Like the Catholic First Sunday of Advent, in the Orthodox liturgical calendar going back to Byzantine times, the 1st of September is the first day of the ecclesiastical year. In 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew decided to devote every 1st of September to praying for the environment. He commissioned a contemporary hymnographer from Mount Athos to compose special hymns for that day.

“For twenty-five years,” observed an Orthodox deacon based in the United States, “Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has emphasized the spiritual dimension of the ecological crisis and even introduced the revolutionary concept of ecological sin by way of expanding our understanding of repentance from what we have hitherto considered an individual wrongdoing or social transgression to a much broader, communal, generational and even environmental abuse of God’s creation.”

In September 2014, for example, in his Patriarchal Encyclical for the Ecclesiastical New Year, Bartholomew declared that the Church “does not remain unmoved or indifferent by the ongoing and daily destruction of the natural environment resulting from human greed and vain profit, which in turn implies an essential turning of the Lord’s face and results in consequential turbulence in nature and fracture in its crown, namely human existence, whose very survival is threatened.”

On 18 June 2015, in the Vatican’s Synod Hall, the Encyclical Laudato si’ was promulgated. Two of its paragraphs quote the Orthodox Leader’s “deep concerns” and “valuable reflections”. Pope Francis names him “the beloved Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, with whom we share the hope of full ecclesial communion.”

Among the five speakers introducing the new Encyclical, surely the most honoured was the Patriarch’s personal envoy and representative, the Metropolitan Ioannis (Zizioulas) of Pergamum. In his profoundly moving address, His Eminence recalled the above history: “The 1st of September each year is now devoted by the Orthodox to the environment.” And then he solemnly asked and proposed: “Might this not become a date for such prayer for all Christians? This would mark a step towards further closeness among them.”

In response, on the feast of the Transfiguration (6 August), Pope Francis wrote to Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. “Sharing the concern of my beloved brother, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, for the future of creation (cf. Laudato Si’, 7-9), and at the suggestion of his representative, Metropolitan Ioannis of Pergamum, who took part in the presentation of the Encyclical Laudato Si’ on care for our common home, I wish to inform you that I have decided to institute in the Catholic Church the “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” which, beginning this year, is to be celebrated on 1 September, as has been the custom in the Orthodox Church for some time.”

Here is the Holy Father’s explanation of the new Day of Prayer:

“As Christians we wish to contribute to resolving the ecological crisis which humanity is presently experiencing. In doing so, we must first rediscover in our own rich spiritual patrimony the deepest motivations for our concern for the care of creation. We need always to keep in mind that, for believers in Jesus Christ, the Word of God who became man for our sake, ‘the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us’ (LS’ 216). The ecological crisis thus summons us to a profound spiritual conversion: 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’ (LS 217). For ‘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’ (ibid.).

“The annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.

“The celebration of this Day, on the same date as the Orthodox Church, will be a valuable opportunity to bear witness to our growing communion with our Orthodox brothers and sisters. We live at a time when all Christians are faced with the same decisive challenges, to which we must respond together, in order to be more credible and effective. It is my hope that this Day will in some way also involve other Churches and ecclesial Communities, and be celebrated in union with similar initiatives of the World Council of Churches.”

This Tuesday 1st September, many churches throughout the world will observe the Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. At St Peter’s Basilica, the Holy Father accompanied by the Roman Curia will offer a Holy Hour of adoration, reflection and prayer.

The Orthodox service is called the “Office of supplication to our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who loves humankind, for our environment and for the welfare of the whole creation.” In communion with many Christian brothers and sisters, let’s join in repeating these one-stanza hymns called “troparia”:

• In your goodness deliver our race from earthquakes and ill fortune, from calamities of many kinds and from soul-destroying pollutions, O Compassionate.
• Give strength to the weak, O all-compassionate, and by your power preserve the atmosphere clean from winds that bring death.
• From every pollution that breeds death, O Saviour, by your power preserve unsullied the air in creation that we breathe.
• Make heavenly our hearts, O Compassionate, through a life of virtue and holiness, and deliver us from the grip of uncleanness.

Amen! Laudato si’!