Day 1: A Journey to Right Relationships
Ash Wednesday is a wonderful day to begin our series on environmental justice – with ashes on our foreheads, in the form of a cross. Today we are signs that we have come from the earth and that we will return to the earth. We are called to “Turn away from sin and believe the Good News.”
Lent is not a journey trying to do things to please God. Rather, we desire to use the means of prayer, fasting, penance and almsgiving to open our hearts to the gifts of a renewed personal encounter which God wants to give us.
Through this series, we are asking for the graces, which the Thirty-Fifth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus called a “Mission of Reconciliation,” a conversion to “right relationships with God, with one another and with creation.” (GC 35, Decree 3, #12)
Today we can ask, “Lord, reorient my whole heart to you, in new ways.” Let us ask for a growing awareness of and compassion for those who suffer as our planet suffers. Let us make this journey with hearts more attuned to those affected most as some of us, through privilege, greed and overconsumption, abuse our common home.
May this Lent stir us to a renewal of spirit – to return to our Lord with our “whole heart.”
Reflection Questions:
- What renewal am I being invited to in my relationship with God, with others, with creation?
- What more might I do, in my prayer, my reading, my habits, my work, my preaching, my advocacy, to express my reconciliation with creation?
Andy Alexander, S.J. is the Director of the Collaborative Ministry at Creighton University and Co-founder of the Online Ministries web site.
Andy Alexander, S.J. is the Director of the Collaborative Ministry at Creighton University and Co-founder of the Online Ministries web site.
Wa good start for my lent. But now I have tp pay attention to new ideas and inspiration, and not just put them in journal.
I am so grateful that ISN is doing this Lenten series on renewing the face of the earth. Already, the site is rich in climate information and the role of our church. An immense thank you for doing this needed and great program. I expect to glean good additional ideas for our local church’s new Care for Creation ministry from this fine Jesuit site. God bless you.