Following the publication of his letter, Laudato si’ in 2015, Pope Francis called for observing a Season of Creation from September I to October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  Francis was joined in calling for the celebration by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch, Bartholomew. Later, the World Council of Churches joined in.

Pope Leo recently endorsed Laudato si’ and its call for environmental conversion::

“…given the evidence in various parts of the world, our earth is being ravaged. On all sides, injustice, violations of international law and the rights of peoples, grave inequalities and the greed that fuels them are spawning deforestation, pollution and the loss of biodiversity…

Environmental justice – implicitly proclaimed by the prophets – can no longer be regarded as an abstract concept or a distant goal. It is an urgent need that involves much more than simply protecting the environment. For it is a matter of justice – social, economic and human. 

For believers it is also a duty born of faith, since the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed. In a world where the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution, care for creation becomes an expression of our faith and humanity.”

Now is the time to follow words with deeds.”

I hope to offer reflections on the Season of Creation each day this month.

September 9th I will be presenting a Day of Prayer on the Season of Creation at the Thomas Berry Spiritual Center in Jamaica, New York, The day will center on the new Mass of Creation. From 9 AM to 2 PM. Interested? Call : (929) 357-6700        Email: team@thomasberryplace.org

For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

The desire Augustine saw in himself he also saw in us, a desire that brings restlessness and a thirst only satisfied at the fountain of true wisdom and everlasting love – Jesus Christ. 

“‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.’“The Lord himself, our God Jesus Christ, is the fountain of life; and he calls us to himself so that we may drink from him. Who will drink? Whoever loves; whoever is filled with the word of God; whoever adores enough, whoever desires enough; whoever is on fire with the love of wisdom.

  See the source from which that fountain flows. It comes from the same place that the manna came from in the wilderness – for the same person is both bread and fountain, Christ our Lord and God, for whom we should always hunger. Even if we eat him, the bread, with love, even if we devour him with desire, let us still hunger for him like starving people. So when we drink him, the fountain, let us always drink him with overflowing love, filled with longing and delighting in the gentle taste of his sweetness.

  For the Lord is gentleness and delight. We may eat and drink of him but still we will be hungry and thirst for more; for he is our food and drink that can never be entirely consumed. He can be eaten but there will always be more left. He can be drunk but he can never be drained dry. Our bread is eternal; our fountain lasts for ever, our fountain is sweet. 

So Isaiah says: come to the water all you who are thirsty – the fountain is for the thirsty, not for the surfeited. He calls the hungry and the thirsty to himself, and they can never drink enough: the more they drink, the more they desire to drink.

 Spiritual writers after Augustine took up the Augustine’s insights:

 If you are thirsty, drink from the fountain of life; if you are hungry, eat the bread of life. Blessed are they who hunger for that bread and thirst for that fountain; they eat and drink for ever and still they desire to eat and drink. For it is lovely above all things, that which is always eaten and drunk, always hungered and thirsted for. ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good.’”  St.Columbanus

The Church repeats his teaching in the prayer for his feast:

Renew in your Church, we pray, O Lord, the spirit with which you endowed your Bishop Saint Augustine that, filled with the same spirit, we may thirst for you, the sole fount of true wisdom,and seek you, the author of heavenly love.. Amen

In a beautiful section of his Confessions St. Augustine describes his mother Monica’s last days at Ostia, the seaport of Rome, where they were preparing to sail for their home in Africa. Monica, taken sick, was on her way to another homeland.  

The two of them were “leaning against a window looking out on a garden…inquiring what you are and what the eternal life of the saints would be like, for ‘Eye has not seen nor ear heard no human heart conceived it’”

“For my part, my son, I no longer find pleasure in anything this life holds,” his mother said, “ What I am doing here still, or why I am still here, I do not know, for worldly hope has withered away for me. There was only one thing I desired to live for in this life: to see you a Catholic Christian before I died. And my God has granted this to me more lavishly than I could have hoped, letting me see even you spurning earthly happiness to be his servant. What am I still doing here?”

Shortly after, Monica fell unconscious from the fever. 

She revived and said to Augustine and his brother at her side, “You are to bury your mother here”. 

“It would be better for you to be buried in your own homeland,” his brother said to her.

 “‘What silly talk!’ she replied, ‘Lay this body anywhere, and take no trouble over it. One thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.’ 

“Having made her meaning clear to us with such words as she could manage, she fell silent, and the pain of the disease grew worse.”

His mother’s death was a graced time when they drank in their thirst from “the fountain of life which is you”, Augustine wrote.  

We’re reading from the 1^st Letter of Paul to the Corinthians for almost the next three weeks at weekday Mass. A long stretch for one of Paul’s letters in our lectionary. It’s an important letter because it gives us a good look at what an early 1^st century Christian community was like. Can we learn from it how to look at our churches and communities today?

The first thing you notice– this isn’t a perfect church. It has strengths and weaknesses, but its weaknesses seem more obvious than its strengths. That’s because Paul’s letter is written to correct abuses and answer questions troubling members of this church. What’s the first thing we might learn? Our church will never be perfect.

But Paul does not begin the letter with abuses, he speaks of the faithfulness of God, who is always at work purifying and strengthening his church.

Corinth was one of the great port cities of the Roman world, a melting pot for people and cultures of every kind. It had a reputation for moral depravity. Paul went there in the year 51, after visiting Athens where he used all his his skill trying to bring the gospel to the Athenians. Evidently, his visit was disappointing. Moving on to Corinth, he went first to the Jews to announce the gospel, as he customarily did, but they turned him away. Then, gentile hearers mostly from the poor of the city embraced the faith.

The situation caused Paul to reflect on what he experienced. The church is a mystery of God. You can’t judge it by human wisdom or explain it in human terms. It’s God’s church, God’s community, and the Spirit of God is at work. It grows according to God’s plan, not human planning. His task, Paul realizes, is to discern what God wills as the work unfolds.

In Ist Corinthians we have Paul’s humble acknowledgment that, though he is founder of this church, he is a servant among many servants. Other teachers, Apollos and perhaps Peter, labored in this church and factions have gathered around them. There’s a danger when human teachers take the place of God, Paul writes.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive wages in proportion to his labor. For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Corinthians 3, 6-9)

We’re God’s field, God’s building. What’s God planting? What’s God building? Questions for us to ask.

Because God reveals himself to us gradually, day by day. The scriptures are a privileged place where God speaks St. Paul says today to the Thessalonians: “We thank God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is the word of God.”

God speaks to us in our readings. “They make the voice of the Holy Spirit sound again and again in the words of the prophets and apostles…The Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talk with them,” the Constitution on Divine Revelation says. (DV 21,22)

“The Lord be with you,” we say, announcing the gospel. Jesus is with us now, speaking to us here and now in our readings..

How should we hear and read God’s word? Some say by reading and listening deeply. Deep listening, deep reading is more than listening and reading for facts. “Give us 20 minutes we’ll give you the world,” one news stations says. and for 20 minutes we hear facts. We browse online, looking for facts, for news, for entertainment. The online world is awash with facts. That kind of reading and listening, some say, endangers our capacity for deep listening and deep reading — for contemplation.     

Prophets like Ezechiel say they devoured God’s word. They ate it, chewed on it, digested it. That’s because God feeds us little by little. We learn little by little. We absorb little by little. We are slow learners. 

Deep reading not only applies to the scriptures we read, it applies also to the prayers we say and saints, like St. Augustine, St.Monica, St. John the Baptist, whom we remember this week.

Blessed Dominic Barbari, whom the Passionists remember today, reminds us of the power of daily learning. He never attended a major university or got a degree, yet he ministered to brilliant figures, like John Henry Newman. He is an example of daily learning.

From September 1st to October 4, the Feast of Francis of Assisi, we are celebrating with other Christians a Season of Creation. We need to see creation prayerfully in a deeper way than a weather report.. 

Prayerful deep reading and listening leads to more than facts. It leads to what God wishes to say, and we never know what that will be. “When you open your sails to the Holy Spirit, you never know on what shores you will land,” St. Jerome said.

“The word of God is now at work in you who believe.”