Communal Prayer during the Season of Creation

In his message for this year’s Season of Creation, Pope Francis evoked his 2022 pilgrimage to Lac Sainte-Anne, Alberta, Canada, which is known as “a place of healing, consolation and love, a reminder that fraternity is true.”

When we “seek first the kingdom of God” (Mt 6:33), maintaining a right relationship with God, humanity and nature, then justice and peace can flow like a never-failing stream of pure water, nourishing humanity and all creatures. 
On a beautiful summer day in July 2022, during my pilgrimage to Canada, I reflected on this on the shores of Lac Ste. Anne in Alberta.  That lake has been a place of pilgrimage for many generations of indigenous people. Surrounded by the beating of drums, I thought: “How many hearts have come here with anxious longing, weighed down by life’s burdens, and found by these waters consolation and strength to carry on! Here, immersed in creation, we can also sense another beating: the maternal heartbeat of the earth. Just as the hearts of babies in the womb beat in harmony with those of their mothers, so in order to grow as people, we need to harmonize our own rhythms of life with those of creation, which gives us life”. 
During this Season of Creation, let us dwell on those heartbeats: our own and those of our mothers and grandmothers, the heartbeat of creation and the heartbeat of God… Lac Ste. Anne, I learned, is also a place of healing, consolation and love, a place that “reminds us that fraternity is genuine if it unites those who are far apart, [and] that the message of unity that heaven sends down to earth does not fear differences, but invites us to fellowship, a communion of differences, in order to start afresh together, because we are all pilgrims on a journey”.’

To read the rest of his message, click here.

Touched by this message, Sr. Sonal prepared a special Vespers service on a Sunday in
September. We prayed in our garden around the statue of St. Francis of Assisi. Sr. Sonal began by reading excerpts from the Pope’s message, then we sang the psalms of the day and meditated on the Word of God.

A raccoon quietly climbed the tree in front of us, settled down and meditated… This time of silent contemplation of creation in the garden at the end of the autumn day was truly a time of consolation and communion with this land, inhabited for centuries by the indigenous peoples.
May our concern to respect creation spur us on throughout the year.

Sr. Marie-Noëlle