Ways to mark the ‘Season of Creation 2026’

The Season of Creation (1 September – 4 October 2026) is being marked in a variety ways by Jesuit works, and co-ordinated by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. Dr Ciara Murphy, Environmental Policy Advocate at the centre, has warmly welcomed a special Examen prayer, written by Piaras Jackson SJ, that can be used by Jesuit communities, apostolates or individual colleagues or friends. (See the bottom of the article for a copy of it.)

Ciara also notes events that have been confirmed so far including a Mass on Sunday 6 September, 6:00 pm, at St Patrick’s Church, Donegall Street, Belfast, celebrated by Fr Piaras Jackson SJ, and featuring interfaith contributions. And on Sunday 4 October, at 7:30 pm a Mass to close the season will take place in Gardiner Street Church in Dublin. “All are welcome,” says Ciara, “especially young people from our Jesuit schools.” She says that future updates regarding other activities will be posted on the JCFJ website, including ways to get involved and “celebrate, pray, and act with us for the protection and healing of our common home.”

The Laudato Si’ Working Group of the Irish Bishops’ Conference and Trócaire have produced a rich set of materials to help parishes, schools and communities mark the season ».

The ‘Season of Creation’, is an annual ecumenical time of prayer and action for our common home, observed by an estimated 2.2 billion Christians worldwide. This year’s theme, ‘Living Water,’ draws on Ezekiel 47:9,12 as a hopeful biblical vision of restoration and ecological healing. Full details and global resources are available here ».

The season is traces its roots to a 1989 proclamation by Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, who designated 1 September as a day of prayer for creation in the Orthodox Church and marked the beginning of the Orthodox liturgical year as a time to give thanks for God’s creation.

The observance expanded when the World Council of Churches extended the single day into a full season running from 1 September through 4 October — the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. The Catholic Church joined the movement in stages: Pope Francis established a Catholic World Day of Prayer for Creation in 2015 and formally embraced the full Season of Creation in 2019.

Today the initiative is coordinated by the Laudato Si’ Movement through an ecumenical steering committee. Each year the season brings Christians together for prayer, celebration and action on environmental stewardship under a shared theme. This year’s theme, “Living Water,” draws on the prophetic image in the book of Ezekiel of a river that deepens, restores barren land, revives waters and sustains ecosystems.

Organizers say the theme is intended to link ecological healing with human wellbeing, and to frame acts of care for the environment as part of a wider, global current of hope for “our common home.”

See the specially composed Examen Prayer below.

Examen for the ‘Season of Creation’

Praying with Awareness

Introduction

The Examen of Consciousness helps us respond to Jesus’ invitation to stay awake and recognise God’s presence in everyday life. The material below is offered to encourage review of stewardship and responsible living during the Season of Creation.

Use the reflections and prompts as a guide for a 5–15-minute daily Examen, a longer weekly reflection, or a conversation with a friend or in your family/community. Choose a few prompts each time rather than attempting every question at once.

Pray for the grace to grow in care for creation and for one another.

Reflection: Our starting point

All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily. (Spiritual Exercises §23, Principle and Foundation (trans David Fleming.)

Prompts

The Principle and Foundation opens the Spiritual Exercises by situating human beings and “other things on the face of the earth” together in a single purpose of the praise and service of God; creation is given to help us toward that end. How do you notice yourself relating to the created world?

Seeing creation, not as an incidental backdrop, but as a fellow‑creature, commits us to attending to it with deliberate care. How are you moved to cherish and care for God’s gift of creation?

When have you recently noticed real beauty in creation — something that stopped you, even briefly? What did that moment invite in you?

We are commissioned to till and to keep, to work and to guard the garden the Earth (Genesis 2:15): what efforts do you notice yourself making to care for and protect creation?

Reflection: What We Hold and Let Go Of

Saint Francis Xavier famously declined the offer of a servant by replying, “The best way to acquire true dignity is to wash one’s own clothes and boil one’s own pot.” Living as community will temper our independence and our expectations, and make poverty take on different meanings.

Prompts

Communities and households often accumulate things they no longer need. What unused resource might you or your community pass on for someone else’s use or repair?

Renting, leasing, or sharing rather than buying outright is one way of holding things lightly. Where might that fit naturally into your own circumstances?

Reflection: Prayer and Liturgy

Bringing to memory the benefits received in creation, redemption, and particular gifts, we ponder with great affection how much God Our Lord has done for us, and how much He has given us of what He has. (Spiritual Exercises §234)

Prompts

How is care for creation evidently part of your personal or community’s prayer?

Does your praying — personal or communal — ever engage with the reality of creation? What might you do to allow creation to be a blessing to you?

Reflection: Looking ahead

Sustainable living means making choices today that shape what tomorrow looks like.

Prompts

 If you imagine someone living well on the earth ten years from now, how does your way of living already point toward that?

As you recognise that today’s children will bear an impact of climate change, how might a memory of your witness encourage them in living responsibly?

Reflection: Taking Responsibility

One of the Society’s Universal Apostolic Preferences is caring for our common home, and it calls us to work for the protection and renewal of God’s Creation.

Prompts

How do you understand your responsibility for your carbon footprint? What concrete choices have you made?

Laudato Si speaks of an “ecological conversion” — not a single decision but an ongoing turning of the heart (§217). Where do you notice that conversion happening in you, even slowly?

How might you renew your own desire for this conversion by asking for the grace you need and by working as if you have that grace?

Reflection: Everyday Choices

May the Lord give us the light of holy discernment, so that we may use created things by the light of the Creator. Amen. (Ignatius of Loyola, 1556)

Prompts

What does “living simply” look like in your own week — the food you consume, in what you buy or want provided for you, in how you choose to travel? What one small habit are you already glad of?

When you need something new, how much weight do you give to buying locally, repairing or reusing, versus a new purchase or ordering online? Is there a purchase coming up where that question might shape the decision?

Reusing, mending, borrowing, sharing — where has sustainability and living responsibly already found a place in your life or in your community, even in a small way?

Reflection: Formation and Companionship

Our aspiration to be “contemplatives in action” prompts us to be reflective, aware and committed to working for justice for all creation.

Prompts

Who has helped you grow in awareness of creation — a companion, a colleague, an activist? And who might you be that person for?

Speaking up “to the right people” has been named as one of the most powerful things we can do. Where might your own voice — in a parish, a formation group, a family — be heard?

Review how your living in community disposes you to make changes for the good of creation. Are there opportunities for you to offer insights, make suggestions, ask for and receive recommendations about how others see you live?

 How might such a conversation help you to be accountable and to grow in responsibility for creation?

How could a conversation about your habits and presumptions help your community live more simply and with greater freedom?

What time do you give — alone or with others — to review and balance your spending on clothes, travel, or entertainment?

Reflection: Solidarity with the Poor

The friendship of the poor makes us friends of the eternal King. (Ignatius of Loyola, 1547). Laudato Si insists that environmental degradation and poverty are “one complex crisis” (§139) — the earth’s cry and the cry of the poor being, in the end, the same cry.

Prompts

Where have you seen that connection made real in your decision‑making: in the sourcing of what you buy, in whose land is affected by what you throw away, in who suffers first from the choices others make?

What habit of yours creates a cost to people and to the planet? What might you do to live more responsibly?

Reflection: 2026 Season of Creation: Theme — Living Water

 Ezekiel tells of a trickle from the temple that became a river too deep to cross.

Prompts

What do you recognise in your life as something small — a habit, a conversation, a decision — which has grown into something that now brings life to others?

How aware are you of your own water use — in what you consume, wash, water, or waste?

What concrete change (a shorter shower, a fixed leak, being aware of the water demands of your food choices) might help you live as a contemplative even in small actions?

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