Monthly Prayer Guide

Editorial page

This monthly prayer guide is crafted for members of our global Laudato Si’ Movement to use personally or in community. Each edition offers reflections and testimonies from voices within our worldwide family, inviting us to pray, contemplate, reflect, and act for the care of our common home.

As we continue journeying through this extraordinary year, we are called to Raise Hope—commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Laudato Si’ encyclical, the founding of the Laudato Si’ Movement, and 800 years of the Canticle of the Creatures. These significant milestones invite us to deepen our commitment to integral ecology, to celebrate the gift of creation, and to walk together in unity as one human family.

The theme for August—For mutual coexistence, recognizing that we are all God’s creatures—reminds us that all living beings are interconnected, worthy of care, and part of God’s sacred creation. This truth compels us to reject division and domination, and instead embrace a spirit of peace, humility, and communion with all life.

This year’s monthly intentions are rooted in the Pope’s universal prayer intentions for 2025, enriched through the lens of Laudato Si’. Each one helps us see how our faith calls us to ecological conversion and to justice for all creation. 

We also look ahead to the Season of Creation, from September 1 to October 4, a sacred time when Christians around the world unite in prayer and action for our common home. Let this be a season of renewal—a time to raise our prophetic voices and recommit to caring for creation with love and urgency.

May this guide move us to act with courage, to love with purpose, and to build a world where all creatures can live in harmony. One prayer, one action, one step at a time.

Hear Creation’s Song

Monthly intention:

For mutual coexistence recognizing that we are all God’s creatures

Quote of the month:

“To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God’s love and hope” LS 85

Prayer of Confession and Intercession

(By Rev. James Bhagwan, Fiji via World Council of Churches)

Creator God, God of the oceans,
God of the land and all that is within it: You created this world with the power of your word.
You formed humankind with your own hands, and breathed your own breath into us.
You gave us these lands as a gift– a source of our identity and sustenance.
you empowered us to be the stewards of what you have made.

Loving God,
we have failed you and abused the gift you have given us.
We have offended you and defiled what you have made.
Forgive us for betraying your trust.
Forgive us for our greed and arrogance.
Forgive us for what we have done to your earth.
Forgive us for what we have done to your oceans.
Forgive us for what we have done to your creatures,
on the land, in the sky and in the depths.

Hear, O God of Compassion:
The cries of the land have become a desert; land laid barren through corrupt
agricultural practices, pollution, mining and deforestation.
The cries of islands are drowning in the rising seas,
oceans that rise with the melting of the ice.
The cries of distress from Mother Earth- storm and drought.

God of Life,
heal your wounded earth. Empower us to choose the road that leads to life.
Guide us in the paths of righteousness for your name’s sake
So that we may experience once again your Shalom in the land and in the sea.
This we ask in the name of the one who came that we way have life in
abundance, your Son, our Saviour Jesus the Christ.
Amen.

Hear Creation’s Cry

Monthly reflection to deepen our eco-conversion

Graced Encounters in the Community of Creation: God’s Invitation to Ecological Conversion

Dr. Ann-Maree O’Beirne RSM, Laudato Si’ Animator, Australia

Standing on mountaintops, climbing trees, watching lambs being born, and playing with puppies and kittens—these are cherished memories from my childhood on a farm. When I look back on them through the lens of God’s loving presence, I now see them as sacred moments—graced encounters within the community of creation. Each one gently invited me to recognize the holiness of nature and opened my heart to an ecological conversion—a growing awareness of creation’s suffering and a desire to respond.
As I reflect on this journey, I realize it’s been a lifetime of graced encounters. And yet, each new moment with creation still opens a door to a deeper relationship with God and the world around me. Some of these moments stand out more than others because they transformed me—shaping both my spiritual path and my understanding of a suffering Earth.
One such moment came in the mid-1990s, during a difficult and lonely time in my life. I was quietly turning the pages of two photography books—landscapes, trees, beaches—and suddenly, something shifted. A lightness broke through the darkness. Those images became reminders of God’s creative presence. At that moment, I felt recreated. I now look back on that day as a turning point, a graced encounter that brought me closer to God. It eventually led me to make a 30-day silent retreat in the Ignatian tradition, and later, to become a Sister of Mercy.
During my novitiate in 2000, I was introduced to the “New Universe Story,” which helped me understand, from a scientific and spiritual perspective, that everything in creation is deeply connected. A year later, I lived in the Aboriginal community of Mulan, Western Australia, where I encountered the ancient wisdom of Indigenous people and their profound connection to land. These experiences deepened my sense of belonging in creation.
In 2007, our Bathurst Sisters of Mercy transformed our novitiate property into an Ecological Learning Community called Rahamim—a Hebrew word for “mercy.” This became a ministry of healing for the Earth. We recognized that our planet, like so many people, was in need of compassion. Working alongside environmental advocates, or “eco-warriors,” we learned sustainable ways of living. Together, we shared spiritual insights that helped us understand how ecological destruction affects the poor most deeply. Those seven years at Rahamim became a season of “germination”—when the seeds planted in my childhood and spiritual journey began to take root.
In 2014, I began a PhD focused on “Finding God in All Things.” Drawing from Ignatian spirituality, Karl Rahner’s theology of grace, Denis Edwards’s ecological theology, and Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, I explored how we can experience God in the beauty—and pain—of creation.
That same year, I experienced profound personal loss. Both of my parents passed away from leukemia, and my younger brother died after a long illness. My grief grew to include the Earth itself—especially the trees. I had always felt a deep connection to them, and during the drought, many trees around me suffered and died. One that broke my heart was a beautiful elm tree at Rahamim, lost to a beetle infestation likely caused by climate change. Through prayer and reflection, I began to see even this suffering as another graced encounter. It became a spiritual practice: finding God in moments of loss and allowing that pain to shape my love for creation.
Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’, speaks of ecological conversion as something we feel: “The desertification of the soil as a physical ailment” or “the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement” (LS 89). This kind of felt experience opens us to change. And change begins with love. Every graced encounter with creation’s suffering moves me to respond—with hope, with compassion, with action.
In Laudate Deum, Pope Francis reminds us of Jesus’s deep relationship with all creatures: “the beings that accompany us along the way” (LD 1). He also warns that many of these creatures have become victims of our neglect (LD 15), and calls all of us to join a “pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world” (LD 69).
My journey of ecological conversion is ongoing. It has been shaped by academic study, prayer, and a deep attentiveness to the world around me. God continues to call me forward—to praise the beauty of creation, to mourn with what is lost, and to care for all living beings. With every small choice I make, I try to live with greater ecological awareness, knowing that this too is part of my spiritual path.