The Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle will host its first Earth Day Lessons and Carols on Sunday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m. Msgr. Jameson, cathedral rector will preside at the event that will feature the Cathedral’s Schola Cantorum in cooperation with the St. Matthew's Creation Care Green Team.
Using carols, chants, choral music, and poetry and scripture readings, organizers seek to highlight the gifts of creation and explore the threats to the fragile health of the earth.
Music will include the works of renaissance composer William Byrd, contemporary Scottish composer Chris Hutchings, as well as a French carol, a Spiritual, two Shaker tunes, a 9th century Gregorian chant and a 12th century chant of Hildegard of Bingen.
The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle is located at 1725 Rhode Island Ave N.W.
Care for the environment has been a special calling of the faithful since Pope Francis issued his encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home in 2015, in which he called on people of goodwill – and indeed, “every person living on this planet” – to demonstrate an “environmental responsibility” that would “directly and significantly affect the world around us.”
Laudato Si’ (“Praise be to You”), was published in June of that year and takes its name from St. Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun” in which the saintly friar praises God through His creation and the gifts of “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon,” and “our sister Mother Earth.” In the encyclical, the Holy Father stressed the need to respect and protect the “relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it.”
The plight of the people of the Amazon will be the focus of a talk on Monday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Woodlands Room at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, 11701 Clopper Rd., Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Attendees will be able to meet with Indigenous leaders from Bolivia, Brazil and Peru and learn about their struggles in maintaining their way of life in the Amazon amidst threats of evictions from native lands. Participants will learn how to act on their behalf after they present their cases of human rights abuses to the United Nations later in the week.
“Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it,” Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical. “The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, His boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.”
In response to the pope’s call for “comprehensive solutions” to address the damage done to the Earth and in celebration of the fifth anniversary of the encyclical, The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington developed a Laudato Si’ Action Plan. Released in August 2021, the plan outlines ways in which the archdiocese, parishes, schools and individuals can actively respond to Pope Francis’s call to “care for our common home.”
“We are all called to protect our common home according to our ability and means. This Action Plan contains small and big ways for us to exercise stewardship over God’s creation,” Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory said in an introductory letter to the plan. “I invite each of you to study this Action Plan and be challenged to protect and restore our fragile Earth and our natural resources.”
The action plan, titled “Laudato Si': Embarking On A Seven-Year Journey Promoting An Integral Ecology” uses Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment as the framework for educational, spiritual and practical steps to help protect the Earth.
It includes educational resources connecting Catholic social justice teaching to care for creation, such as study guides and videos that might be used in school, parish or community settings. Other sections suggest steps that individuals, families, churches, schools and other organizations can take to limit pollution, reduce consumption of water and electricity and to protect natural resources.
