Sept 1 – Oct 4, 2024
For Five Sundays in September we will be in this optional lectionary within Pentecost. The end of the season, Oct. 4, is the Feast of St. Francis.
The 2024 Season of Creation’s symbol is “the first fruits of hope,” which is inspired by Romans 8:19-25. The theme for 2024 is “To Hope and Act With Creation”, and the symbol represents the idea that people can work together with creation to bring about hope. The hope is that creation can be freed from decay and brought into the glory of God’s children. Hope is also seen as a tool that can help people overcome decay and realize freedom.
Sept 1 was proclaimed as a day of prayer for creation (World Day of Prayer for Creation, or Creation Day) by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I for the Orthodox in 1989, and was embraced by the other major Christian European churches in 2001 and by Pope Francis for the Roman Catholic Church in 2015.
The event is celebrated in many faith traditions and has a centralized website. This year, the theme for the season is “To hope and act with Creation”. Amid the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, many are beginning to despair and suffer from eco-anxiety. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are on a pilgrimage to better care of creation. As people of faith we are called to lift the hope inspired by our faith, the hope of the resurrection. This is not a hope without action but one embodied in concrete actions of prayer and preaching, service and solidarity.
In walking together, we follow the role of Jesus, who walked with friends on the roads around Jerusalem. As he traveled the byways of his community, Jesus invited us to encounter God through God’s presence in creation. Whether by considering “the lilies of the field” or the “grain of wheat that falls to the earth,” the spiritual journey of following Jesus is closely tied to the everyday wonders of nature that He experienced in His earthly journey.