By Josh Noem ’98, ‘05MDiv

To foster conversions to a new way of living, Pope Francis recently established a World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to be celebrated worldwide every year on September 1.

(See our coverage of the pope’s ecological initiative, including reflections from the Notre Dame family trying to live it out, here. View a prayer card with the pope’s prayer for the Day of Prayer here.)

The pope argues that the environmental crisis we face is not a technological or scientific problem alone—it is a problem that touches the core of who we are and how we live. God blessed and redeemed the physical world by joining it in the person of Jesus, who became man and lived with us, as one of us. Because of the Incarnation, the spiritual life is not sought apart from creation, but within it.

“The ecological crisis therefore calls us to a profound spiritual conversion,” wrote Pope Francis in his declaration of the new day of prayer. “Christians are called to an ecological conversion whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Thus, living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”

The pope made the declaration on Aug. 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. In the Transfiguration, Jesus was transformed in front of his disciples as his divinity briefly shone forth with brilliance. The feast unveiled Jesus’ identity as fully God and fully man, and the Pope used this event to call us to do our part to allow God’s image to shine forth through creation. Our current lifestyles are unsustainable in their consumption, and obscure that image—in nature and in ourselves—through wastefulness, selfishness, and inequality.

In his letter announcing the new day to the Church, the pope said the day of prayer is a way to grow in our role as custodians of creation, to thank God for the “marvelous works that He has entrusted to our care,” to ask for help in protecting creation, and to ask for mercy for “the sins committed against the world in which we live.”

The day coincides with a day of prayer for creation celebrated by the Orthodox Church. “We live in a time where all Christians are faced with identical and important challenges and we must give common replies to these in order to appear more credible and effective,” Pope Francis wrote. “Therefore it is my hope that this Day can involve, in some way, other Churches and ecclesial Communities.”