Welcome to the Season of Creation

Christian World Service welcomes the Season of Creation which begins today, September 1 and runs to October 4, the Feast of St Francis of Assis.

The Season of Creation is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through repenting, acting, and rejoicing together. During the Season of Creation, we join our sisters and brothers in the ecumenical family in prayer and action for our common home.

This year, amid crises that have shaken our world, we’re awakened to the urgent need to heal our relationships with creation and each other. This is a time of restoration and hope, a jubilee for our Earth, that requires radically new ways of living with creation.

This year’s four-week celebration takes its theme from Amos 5:24, “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

We are invited to join the “river of justice and peace”.  The focus is on celebrating the earth as a gift of God for us all.  Churches, communities and individuals are encouraged to pray and act in ways that better care for our common home.

The main resource guide includes information, prayers and reflections.  Resource materials from international partners are available on the global website.

The Pacific Conference of Churches has adapted this guide for our region.

CWS has prepared Let’s Stand for the Ocean, a spring story from fish workers on the Tamil Nadu coast of South India.  We welcome donations to the Ocean Appeal as a practical action you may like to make in response to the Season.

The Season of Creation grew out of the first day of prayer for creation proclaimed by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I in 1989.  It has been picked up by Christians as a time of reflection and action on our global environmental responsibility.  ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together) of which CWS is a member, the Laudato Si movement, the Pacific Conference of Churches, the World Council of Churches and others are part of this global celebration.

 

September 1, 2023