In this Season of Creation, let us bring our common concerns to the Creator.
St. Francis grieved at sin and brokenness in all of creation, human and non-human. He was a man integrated in his vision of God’s creation.
Not too far from where he prayed outside the walls of Assisi, St. Clare was in deep contemplation in her monastery about the same concerns. She gazed at the Christ of San Damiano, prayed for healing, and actively sought to bring healing to others by witnessing to incarnate love and mercy.
Watching over both these poverelli of Assisi, was the Queen of the Franciscan Order, Mary, Mother of the Church, Our Lady of Joys, Our Lady of Sorrows. She commiserated with Francis’ sorrows and pains, just as she stood beside the foot of the Cross, bearing in herself the sufferings of her son, Jesus Christ. She looked kindly upon the petitions of Clare, who desired healing for the world and intercedes for a world in need of more childlike Christ-agents for peace and good. Our Mother is busy at work helping make ‘annunciations’ into ‘incarnations.’
During this season and beyond, let us not forget our call to missionary servanthood – at home, at church, at work, and in between, in our corner of creation. In kinship with creation, in prayer and in perseverance to be and live the answer to our own prayers, we experience the Edenic rhythm of shalom and play our part is the song of creation – carmen Dei.
This season, we reflect on how to make this ‘oikos’ (God-given home) a home for all. Let us pray for and live within the confluence of two rivers in our common home: one flowing with the purifying, renewing, living waters of the Creator Spirit; the other flowing with the life-source of the Logos, flowing from Christ’s self-offering, from the martyrs and the Cloud of Witnesses who followed Jesus’ example.
In the confluence of these two rivers let us pray that God’s love and mercy floods over our community of creation as we join to heal and transfigure our world! Let us reflect on cultivating God’s truth, goodness, and wholeness in our lives:
- Are we faithful servant and missionary disciples that attend to the beauty of the Creator within, in each other, and in the world around us?
- Do we cultivate our own pretentions, or do we cultivate our blessings and steward our resources to mend the cosmic kingdom and rebuild God’s church?
Only then will we able to properly hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. Only then will we understand the gospel meaning of greatness. Let us pray for the grace to follow Christ’s lesser way with undivided hearts!
– friar Cristofer Fernandez OFM Conv.
