Contemplatives & activists

Laudato Si’ Week 2023 will be celebrated May 21-28. The Laudato Si’ Movement Prayer Book is a very beautiful and rich resource to help us to be both contemplatives and activists, and in the words of  Dr. Lorna Gold a means to ‘discern how to act prophetically while living in hope’. 

In her introduction to The Laudato Si Movement (LSM) Prayer Book, Dr. Lorna Gold, Board Chair of LSM  writes:

Our work as the Laudato Si’ Movement is shaped by our values. We are grounded in faith and committed to spiritual transformation. We embrace contemplation and action so that we can discern how to act prophetically while living in hope. We are contemplatives and activists embracing the paradox of slow and fast rhythms to respond to the crises we are living. Our values guide us in the challenges of caring for our common home, which is never free from obstacles and frustrations.

Accepting these challenges, our values remind us to care for one another and cultivate unity within the diversity of the environmental movement, our Church, and our diverse societies and cultures. Truly, we have many wonderful partners!

About this Prayer Book

This Prayer Book emerges from the heart of the Laudato Si’ Movement. It is the fruit of their united walk, listening to one another and to all the branches that compose the beautiful tree that is their network. This is a compilation of prayers to guide us in our ecological conversion as individuals and as a community that cares and acts for creation.

This collection of prayers serves to lift up all who seek to care for our common home, whether in personal contemplation or shared reflection.

There are prayers for gatherings, prayers for retreats, prayers for protests, prayers for the hours of the days and seasons of the year, and so much more.

May these prayers deepen our journey along the path of ecological conversion, and like that great writer of prayers, the Psalmist, may we “sing as we go” (Laudato Si’ 244).

You can download the Laudato Si’ Movement Prayer Book LSM PRAYER BOOK

The book is structured into eight parts:

1)    Prayers from Laudato Si’
2)   Praying with creation
3)   Hearing creation’s song
4)   Hearing creation’s cry
5)   Hearing creation’s call
6)   Prayers for daily life
7)   Creation themed morning and evening prayers, and the
8)   Laudato Si’ Rosary.

The best way to navigate through this book is by paying close attention to the index and what each of those eight sections have to offer.

See also  About Laudato Si’ Movement Prayerbook

Foreword to LSM Prayer Book

We humans are all in relationship with God. God is the Creator and we are creatures whom God creates. When we pray, we pay attention to that relationship, learn about it, grow in it, get reshaped and renewed by it. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis implored and guided us to pay much more attention.

We humans should pay attention to our relationships to each other and to all the rest of the created order as well as to God.

Following Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis begins his encyclical with gratitude for all of Creation. The very title is a prayer of praise sung by all Creation for the Creator. Following science and conscience, Pope Francis begs us to hear “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

Since June 2015, when Laudato Si’ was published, millions of people have responded to his plea. People have acted in practical ways to improve our relationships with the earth and with each other. People have also prayed, in both traditional and new ways, for a healthier and more loving world called “our common home”. Inspired by the invitation to practice an “ecological spirituality” (LS 216), people are developing new prayers of words and of deeds. Let’s all pray.

This booklet shares many lovely prayers and prayer practices. You will find inspiration for how to express:

•   exhilaration, awe and joy at the wonders of the nature world
•   gratitude for all of nature’s gifts that sustain us
•   sorrow and shame at how we humans have mistreated the earth and each other and are continuing to do so
•   commitment to heal the earth and our human relationships.

Let us pray

When Jesus responded to the request “Lord, teach us to pray”, his suggestion began with these two words: “Our Father”. Our father, not my father – a father whom Jesus addressed as “Abba”, Daddy or Papá, not as a remote deity..

Nowadays we recognize Mother, Father, Great Spirit and other ancient and new names for our loving Creator; and now, we understand, more profoundly and urgently than ever, that we are in this together. Our common humanity, not my needs and wishes alone; our connection with all of creation, not my use of this or that resource; Our Father and Our common home. We learn to pray.

The prayers in this book emerge with caring love from the many levels of the Laudato Si’ Movement. The prayers are in fruitful dialogue with Pope Francis’s own beautiful contributions: “A prayer for our earth” and “A Christian prayer in union with creation” (p. 4, below), and in the encyclical they come after his own spiritual and mystical introduction (LS 238-46) to read and meditate again and over again.

Let us pray: “Laudato si’ mi’ Signore – Praise be to you, my Lord” (LS 1).

(By Cardinal Michael Czerny S.J., Interim Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in the Foreword 
Laudato Si’ Movement Prayer Book).

Laudato Si’ Week 2023 will be celebrated May 21-28 with the film “The Letter” to mark the eighth anniversary of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on care for creation. This global celebration will unite Catholics to rejoice in the progress we have made in bringing Laudato Si’ to life, and show how the protagonists of “The Letter” are already doing so.

See https://laudatosiweek.org/

And Our ecological conversion