09/01/2026
Today, September 1, 2026, Pope Leo XIV celebrated the Mass for the Care of Creation at Borgo Laudato Si’, reminding us that caring for our common home is deeply rooted in our faith.
And just hours before the Mass, Christians from around the world gathered in prayer to open the Season of Creation 2026. From September 1 to October 4, we are invited to pray, reflect and act together under this year’s theme: Living Water, inspired by Ezekiel 47:9–12.
I was especially moved by how our prayer began: simply by giving thanks for water.
Guided by Shawna Nemesia Rebello of Don Bosco Green Alliance and Tamás Kodácsy of the European Christian Environmental Network, we entered into this global moment of prayer. Then, in our Thanksgiving for Water, we thanked God for the waters that sustain and cleanse all life and remembered Christ as Living Water, cleansing, refreshing and making all things new.
Think for a moment about the water in your own life. The rain. The rivers. The oceans. The water we drink. The water that nourishes the food on our tables and sustains forests, animals and entire communities. What an extraordinary gift we have been given.
Then we heard the Scripture at the heart of this year’s Season of Creation. Ezekiel describes water flowing from the sanctuary and transforming everything it touches. Waters become fresh. Living creatures flourish. Trees grow and bear fruit, and their leaves bring healing.
“Where the river flows everything will live.” What if this could also describe our presence in the world?
Reflecting on this image, Cardinal Fabio Baggio, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, offered us a beautiful challenge:
“Let us ask the grace to become springs of Jesus’ water for our brothers and sisters and for our common home.” That sentence stayed with me. Because Living Water is not only something we receive. We are called to let it flow through us.
Rev. Mari Valjakka, an Indigenous Sámi reverend from Finland, reminded us: “We belong within creation, and we receive life as a gift from God through it.”
We do not stand outside creation. We belong to it. We receive from it, depend upon it and have a responsibility to protect its gifts for those who will come after us.
But our celebration did not stop at gratitude. We also lamented polluted rivers, oceans filled with plastic, warming seas, droughts and floods, communities without safe water, and Indigenous Peoples whose sacred waters and ways of life are threatened.
Together we confessed: Ashamnu — we have all been guilty.
And then came a prayer that I hope stays with us throughout this entire Season: “Turn our guilt into grace and our apathy into action.” Because this is where Living Water becomes our mission.
As Rev. Valjakka reflected, we are called to become people through whom God’s life flows — bringing hope where there is despair, healing where there is brokenness, and reconciliation where relationships have been wounded. This Season of Creation, let us turn prayer into action.
🌊 Share your Season of Creation initiative on our global map and let others be inspired by what is happening in your community.
🌿 Explore the Season of Creation resources we have prepared to help you pray, celebrate and act throughout this special season.
May our gratitude become conversion.
May our lament become courage.
May our guilt become grace.
May our prayer become action.
And wherever Living Water flows through us, may everything live.
Happy Season of Creation!
Christina Leaño
Associate Director
Laudato Si' Movement
