At the beginning of the Season of Creation, we are invited this year to live in peace with Creation, as pilgrims of hope.
The prophet Isaiah (32:14) describes a Creation left desolate and without peace due to the absence of justice and the broken relationship between God and humanity. In these times of ecological crisis, injustice, and search for meaning, prayer for Creation emerges not only as a spiritual response but also as a profound way of communion with God and with all creatures.
Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Marie Eugenie of Jesus offer two complementary paths that help us enter into a prayerful dialogue with nature, with the poor, and with God himself. Both teach us to see Creation not as a mere backdrop, but as a subject of prayer, encounter, and transformation.
Saint Francis, through the Canticle of the Creatures, showed us that all Creation — the sun, the moon, water, fire, animals — is capable of praising the Creator. His spirituality invites us to live a universal fraternity, where the human being is not master but brother to all that has been created. This vision inspires a prayer that listens to the whisper of the wind, the groaning of the wounded earth, and the cry of our brothers and sisters. Marie Eugenie, for her part, places prayer at the very heart of the Incarnation. For her, all of Creation is a gift that reveals the active presence of God in the world. Her words and her invitation to love our time urge us to embrace the reality of our fragmented and suffering world — but also beautiful and noble — and to make it our own, as Jesus did in his Incarnation. Mary, in her Assumption into Heaven, is the paradigm of this reality. In her statement, “the world is not big enough for my love,” Marie Eugenie expresses a grateful heart that contemplates the beauty and reality of Creation as a grace received.
Praying for Creation is therefore an act of gratitude and contemplation. From this grateful perspective arises a prayer that is not an escape, but an impulse towards ecological and social commitment. Franciscan spirituality and Marie Eugenie’s vision both affirm that authentic prayer transforms the one who prays and sends them into the world with a mission: TO CARE, TO HEAL, TO PROTECT.
On this path, contemplative silence becomes a source of action. The three pillars of Assumption life — prayer, community, mission — remind us that prayer is never isolated, but unites us with others and sends us forth in service. Caring for Creation is not only an ethical or ecological duty, but a profound mysticism, a concrete way of loving and following Jesus Christ.
Thus, to pray for Creation is to join all creatures in praise, to allow ourselves to be transformed by the gift of life, and to respond with concrete acts of care and justice. It is to enter into the dynamic of the Kingdom, where everything is called to be reconciled and transfigured in the love of God.
Cover Image: Nature is good, beautiful, and a shadow and reflection of God, the Creator
Introductory Image: The treatment of plastic, a challenge