Week Four: March 14 – March 20
The Sunday readings for this week can be found here.
Reflection
God’s temple was a model of our Creation that was given to Israel as the place to remember, celebrate, and renew the covenant of peace that God began at the beginning. But like Israel’s sins against its temple, our actions have polluted and corrupted our earth’s creative and sustaining powers. Like the temple then, Pope Francis is warning us that our natural world is now burning. As a prophet he proclaims God’s direction for us to restore and protect our earth that is the dwelling place of God. Our psalm this week is a lament describing how exiled Israel wept when it remembered that their abuses of God’s covenant with the people and the land had damaged and alienated them from their natural home. But Jesus is calling us and empowering us to choose God’s light and life for ourselves and our mother earth that is struggling for its life and to continue to support us.
Action
1. What is a way that you can become more enlightened about specific destructive overuses of our earth’s life force that help us lament and seek to repent so our earth can celebrate God’s Sabbath rest?
2. What sustainable actions to repair and renew the earth’s life can you practically implement that will demonstrate our response to God’s gift of life and rest for the creation?
3. Reflect on God’s use of water, oil, ashes, bread, wine, fire, incense, stone and glass, breath and voices, sound and silence, ears, raised hands, heads, and feet to touch us with the sacramental saving actions. Allow this to inspire our reverence and compassion for the earth that has suffered “lost sabbaths.”
Source
Used for inspiration for the reflection:
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