Third Sunday in the Season of Creation


Today is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time and the 3rd Sunday in the Season of Creation. 

Today’s homily is adapted from Jubilee Time for the Earth: A Catholic Liturgical Guide.[1]  It calls us to listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor and acknowledges that God is near to all who call.

Isaiah’s urgent call to seek God while God is near and can be found, resonates deeply with the warnings of climate experts for these times.  We are invited to enter into contemplative reverence in the midst of creation before the greatness of God, the source of Earth and all the universe. Love of God’s creation in all its beauty, intricacy, and lavish goodness can spark love in our hearts and guide us in caring for creation as it needs to be cared for.  In what ways can we grow in consciousness of God’s gifts and presence in creation? Do we call upon God for forgiveness? For wisdom in living more sustainably, more justly, and more generously upon Earth?

In Pope Francis’ reflection for today, he says, “In today’s Gospel reading there is the parable of the day labourers in the vineyard, which Jesus recounts in order to explain two aspects of the Kingdom of God: the first is that God wants to call everyone to work for his Kingdom; the second is that, in the end, he wants to give everyone the same reward, that is, salvation, eternal life.”[2]

In today’s homily, I address the first aspect.  That is, that God wants to call everyone to work for the Kindom.  God’s ways are not our ways. In this Gospel parable, the owner of the vineyard gives a full day’s wage to everyone, regardless of how long they worked.  This often brings out complaints about fairness.  Those who worked the longest, the whole day, received what they had agreed was a just wage. The wages of day laborers are often all that their family has to survive on for a given day; and so, the generosity of the vineyard owner served to meet the people’s basic daily needs. This parable shows us a compensation system based on the agreed-upon value of certain work as well as care to meet the basic needs of all workers. It is not based upon comparative, competitive, unlimited accumulation.

God’s ways challenge us.  A central belief of the Catholic Social Tradition confesses that the Earth is God’s and everything in it. Creation is a gift of God to all people and all living creatures.  Creation is a gift to provide for the needs of all for survival, growth, and flourishing.

To accumulate and cling to more and more than one needs while others live in desperate poverty is a serious sin against creation and the Creator. It is the situation of human life on Earth today: a grave pattern of injustice that undermines peace and survival planet-wide. Climate change today is a result of the coming together of economic and social systems driven by greed and accumulation, governed to protect inequality, and built upon domination and destruction of Earth.

The biblical vision of Jubilee was chosen as the theme for this year’s celebration of the Season of Creation because, in the words of the international ecumenical steering committee, “Jubilee is a time to renounce overconsumption and economic systems based on constant economic growth at the cost of the Earth and those who are poor. “Jubilee is a time of rest for the land from constant exploitation, to restore ecosystems and people.”

“The theme of Jubilee affirms the need for equality, justice and sustainability, and a transition to sustainable economies.” How can we and our communities embrace God’s ways of Jubilee here, now? How can we do more to heal our relationships with God, with people, with Earth in ways that respond with love and care to the cry of the poor and the cry of Earth?

I’ll close with what I said in the introduction.  In this Season of Creation, we are being called to take up our prophetic responsibility in love to spread the word and to transform the ways we are living upon Earth. We must acknowledge our failures to care for creation and embrace God’s ways. 

 

Please share your thoughts.

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2023-06-04_Trinity Sunday_Pride Month

Image
Trinity Sunday_Pride Month June 4, 2023   Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity.   June is both Pride Month and Indigenous Peoples Month in Canada.   Today, I used one of the bible translations accepted by the English-speaking Church because I want to share with you how word choice can limit inclusive and creative thought.   Due to the patriarchal culture of the time, God is addressed as Adonai or Lord in speaking to God, with only the first letter capitalized, as is used by Moses’ prayer in the first reading.   The word LORD in all caps is used six times in today’s first reading.   The name of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible when speaking of God is the Tetragrammaton , romanized as YHWH .   However, the Jewish people traditionally do not pronounce it, and instead refer to God as HaShem , literally "the Name".   This conveys that God cannot be reduced to a “he/him” or a “she/her”.   The culture of our time allows for the use of non-gendered, all-encompassing wo
Read more

7 July 2013 – 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Image
Shared Homily Starter First Reading: Isaiah 66.10-14 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 62 Second Reading: Galatians 6:14-18 Gospel: Luke 10.1-12, [13-16], 17-20 Today’s gospel is about evangelization.   The word, “evangelization” has become, for many of us, a word that sends up red flags.   This is because, unfortunately, for almost two millennia, evangelization has been used more as a weapon than as an invitation to follow Christ’s example of peace and love.   Let’s examine evangelization from Jesus’ perspective.   He knows there are plenty of people out there who would be open to hearing the Good News.   He also knows that there are plenty who don’t want to hear it.   But Jesus sends out his disciples like lambs into a sea of wolves.   We live in a culture of ravenous consumption and accumulation.   We seek to accumulate more and more money, more and more power and more and more ad nauseam.   The more we have, the more we want and more we have to get; the more we get t
Read more

The High Cost of Free Trade for Indigenous and Afro-Colombians

Image
Victoria Marie, PhD Presented at the Racial Violence and the Colour Line of the New World Order Conference Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia April 2, 2005 The power of spreading the word… When governments speak they don’t speak the truth. Plan Colombia is not addressing social probems but spending more on war, which seems to have the aim of eliminating the civilian population (OFP, 2004) . Introduction Colombia has been in a state of civil war for the past 40 years. The combatants are the legitimately armed actors, such as the army and police; paramilitaries, who protect the interests of legal and illegal businesses; and two major groups of revolutionary forces. However, it is the civilian population that is most adversely impacted from the ongoing conflict. They are endangered by the warring factions, who routinely murder, displace or conscript them. The aim of this paper is to explore how this conflict and economic policies have adversely affected the people of colour in Col
Read more