The Holy See has made public the Message from Pope Francis for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation 2024, which the Church celebrates September 1st. «Wait and act with creation» is the theme that the Holy Father proposes for this year.
MESSAGE FROM HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS FOR
THE WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CREATION
September 1, 2024
«Wait and act with creation«
February 10, 2022
“Wait and act with creation” is the theme of the Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which will be celebrated next September 1. It refers to Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans 8:19-25, where the apostle clarifies what it means to live according to the Spirit and focuses on the certain hope of salvation through faith, which is new life in Christ.
1. Let us then start from a simple question, but one that may not have an obvious answer: when we are truly believers, do we how come we have faith? It is not so much because “we believe” in something transcendent that our reason cannot understand, the unattainable mystery of a distant and distant God, invisible and unnameable. Rather, Saint Paul would say, it is because the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Yes, we are believers because the same “love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” ( Rm 5.5). That is why the Spirit is now, truly, "the downpayment of our inheritance" ( That the XXX World Day of the Sick —whose final celebration will not take place in Arequipa 1,14), as a provocation to live always oriented towards eternal goods, according to the fullness of the beautiful and good humanity of Jesus. The Spirit makes believers creative, proactive in charity. It introduces them to a great path of spiritual freedom, not exempt, however, from the struggle between the logic of the world and the logic of the Spirit, which have conflicting fruits between them (cf. Ga 5,16-17). We know it, the first fruit of the Spirit, compendium of all the others, it is love. Led, then, by the Holy Spirit, believers are children of God and can address Him by calling Him “Abba!, that is, Father!” ( Rm 8,15), precisely like Jesus, with the freedom of one who no longer falls into the fear of death, because Jesus rose from the dead. Here is the great hope: the love of God has conquered, conquers and will always continue to conquer. Despite the prospect of physical death, for the new man who lives in the Spirit the destiny of glory is already certain. This hope does not disappoint, as the Summon Bull of the next Jubilee. February 10, 2022
2. The existence of the Christian is a life of faith, diligent in charity and overflowing with hope, awaiting the arrival of the Lord in his glory. The “delay” of the parousia, of his second coming, is not a problem; The question is another: "when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS 18.8). Yes, faith is a gift, a fruit of the presence of the Spirit in us, but it is also a task, which must be carried out in freedom, in obedience to the commandment of the love of Jesus. That is the happy hope that we have to witness; Where, when, how? In the dramas of suffering human flesh. Although you dream, now it is necessary daydreaming, animated by visions of love, brotherhood, friendship and justice for all. Christian salvation enters the depth of the world's pain, which not only affects human beings, but the entire universe; to nature itself, oikos of man, his vital environment; understands creation as “earthly paradise”, mother earth, which should be place of joy and promise of happiness for all. Christian optimism is based on a living hope; He knows that everything tends to the glory of God, to the final consummation in his peace, to the bodily resurrection in justice, “from glory to glory.” As time passes, however, we share pain and suffering: the entire creation groans (cf. Rm 8,19-22), Christians groan (cf. vv. 23-25) and the Spirit himself groans (cf. vv. 26-27). Moaning manifests restlessness and suffering, with longing and desire. The moan expresses trust in God and abandonment to his affectionate and demanding company, with a view to the realization of his plan, which is joy, love and peace in the Holy Spirit.
3. The entire creation is involved in this process of a new birth and, groaning, awaits liberation. It is a hidden growth that matures, like “a mustard seed that becomes a great tree” or “yeast in the dough” (cf. Mt 13,31-33). The beginnings are insignificant, but the expected results can be of infinite beauty. As it awaits a birth—the revelation of the children of God—hope is the possibility of standing firm in the midst of adversity, of not becoming discouraged in times of tribulation or in the face of human barbarity. Christian hope does not disappoint, but it does not give false illusions either.; If the groaning of creation, of Christians and of the Spirit is anticipation and expectation of the salvation that is already being realized, we are now immersed in many sufferings that Saint Paul describes as “tribulations, anguish, persecution, hunger, nakedness, dangers, sword” (cf. Rm 8.35). So hope is an alternative reading of history and human vicissitudes; not illusory, but realistic, of the realism of faith that sees the invisible. This hope is patient waiting, like Abraham's not-seeing. I like to remember that great visionary believer who was Joachim of Fiore—the Calabrian abbot “with a gifted prophetic spirit,” according to Dante Alighieri. [2]— who, in a time of bloody struggles, conflicts between the papacy and the empire, crusades, heresies and worldliness of the Church, knew how to indicate the ideal of a new spirit of coexistence among men, based on universal brotherhood and Christian peace, the fruit of the lived Gospel. I proposed that spirit of social friendship and universal brotherhood in All brothers. And this harmony between human beings must also extend to creation, in a “situated anthropocentrism” (cf. Praise God, 67), in the responsibility for a human and integral ecology, the path of salvation for our common home and for us who live in it.
4. Why is there so much evil in the world? Why so much injustice, so many fratricidal wars that cause the death of children, destroy cities, contaminate the living environment of man, mother earth, violated and devastated? Implicitly referring to Adam's sin, Saint Paul states: "We know that the entire creation, up to the present, groans and is in travail" (Rm 8,22). The moral struggle of Christians is related to the “groaning” of creation, because the latter “was subject to vanity” (v. 20). The entire cosmos and every creature groan and long “anxiously” for the current condition to be overcome and the original condition to be reestablished: in effect, the liberation of man also involves that of all other creatures who, in solidarity with the human condition, have been subjected to the yoke of slavery. Like humanity, creation - through no fault of its own - is enslaved and unable to do what it was designed to do, that is, to have lasting meaning and purpose; It is subject to dissolution and death, aggravated by human abuse of nature. But, on the contrary, the salvation of man in Christ is a sure hope also for creation; in fact, “creation also will be freed from the bondage of corruption to share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rm 8,21). So, in the redemption of Christ it is possible to contemplate with hope the bond of solidarity between human beings and all other creatures.
5. In the hopeful and persevering expectation of the glorious coming of Jesus, the Holy Spirit keeps the believing community alert and continually instructs it, calling it to the conversion of lifestyles, to oppose human degradation of the environment and express that social criticism that is, above all, testimony of the possibility of change. This conversion consists of moving from the arrogance of those who want to dominate others and nature - reduced to a manipulable object - to the humility of those who care for others and creation. "A human being who tries to take the place of God becomes the worst danger to himself" (Praise God, 73), because Adam's sin destroyed the fundamental relationships by which man lives: the one he has with God, with himself and with other human beings, and the one he has with the cosmos. All these relationships must be, synergistically, restored, saved, “reoriented.” None can be missing. If one is missing, everything fails.
6. Wait and act with creation It means, first of all, joining forces and, walking together with all men and women of good will, contributing to "rethinking together the question of human power, what its meaning is, what its limits are. Because our power has increased frantically in just a few decades. “We have made impressive and astonishing technological progress, and we do not realize that at the same time we have become highly dangerous beings, capable of putting the lives of many beings and our own survival at risk” (Praise God, 28). Uncontrolled power breeds monsters and turns against ourselves. That is why today it is urgent to put ethical limits on the development of artificial intelligence, which, with its capacity for calculation and simulation, could be used to dominate man and nature, instead of putting it at the service of peace and integral development ( cf. Message for the World Day of Peace 2024).
7. "The Holy Spirit accompanies us in life", this was well understood by the boys and girls gathered in St. Peter's Square for their first World Day, which coincided with Holy Trinity Sunday. God is not an abstract idea of infinity, but he is a loving Father, Son, friend and redeemer of every man, and Holy Spirit who guides our steps along the path of charity. Obedience to the Spirit of love radically changes the attitude of man: from “predator” to “cultivator” of the garden. The earth is given to man, but it remains God's (cf. Lv 25,23). This is the theological anthropocentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Therefore, attempting to possess and dominate nature, manipulating it at will, is a form of idolatry. He is the Promethean man, drunk with his own technocratic power, who arrogantly places the earth in a “disgraceful” condition, that is, deprived of the grace of God. Now, if the grace of God is Jesus, dead and resurrected, then what Benedict XVI said is true: «It is not science that redeems man. Man is redeemed by love" (Letter enc. Spe Salvi, 26), the love of God in Christ, from which nothing and no one can ever separate us (cf. Rm 8,38-39). Constantly drawn towards its future, creation is neither static nor closed in on itself. Today, also thanks to the discoveries of contemporary physics, the link between matter and spirit is presented in an increasingly fascinating way for our knowledge.
8. Therefore, the care of creation is not only an ethical issue, but also eminently theological, since it concerns the intertwining of the mystery of man with the mystery of God. It can be said that this interweaving is “generative.”, since it goes back to the act of love with which God creates the human being in Christ. This creative act of God grants and founds the free action of man and all of his ethics: free is precisely his created being. in the image of God who is Jesus Christ, and therefore “representative” of creation in Christ himself. There is a transcendent motivation (theological-ethical) that commits the Christian to promote justice and peace in the world, also through the universal destiny of goods: it is about the revelation of the children of God that creation awaits, moaning as if in labor pains. In this story, not only is man's earthly life at stake, but above all his destiny in eternity, the eschaton of our blessedness, the Paradise of our peace, in Christ Lord of the cosmos, the Crucified-Resurrected for love.
9. Waiting and acting with creation means, therefore, living an incarnate faith, which knows how to enter the suffering and hopeful flesh of people, sharing the expectation of the bodily resurrection to which believers are predestined in Christ the Lord. In Jesus, the eternal Son in human flesh, we are truly children of the Father. Through faith and baptism, life according to the Spirit begins for the believer (cf. Rm 8,2), a holy life, an existence as children of the Father, like Jesus (cf. Rm 8,14-17), since, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ lives in us (cf. Ga 2,20). A life that becomes a song of love for God, for humanity, with and for creation, and that finds its fulfillment in holiness. [3]
Rome, Saint John Lateran, June 27, 2024
FRANCISCO
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February 10, 2022 Hope does not disappoint, Bull of convocation of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 (May 9, 2024).
4.23). We can ask ourselves: why this particular attention of Jesus towards the sick, to such an extent that it also becomes the main work of the mission of the apostles, sent by the Master to announce the Gospel and to heal the sick? (cf. Divine Comedy, Paradise, XII, 141.
[3] The Rosminian priest Clemente Rebora has expressed it poetically: “While creation ascends in Christ to the Father, / In the arcane destiny / everything is labor pain: / how much to die so that life is born! / but from one Mother, who is divine, / one happily comes to the light: / life that love produces in tears, / and, if she longs, here below it is poetry; / but only holiness fulfills the song” (cf. Curriculum vitae, “Poetry and sanctity”: Poems, prose and translations, Milan 2015, p. 297).
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