Pope Francis now asks that every September 1st we set aside time to pray for creation at the start of a month-long ‘Season of Creation,’ ending on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4.
The Global Catholic Climate Movement suggests one of the prayers in Francis’ eco-enyclical Laudato Si’ - ‘A Prayer for Our Earth’, say - or St Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures.
Saving creation feels much more like something we do.
But read one of Pope Francis’ gurus, and the invitation becomes more compelling.
....the most frequently cited source in Laudato Si’, and specifically the Italian-born German thinker’s prophetic 1950 book The End of the Modern World.
Over many years vacationing in the early twentieth century on the shores of Lake Como, Guardini observed how the forms of houses become more angular and aggressive in relation to their surroundings. He detected the emergence of a new mentality that he called the ‘technocratic paradigm,’ one that sees nature as passive matter or an object to be manipulated.
Long before the term became fashionable, Guardini foresaw a new post-modern era in which the peoples of the world would become ever less differentiated and ever more conditioned by the state and by technology.
As man came to dominate nature, and religion lost its cultural hold, the influences of tribe and family and social class would fade, and humanity would look ever more like a “formless mass to be organized.”
But then, in the post-modern era, there would be a recovery.
Guardini looked to the emergence of a great leader, one “who alone can save our age from
As a description of Pope Francis, that’s not bad." CRUX
.....and all
the world
wondered after the beast.
Revelation 13:3
