Fourth Week in the Season of Creation: Contemplative Reverence

Let us boldly step out of our comfort zone, guided by the Holy Spirit to denounce unjust

policies and practices in response to “the cry of the earth and the poor.” (LS 49)

During the Fourth Week of the Season of Creation we focus on:

CONTEMPLATIVE REVERENCE and THE PARABLE of Sunday’s Gospel

Reading from the Prophet Isaiah.

To all who call out to God, know God’s nearness. We are invited to enter contemplative reverence in the midst of creation before the greatness of God, the source of Earth and all the universes. Contemplation of God’s creation in all its beauty, intricacy, and lavish goodness can spark love in our hearts and guide us in caring for it as it needs to be cared for.

How can we grow in an ecological spirituality, discover, and deepen our sense of wonder, praise, joy, and gratitude before God in creation?

ONE WAY: Go to your backyard, or a park and find something that captures your spirit. Spend time with it, look deeply and carefully at every aspect of it. Stay with it until you feel gratitude growing inside you for the grace of that time. Carry it in your heart.

The parable of the Landowner and the Workers. God’s ways are not our ways. The parable in the gospel in which the owner of the vineyard gives a full day’s wage to all, regardless of how long they worked, often stirs complaints about fairness. But 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 and care to meet the basic needs of all workers. It is not based upon comparative, competitive, unlimited accumulation.

God’s ways challenge us. We in turn challenge the powers that be to change the law and raise the minimum wage while providing paid sick leave for all Missourians. Sign the petition for a minimum wage increase and paid sick leave.

Prayer: May God bless us all with deep reverence and love for creation in all its beauty, intricacy, and

lavish goodness and guide us in caring for it wisely and well, God who is our Creator, Christ Jesus our

brother, and the Holy Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being now and forever. Amen

S. Gen Cassani, SSND