LSM’s Monthly Prayer Guide – July 2024

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:

1. 1. Read the full guide to familiarize yourself with the content and plan how you will use it in the encounter.
   2. 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.
   3. 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 the formation of seminarians and clergy members to grow in their ecological conversion

“It is my hope that our seminaries and houses of formation will provide an education in responsible simplicity of life, in grateful contemplation of God’s world, and in concern for the needs of the poor and the protection of the environment.” (LS 214)

Forte de São Miguel Arcanjo, Nazaré (Portugal), where the highest waves in the world are produced.

Prayer of the month: Prayer for water

Creator, we turn our attention to
acknowledge and give thanks for Your
gift of water. The
mighty seas, the calm lakes, the rivers,
the streams, and the rain that falls to
refresh our sister mother earth.

At the beginning of creation You
sanctified the waters. Your gift is
indispensable to all life on
earth. It grows our food, it sustains all
living things physically. When we are in
need of spiritual
strength You instructed us to go down
to the water and wash our spirits clean.

Awaken the heart of those who exploit
Your gift for profit. And forgive those of
us who take Your gift for granted.

Help us to remember the preciousness of
Your gift and give us the wisdom to use
Your gift wisely and to share it equitably.

(Laudato Si’ Movement Prayer Book)

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Hear Creation’s Cry
Monthly reflection to deepen our eco-conversion

Priestly ministry called to care for our common home
Pbr. Rafael Muñiz López, Laudato Si’ Animator , Archdiocese of Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.  

To be able to share this text with you is a deep joy for me, since it is a bit of God’s action in my life through the encounter with my brothers and sisters and our mother earth, as Saint Francis of Assisi calls her. God gave me the grace of being born in a rural environment surrounded by nature and farmland along the Actopan River.

My formation began at the age of 18 when I entered the seminary. I was ordained as a priest in 1998, and during these 25 years I have been parochial vicar, pastor, formator and seminary teacher. In my time of formation, we did not think of pollution, the care of the common home, as something urgent, and even less as lines of pastoral action. Nineteen years ago, John Paul II wrote in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae: human beings are “called to till and look after the garden of the world…from the preservation of natural habitats…to human ecology”. This text is a milestone for subsequent formation, since it begins to raise awareness regarding the care of the common garden. However, there was no theme in the study plans that would lead the seminarians to start a process of awareness from the seminary itself. I must point out that as a student and formator of the human sciences area, we lacked, and still need, elements to be guides in the Church regarding this topic, since it was relegated to science, as if the action of caring for the common home corresponded only to scientists.

It is sad that despite the encyclical Laudato Si’, there are many bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians and lay people who remain on the margins of the commitment to care for the common home, although it is encouraging that some dioceses are already implementing pastoral actions in favor of its care.  In my case, it has been in recent years, when looking around at the environment where I grew up being devastated, that I began to understand that we Christians must be the first to lead actions in favor of the care of creation , and especially as pastors, to support what our Holy Father writes in Laudato Si’. I must confess that I had not had as much awareness and commitment as I do today. When I discovered the Laudato Si’ Movement, became part of it and studied the history of the present time, I understood that the basis for change is Franciscan spirituality and fraternity. I understand that I am part of a whole in the midst of all creation and therefore I must be a committed agent of evangelization; I must be more brotherly and responsible for my environment.

Like every human being and as consecrated persons, we must allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and a life experience that is the fruit of prayer, contemplation and interpretation that goes beyond the daily routine as St. Francis of Assisi did. The great challenge is to take action and be a voice that makes us see the errors that we as a society are causing to our environment, to be actors of change, to dare to turn what is happening to the whole world into personal suffering.

Last remaining glacier in Venezuela vanishes Venezuela marks a historic milestone in the climate crisis: it has become the first country in the world in the modern era to lose all of its bodies of ice (LSM Venezuela).

Questions for reflection

• For our ecological conversion, we feel inspired to go forward with the testimonies we receive in the process. Whether it is the witness of nature, such as the rural environment where Fr. Rafael grew up, or the witness of someone, such as Pope John Paul II with his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, it is important to realize which testimonies nourish our life to be able to take better care of creation. What are the testimonies that have influenced your life and your ecological conversion?
• When we think about the challenge of implementing more care for creation in seminaries, the challenge also arises to first know and know how the formation processes are going. Do you know the seminaries that exist in your city? Find out if it is possible to recommend a list of bibliographical references for the formation of seminarians, to include not only Laudato Si’ but also books and articles that develop the Catholic perspective of care for our common home.
• Have you already prayed for the seminarians and ordained in your diocese? How about creating the habit of praying for their ecological conversion every day?

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Hearing Creation’s Call
This month’s call to action:

In preparation for Season of Creation, take a look at the advocacy activity guidelines and how you can get involved with the FFNPT.

In July we begin the official preparation for the Season of Creation 2024, ” To hope and act with creation”. This month, the Pope’s Message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will be published and we will place special emphasis on understanding the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty through formative content.

Check out our blog to read about the FFNPT

Coming up: The Encounters process is still happening! See how you can prepare or participate in a national encounter 

If local, community and national encounters on the road to 2025 have not yet taken place in your country, we invite you to be on the lookout to participate as soon as possible. How can you prepare? By reviewing the new resources available for organizing encounters, available on our website.

Check out the resources here

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