Pope Francis, October shared mission, and, Our Lady of the Rosary

The Season of Creation 2024, which started last September 1 ended yesterday, October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Ecology.

This year’s theme – to hope and act with creation – was inspired by Romans 8:19-25. The season of creation is in keeping with Laudato Si, the Church’s commitment to protect God’s creations, our earth, our common home.

Bayanihan vs global warming

The season just concluded aimed to remind all that Earth is a gift from our Creator, not a resource to be used and that "creation groans" (Rom 8:22) because of our selfishness and our unsustainable actions that harm it. However, Creation teaches us that hope is present in waiting, in the expectation of a better future (cf. Rom 8:20-21).

To hope is not “to remain still/silent, but to groan/cry out and struggle actively for a new life in the midst of difficulties. Creation and all human beings are called to worship the Creator, working for a dynamic future from which the firstfruits of hope can spring.”

Pope Francis’s prayer intention for this month of October 2024 is for all Christians to all be responsible for the Church’s vision, to walk together, to take the path of synodality.

The Pope’s message: “Jesus called us, one and others — not one above others, or one on one side and others on another side, Everyone contributes what they know how to do best. We are co-responsible in mission, we participate and we live in the communion of the Church.

"We work together in this co-responsibility - to care for the Church, our home.”

Pope Francis likewise called for October 7, the Feast of our Lady of the Rosary, to be a day of prayer and fasting for peace reminding the Christian community to "put itself at the service of humanity in this dramatic hour of our history, while the winds of war and the fires of violence continue to devastate entire peoples and nations.”

The Pope also invited members of the General Assembly of the Synod to join him visit, on the eve of the Feast of our Lady of the Rosary, the Basilica of Saint Mary Major where, he said, he will “address a heartfelt petition to the Virgin” for peace.

“Let us walk together,” the Pope urged, “let us listen to the Lord. And let us be led by the breeze of the Spirit.”

Pope Francis has continued to invite everyone to pray the Rosary "to invoke Mary's intercession, so that the Lord may grant peace to the whole world.”

In May, 2023, Pope Francis shared three reasons to pray the rosary regularly: First, he said that the Rosary is a "compendium of the entire history of our salvation."

The rosary helped spread the Christian faith to many parts of the world, especially during the period when there was no access to the printing press or readily available bibles. The Rosary became the “primary means of communicating the essence of Christianity, a method of evangelization for many missionaries.”

Second, the Pope noted that the "Holy Rosary is a powerful weapon against evil," its power against Satan something that many saints like Padre Pio and St. John Bosco have noted.

Third, the Pope said, the rosary is "an effective means of obtaining true peace in our hearts."

The Rosary is viewed as “a garland of roses to the Blessed Mother in a similar way that roses would be picked for a person’s earthly mother.”

At Fatima, where she identified herself as our Lady of the Rosary, she asked all to continue “to pray the rosary each day, for people to amend their lives, ask pardon for their sins and stop offending our Lord who is already too much offended.”