Season of Creation: Protect Creation

By Julia St. Clair

Today, we begin Week Four of the Season of Creation. Throughout the past few weeks, we have looked at how we can enjoy, enhance, and respect creation throughout our Province. Now through Saturday, September 26, we examine one thing that is deeply crucial to ourselves and our world—protecting creation.

How can be we best protect creation? That are many ways, all of which include how we enjoy, enhance, and respect creation. For example, let’s say there is liter—particularly plastic—on the ground. If an animal picks it up by accident and gets hurt, creation has not been protected—it has been harmed. ⁠Even if no animal takes the liter, its presence damages our environment, our world, and ultimately ourselves.

Many schools and organizations have taken action to protect creation. One of these is the ridding of plastic altogether on their campuses and grounds. Even individual programs and classes have put these practices into motion, such as Robert Sellers’ English and business law classes at Don Bosco Prep High School in Ramsey, NJ. Students in these classes are only allowed to drink water from reusable bottles. Each semester, Sellers’ business law students do a module on environmental law, where they work in teams to first research, then present, on the impact of plastic, power generation, buildings, transportation, and agriculture on climate change and our ecosystem. Beginning with his classroom policy, Sellers’ goal is to have his students take the initiative to eliminate all plastic bottles from campus and reduce usage in their homes and communities.

Truly, Sellers’ work demonstrates a wonderful way to protect creation. It also instills these important values in our youth, and we pray they will carry these learnings throughout their lives.

We hope and pray you, too, find a wonderful way to protect creation today, this week, and always.

Stay tuned for next week, where we will conclude our Season of Creation with many examples of how we can all Celebrate Creation.