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 Suzana Moreira from Brazil, with the support of Christina Leaño from the USA, and the strategic work by Guada 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 a deeper ecological conversion recognizing our ecological sins
“Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community…[it] makes manifest ‘a tragic and striking example of structural sin’” (LD 3).
As the world’s largest continuous wetland, the Pantanal spans parts of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. This natural treasure is renowned for its incredible wildlife diversity and covers an expansive area of approximately 195,000 square kilometers during the rainy season. In the dry seasons, many flooded areas transition into swamps, lagoons, and smaller watercourses. (Photo: Getty Images/Natphotos)
Prayer of the month
Be praised, my Lord, God-Trinity:
Ever the source, grace, and hope of Full Life.
Be praised, my Lord, for your Mother Mary
whom Latin-Americans call by the name of
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Be praised, my Lord, for all those who
sensitively and integrally do not let
the ECHO of LIFE resonate in vain.
We beseech you, Lord, for all
trampled, plundered, and marginalized
human beings.
We beseech you, Lord, especially
for the communities that suffer from hunger,
who have nothing to wear and no place to live,
“almost lifeless”,
victims of economic exploitation and abuse
of a consumerist, utilitarian,
heartless, loveless society.
We beg on behalf of all creatures,
whether animate or inanimate,
works of God’s love,
continually facing threats of extinction, exploitation, destruction, and exhaustion:
All of these beings testify to the fact that our God calls us to embrace integral ecology.
Amen!
Prof. Telmo Pedro Vieira – Laudato Si’ Animator – Brazil
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Hear Creation’s Cry
Monthly reflection to deepen our eco-conversiony
Our God: a God who calls us to embrace integral ecology
Prof. Dr. Telmo Pedro Vieira, Laudato Si’ Animator, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil
As a Catholic Christian guided since childhood by Franciscan friars, I learned to love nature as a reflection of God’s love. Upon completing the Laudato Si’ Animators Program, motivated by the apostolic exhortation Dear Amazon, I took on as an ecological conversion project the commitment to publicize the Latin American reality, aiming at creating awareness on the care of Creation.
We, Latin-Americans, have been blessed by the Creator with a land where a river of Amazonian waters runs through its open veins and promotes life. We have been graced by various biomes, which manifest the reflection of God’s creation in their biodiversity. We have been blessed with a people who seek to live their vocation as children of God and who care for the Common Home.
In the beauty of Latin America, we realize that we have been created by a God who is eager to expand his Life. It turns out, however, that the Latin American reality is not just made up of beauty: it echoes the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. This cry is caused by anthropocentrism, which fails to understand that the world did not emerge by chance, nor was it created by human beings. A society that forgot that all creatures are a gift, an original gift in relationship with one another. Because the giver is God, the Creator, every creature is worth great value. It is not just a value we give each creature, a value that we decide upon, but rather a value that arises from the fact that each creature is a gift from God.
When we look at all the countries in Latin America as a whole, we realize that life is glaringly frail. We are witnessing environmental destruction not only in the Pan-Amazonian countries, but throughout the South American continent. We witness the degradation of life and Indigenous people, traditional riverside communities, Maroons, migrants, and the poor are the most affected by it. We witness deforestation, drought, hunger, water and food insecurity, violence, and the death of Indigenous People fighting for the forest, the murder of environmentalists and environmental activists.
Faced with this reality, we are called to echo the cry of Pope Francis who asks us to listen to the “cry of the Earth and the cry of the Poor”.
In his apostolic exhortation Dear Amazon, Pope Francis invites us to dream with him the four great dreams that the Amazon has granted him:
I dream of an Amazon region that fights for the rights of the poor, the original peoples and the least of our brothers and sisters, where their voices can be heard and their dignity advanced.
I dream of an Amazon region that can preserve its distinctive cultural riches, where the beauty of our humanity shines forth in so many varied ways.
I dream of an Amazon region that can jealously preserve its overwhelming natural beauty and the superabundant life teeming in its rivers and forests.
I dream of Christian communities capable of generous commitment, incarnate in the Amazon region, and giving the Church new faces with Amazonian features. (DA 07)
To conclude, I would like to remind you that the encyclical Laudato Si’ is based on the prayer by Francis of Assisi, “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore”, which expresses an invitation to ecological conversion. We need to turn to God because God is the defender of Life. He is the Savior who sees, hears, knows all our suffering, all the groaning of Creation and comes down to free us and redeem us (Ex 3,7-8 and Rm 8,19-23).
An aerial view depicts the drought-affected Rio Negro, near the community of Santa Helena do Inglês in the city of Iranduba, State of Amazonas, Brazil. Increasingly, Brazil is grappling with extreme weather events. Experts predict a worsening drought in the Amazon, intensified heat in the Midwest and Southeast regions, and heavy rainfall in the South. (Photo: Reuters – Bruno Kelly)
Questions for reflection
- Great projects and movements in the world started because of a dream. Dreams motivate us to act and build a better world. What are your dreams to fix the climate and socio-environmental crises? Think both locally and globally.
- This month of February we enter the season of Lent, when we have the opportunity to give special attention to the aspects of our lives that still hurt the divine plan of Love. Reflect with discernment on what your ecological sins are. Make a commitment during these 40 days of Lent to fight an ecological sin in your life and thus deepen your ecological conversion to care for God’s Creation.
- We often forget that “all is interconnected” and that is why we have trouble seeing how our local reality is connected with reality in other places. Reflect carefully on how your local reality is connected to the socio-environmental destruction in Latin America and, if necessary, research on it to learn more.
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Hearing Creation’s Call
This month’s call to action: Laudato Si’ Lent 2024
Lent is a special season for reflection and action through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, so this year we’ll live it more profoundly by focusing on the theme “Listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” (LS 49).
We invite Catholics to live this special liturgical season by repenting of their ecological sins, reading and reflecting on the content of our Lent calendar, and reconciling their relationship with the Earth through concrete actions according to the regional campaigns.
Browse the Laudato Si’ Lent calendar! A curated blend of calendar touchstones, Gospel reflections, and regional calls to action. This calendar links the contemplative spirit of the Lent Season with the need for ecological conversion through repentance, reflection, and reconciliation.
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