This Laudato Si’ Week and Pentecost, let us gather in community to contemplate and nurture seeds of hope for our “suffering planet” (LD 2). Laudate Deum is a reminder about the urgency of the Laudato Si’ message and the need for both personal and cultural transformation amidst our ecological and climate crises.
This year’s Laudato Si’ Week theme is inspired by the symbol for Season of Creation 2024, “firstfruits” inspired by Romans 8:19-25.
“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice,
but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?
But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently”.
The times in which we live show that we do not relate to the Earth as a gift from our Creator, but as a resource to be used. ‘Creation groans’ (Rom 8:22) because of our selfishness and unsustainable actions that harm it. Creation, however, teaches us that hope is present in expectation, in waiting for a better future (cf. Rom 8:20-21).
Hope in the biblical context does not mean standing still and silent, but groaning, crying out and actively striving for a new life in the midst of difficulties. Creation and all human beings are called to worship the Creator, working for a dynamic future from which the first fruits of hope can spring. Let us be seeds of hope in our lives and in our world, rooted in faith and love.
Let us be seeds of hope in our lives and our world, rooted in faith and love.
