your Christian calling.
“All it takes is one good person to restore hope!” (LS #71)
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Visit the Presentation Sisters, US Province’s WEBSITE
READ MORE OF MAURICE’S WEEKLY REFLECTIONS
