How will you celebrate the upcoming World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation?  Held on the 1st of September each year, this day of prayer is an opportunity for us to celebrate God’s creation, to affirm our vocation to care for creation, and to reflect and pray, giving thanks to God for the gift of creation to our communities.

“we must first rediscover in our own rich spiritual patrimony the deepest motivations for our concern for the care of creation. We need always to keep in mind that, for believers in Jesus Christ, the Word of God who became man for our sake, “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us” (Laudato Si’, 216). The ecological crisis thus summons us to a profound spiritual conversion: Christians are called to “an ecological conversion whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them” (ibid., 217). For “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience” (ibid.).”

Pope Francis in his letter to Cardinals Turkson and Koch establishing the “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation”

To read the full letter from Pope Francis, click here.

To learn more about the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation and access resources to help celebrate the day, click here.