A REDEMPTORIST FOCUS ON THE SEASON OF CREATION:

On Thursday I went to Sheffield and had lunch with a former Parish Priest of Bishop Eton, namely Bishop Ralph Heskett. I thought you might be interested in the Pastoral Letter he has written for his Diocese this weekend. The full text is on our websites (click here to read), but here is a flavour of what he wrote:

“In his book, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ, written in 1768, St Alphonsus, the Founder of the Redemptorists, speaks of four outpourings of God’s love on the world: the Incarnation, the Passion and the Eucharist. However, he says that the first outpouring is the gift of creation.

Alphonsus is no “Eco Warrior”! However, I believe he has something that is both simple and profound to say about our relationship with our Creator and our world.”

The Pastoral Letter goes on to remind us that Alphonsus points to the whole of creation as God’s gift of love to us: the sky, the stars, the planets, the seas, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, the plains, metals, fruits and countless species of animals; all given so that we might be led to love God in return

Well now, we do have our Eco Warriors in the form of Fr Jim Casey and those in both our parishes who continue to help raise our level of consciousness on these matters. Indeed, I believe, in a coming issue of the Catholic Pictorial there will be an article about how our two parishes have been striving to ‘Live Simply’ and how we duly received the CAFOD award for our efforts. I suggest the challenge now is not that we sit back and glory in all that has been achieved but recognise that we are called to live in this way every day of our lives, for there is no doubt that we and our planet are still in dire need of rescue.