Soul Food for Sundays

Reflection for World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, 1st September 2024

Reflections 1st September 2024
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Author: Carol McCabe
calendar_today Date: August 14, 2024 - 3 minutes read

Catholic Sunday Mass Readings for September 1 2024, Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – Sunday Homily

It is easy to take our natural world for granted. We see nature all around us, but do we really see it?

The whole cycle of life and creation is in our seasons – waiting, being fully alive, decline and death – a mirror of our own lives.

There is a whole world out there, not so different to us and our lifecycle. Look at the birds of the air and fish of the sea which do not worry about what they have to eat or where to live. They are provided for since creation began, and we too were promised that we would be looked after. We only have real difficulties when those with more than they need do not share with those who do not have enough to survive.

The Global North has an abundance of food and wealth while in other parts of the world people are starving and living in poverty – an imbalance in our shared world due to greed.

War was never part of Creation; everyone had an equal share at birth, but their place of birth may determine the share of earth’s abundance that some people receive. Greed creates difficulties in our natural world where rain forests are cut down and land is used for industrialisation in an unbalanced way.

We must come back to the realisation that earth / nature is a gift to use and enjoy, not to abuse.

Human life is only one form of life on this earth. We must respect and live in harmony with all other forms of life that have been created – forests, birds of the air, fish of the seas and all other living creatures – and that we are blessed to have on our temporary home, called earth. (God’s creation)

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay