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Thursday, March 28, 2024

On Earth Day, creation care team promotes time spent in nature, prayer

Watch a sunrise. Plant a flower. Walk through nature. These are some of the ways the Archdiocesan Care for Creation Team suggests Catholics observe Earth Day, April 22. And then, after intentional time in nature, the team is inviting Catholics to unite online that evening in prayer for that creation.

It’s the first event hosted by the Archdiocesan Care for Creation Team, which is still taking form. It was sparked by an email from a Catholic asking what the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was doing in the area of caring for creation, and within a few months, grew from an idea to a group with representatives from eight parishes as well as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and Consociates.

Adam Fitzpatrick, the social mission outreach coordinator of the Center for Mission, which serves the archdiocese, is coordinating the group. From an archdiocese-wide parish survey he conducted last year, he estimates about 10 percent of parishes have consistent creation care efforts. Which means that there is interest, but also room for growth, he said.

“There are enough parishes doing something individually to get buy in, but could benefit from something that was more regionally focused because of some of the legislative aspects in particular,” he said.

He noted that the group is guided by the principle of subsidiarity and not trying to overstep parish efforts underway.

The group is still determining its vision, mission and aims, but it wanted to leverage Earth Day’s 50th anniversary this year to help Catholics think about their responsibility to care for creation.

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A promotional poster encourages participants to start their day April 22 with intentional time in nature, to “connect with and honor the earth and the natural world in a meaningful and reflective manner that invites you to experience and respond to the image of God in creation.”

Then, at 5:30 p.m., the group will host a half-hour prayer vigil on Zoom with readings, song and quiet reflection.

This year also marks the fifth anniversary of “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home,” Pope Francis’ encyclical on human ecology.

Fitzpatrick, who joined the Center for Mission in 2018, pointed to “Laudato Si’” as expounding a Catholic vision of creation and humankind’s responsibility to it. With the document, “Pope Francis really calls for a sense of ecological conversion,” he said. “And that means not just the actions and the systemic change that we need, but also just a reflection of how we live our lives.”

For the Earth Day event, the goal for the morning’s intentional time in nature “is being appreciative, grateful and understanding of what creation is happening around us,” Fitzpatrick said. The focus for the evening is to share communal prayer, even amid the social distancing required by the COVID-19 pandemic.

To learn more about a Catholic vision of human ecology and creation, Fitzpatrick recommended “Laudato Si’” and the Minnesota Catholic Conference’s related 2019 document, “Minnesota, Our Common Home.” He also recommended the websites of the Catholic Climate Covenant and Global Catholic Climate Movement.

“Whether or not you believe climate change is true, it is still our responsibility in the Catholic moral tradition to be good stewards of the world around us,” he said. “That has been a consistent witness over time, and so being connected to the environment and leaving it better than we inherited it, that’s an important step for continuing to provide as good of a world as we can provide.”

Observing Earth Day during the COVID-19 pandemic “creates an interesting situation, because we’re seeing how rapidly the world can change pace, and things we thought were not possible now seem very possible,” Fitzpatrick said, noting, in particular, air pollution reduction. “We can do a lot of telecommuting, we can increase our internet infrastructure to host more Zoom calls. The biggest lesson is that change is possible. It is possible to create quick change to meet the challenges of climate change. Now, whether we have the will to do so will be based on our reflection going forward … seeing that the effects of climate change seem further off than they really are.”

Parishes currently represented on the Care for Creation Team are Gichitwaa Kateri, St. Frances Cabrini and St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis; St. Dominic in Northfield; St. Joseph in New Hope; St. Joseph in Red Wing; St. Maximilian in Delano; and St. Thomas More in St. Paul. To learn more about the Archdiocesan Care for Creation Team, visit centerformission.org.

Connect to the Care for Creation Zoom meeting at 5 p.m. April 22https://zoom.us/j/258812734

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