The parish bulletin is back after the summer break. Hope you all are continuing to enjoy the beautiful summer days. We have been lucky that God has kept us away from natural disasters this summer especially the forest fires. We thank God for the same. 

As we enter the new month (September) we begin the month by dedicating the first day of the month to World Day of Prayer for the care of creation. God has taken great care in creating this nature and He has created us and made us the crown of creation. On May 24th, 2015, Pope Francis published his second encyclical, Laudato sí and highlighted the need to renew our commitment to the care of of our mother earth. In this encyclical, The Pope, referred to creation in terms of a Gospel, and invited us to recognize in creation a great act of God which is beneficial to humans. It invites us to consider creation as an act of God, with a design and a purpose that is not based on the human person but based on God’s own design for creating everything.

In addition, it is an invitation to seek God’s design in everything that is created. Book of Genesis tells us that God designed creation so that it would be our home. 

The human tendency to destroy and alter the natural environment is, according to Pope Francis, the result of sin. But through universal reconciliation with every creature, Saint Francis Assisi, in some way, returned to the state of original innocence.

Pope Francis quotes from a variety of Biblical sources all leading to the conclusion that “clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures.” “Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection.”

So, we are not only responsible to honour and protect human life from its conception to its natural end in death, but also to take care of the nature with equal concern and responsibility. 

We will also be celebrating following feasts and memories of saints this week:

September 3: St. Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Gregory was born around 540 A.D. into worldly prestige – his family belonged to the Roman nobility and his father was prefect, or mayor, of the city. He was also heir to a Christianity profoundly lived, for his mother and aunt are saints. “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor,” the Lord had said, and Gregory heard that voice penetrating his own heart. The prefect of Rome turned his family’s villa on the Caelian hill into a monastery, left the office of prefect and became a monk renowned for his love of poverty. As he put it, he kept watch in the “silence of the heart.”

The Pope was known to invite the poor regularly to his own table, sharing his meals with them. 

September 8: Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

This is one of the most ancient Marian feasts. It is thought that this feast originated in connection with the Feast of the dedication of a church dedicated to Mary, now the Church of St Ann, in Jerusalem in the 6th century. Tradition holds that this is where the house of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Ann, stood and where she would have been born. The Feast began to be celebrated in Rome in the 8th century with Pope Sergius I (8 September 701). It is the third such feast of a “nativity” on the Roman Calendar: the Nativity of Jesus, the Son of God (Christmas); the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (24 June); and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8 September). 

Have a blessed week!