“Today, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation, raising to God our thanks for the marvellous works that He has entrusted to our care, invoking his help for the protection of creation and his mercy for the sins committed against the world in which we live. The celebration of the Day on the same date as the Orthodox Church will be a valuable opportunity to bear witness to our growing communion with our orthodox brothers and sisters. We live in a time where all Christians are faced with identical and important challenges and we must give common replies to these in order to appear more credible and effective” (Pope Francis)
More and more we are seeing unusual and extreme weather patterns in different parts of the world including the heatwave we had here recently. When you see the forests south of Bordeaux in France on fire and temperatures there averaging around 40C and the wildfires in Portugal and heat of near 50C, severe floods in so many places in the world where communities have to rebuild their homes (and villages and towns in some places). The reality of what is happening is beginning to hit more and more directly. Let us pray that the actions needed at this stage on all levels will be taken by those who can make the decisions necessary to bring change into play to stem the extremes and help in renewing the face of the earth.