Dear Brothers and Sisters!
As we approach the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation on 1 September 2024, the theme “Hope and Act with Creation” resonates deeply with the teachings of Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans. This theme encourages us to live according to the Spirit, embracing faith, hope, and newness of life in Christ.
What does it mean to be a believer? It is not just about acknowledging a distant, mysterious God. It is about the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, enriching us with the love of God and guiding us towards eternal goods through the fullness of Jesus’ humanity. The Spirit empowers believers to express creativity and charity, leading them on a journey of spiritual freedom despite the challenges of the world.
Living a Christian life involves faith, active charity, and hopeful anticipation of the Lord’s return. Our faith is a gift from the Spirit but also a responsibility to love and serve others. We are called to care for the suffering, to dream of a world filled with love, fraternity, and justice, and to extend this harmony to all of creation.
The groaning of creation, humanity, and the Spirit itself reflects our trust in God and our longing for His plan of joy and peace to be fulfilled. We are part of a process of new birth and liberation, where hope sustains us in times of adversity and guides us towards the promise of salvation.
Protecting and caring for creation is not just an ethical duty but a theological one, rooted in the intersection of human and divine mysteries. Our hopeful expectation of Christ’s return motivates us to live out our faith in tangible ways, promoting justice, peace, and a harmonious relationship with all of God’s creation.
To hope and act with creation means to embrace an incarnational faith, embodying the love of God in our relationships with others and the environment. Our lives, rooted in the Spirit, become a song of love for God and all of His creation, leading us towards holiness and the ultimate fulfillment of our existence.
Rome, Saint John Lateran, 27 June 2024
FRANCIS
[1] Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 Spes Non Confundit(9 May 2024).
[2] The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto XII, 141.
[3] The Rosminian priest Clemente Rebora expressed this poetically: “As creation ascends in Christ to the Father, all in a mysterious way become the travail of birth. How much dying is required if life is to be born! Yet from one Mother alone, who is divine, we come happily into the light. We are born to a life that love brings forth in tears. Its yearning, here below, is poetry; but holiness alone can finish the song” (Curriculum vitae, “Poesia e santità”: Poesie, prose e traduzioni, Milan 2015, p. 297).
