LSM’s Monthly Prayer Guide
This resource is a guide for our movement members to use collectively or individually every month. Each month this prayer guide brings reflections and testimonies from different members of our global movement to inspire you to pray, contemplate, reflect, and act for creation. This month’s edition was prepared by Cheryl Dugan, Adrian Tambuyat, and Reynaldo Raluto from the Philippines, with the support of Suzana Moreira, from Brazil, and the strategic work by Guada García Corigliano from Argentina, design work by Marco Vargas from Ecuador, as well as work from others of the Communications team spread across the Americas and translators spread across the world.
If you prefer, you can download this resource in PDF format by clicking here.
How to use this prayer guide for an encounter
This year we are making some changes to this guide so it can better support you and your community. Here are a few tips for you to use this guide as the structure of an encounter:
- Read the full guide to familiarize yourself with the content and plan how you will use it in the encounter.
- Hold the encounter through the three steps: Hear Creation’s Song, Creation’s Cry, and Creation’s Call, making sure to prioritize time for common prayer, contemplative silence, and personal and shared reflection.
- After the encounter, remember to thank the participants and start planning for the next one, as well as continue to pray throughout the month with the month’s intention and prayer.
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Hear Creation’s Song
For our capacity to truly listen and become aware of the different dimensions of the climate crisis
“Our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest” (LS 204).
Libona Camp in Bukidnon, Philippines. Photo Courtesy of Lupad Studios
Tears of Creation (from the LSM Prayer Book)
Lord Jesus,
through Your incarnation
You shared the tears of creation
that “groans and suffers
the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8: 22)
You made human fragility your own
in climatic injustice,
in our fears, and in our worries.
When anguish tries to prevail
over the oppressed peoples and over us,
we ask You to bring Your loving
presence to our hearts,
in order to rediscover the purpose
of our presence in the world. Amen
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Hear Creation’s Cry
Monthly reflection to deepen our eco-conversion
The Spark of Environmental Activism
Fr. Reynaldo D. Raluto
Parish Priest of Jesus Nazareno Parish
Libona, Diocese of Malaybalay, Philippines
LSM Pilipinas
My ecological conversion did not happen as a single event. It initially emerged in the context of the two crucial events of environmental activism in the Diocese of Malaybalay. The first was in July 1987 when, as a pre-college seminarian, I witnessed the poor parishioners of San Fernando (Bukidnon), staging a picket against logging companies that operated in their watershed. Their protest had successfully pressured the government to put the whole province of Bukidnon under a logging moratorium in 1990 but one of our diocesan priests, Nery Lito Satur, was brutally killed on October 14, 1991 for zealously implementing this order.
The second happened in November 1999, a few months before my presbyteral ordination, when I witnessed a coalition of civil society groups that strategically formed a series of human barricades to block the series of logging trucks from passing along the highways of Bukidnon. Fortunately, the legal case between the logging company and the civil society barricaders reached the Supreme Court, which finally ruled in favor of the protesters.
With hindsight, I realize that my experience of environmental activism has crucially shaped my vocation and pushed my priestly ministry to embrace an inclusive community: to be a padre cura (i.e., a priest who cares) for the poor and the earth. These events also made me realize that priests are called to care not only for the community of human persons (cura personalis) but also for the larger Earth community (cura terrae).
In the Philippines, there is an ongoing movement not only to re-root our Basic Ecclesial Communities back to the fundamental context of human communities but also to enlarge them by becoming basic ecological communities. It is clear to us that our appropriation of an ecological perspective of community does not seek to abandon the existing struggles for human liberation but rather to complete them.
I am grateful for having been given the opportunity to theologize in the context of people’s option to struggle for human and ecological liberation, which is clearly a positive “sign of the time.” In the Philippine experience, this holistic struggle for liberation has strategically originated from the rural grassroots whose daily survival entirely depends on the providence of nature. Thus, in the spirit of synodality, it is imperative for theologians to live as close as possible by their side in order to be able “to hear their heartbeat” and to accompany them in their journey towards the fullness of life.
My pastoral engagements with the poor reveal that the grassroots communities from the rural areas have a distinctive closeness to nature, which allows them to have a more developed mystical capacity to hear the “cry of the Earth.” In the context of today’s climate crisis, their cry for ecological justice is their way of amplifying the unheard voices of countless ecological victims. Thus, from an ecological perspective, listening to the cry of the poor and to the groaning of the Earth are logically inseparable.
Landslide in a gold mining village that claimed almost 100 lives in Davao de Oro, southern Philippines. Screengrabbed from Aerial Footage of Renante Naparan AFPTV/AFP]
Questions for reflection
- Take a moment to recall a specific environmental catastrophe that impacted you in your journey of ecological conversion. Notice how you feel as you remember this event. Think about the creatures who may have been affected by that catastrophe, both humans and others. Notice the physical sensations in your body as you reflect on the different dimensions of this event and offer a prayer for any consequences that may be still taking place because of it.
- Extreme weather leads to extreme social unrest, along with many other consequences to the fabric of society. Sometimes, when we struggle to find a solution to the climate or environmental crisis, the solution might be found by looking at it from a different point of view. Reflect on how you can create encounters with different people to share, listen, and learn from one another, sharing different points of views, and collectively thinking of creative solutions to the problems present in your region.
- As we celebrate Easter season this month, remember that Christ has redeemed the whole cosmos, both the human community and the Earth community. Think about concrete ways you or your community can better listen to the different dimensions of the climate crisis where you live and take time to discern at least 3 concrete steps you can take to heal the cries of the Earth and the poor.
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Hearing Creation’s Call
This month’s call to action
Happy Easter!
Christ, the Redeemer of the whole cosmos, has risen! May the joy and hope of the Resurrection fill our hearts with love, peace and hope. This is our desire from the Laudato Si’ Movement.
Coming up: Prepare for encounters during Laudato Si’ Week
Laudato Si’ Week 2024 already has a date and theme! As every year, we celebrate the birthday of Laudato Si’ for an entire week. It will be from May 19 to 24, with the theme “Seeds of Hope”. Also during that time, our synodal road towards 2025 will be marked by local, regional and fraternal encounters in each country where LSM is alive.
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