Laudato SI’ Week 2020 Celebration, Assumption Province, Patna

June 5, 2020

At the fifth anniversary of Laudato Si’, the Patna provincial community celebrated the Laudato Si’ Week 2020 with nine days (a novena) of prayer and reflection. Prior to the celebration, the young members–postulants and junior sisters–residing at the provincial house had one week of training on Laudato Si’ by Sr. M. Jyotisha, who is aspiring to be certified as a Laudato Si’ Animator by the Global Catholic Climate Movement. Sister prepared the young members to conduct a novena for the sisters of the provincial house community. As Pope Francis says “The young people demand change, young people want build a better future. They take seriously the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the poor.”

Our young members were very enthused to prepare the prayers and reflections for the community through a very contemplative PowerPoint presentation. Each day from May 16-24 they had a theme taken from Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home, with prayers and reflections which helped every sister who attended the novena to be conscious of the message of Laudato Si’ and to live the encyclical.

They prepared a green heart with a Laudato Si’ motto, and on the first day of the novena, they processed to the chapel with the green heart and placed it under the exposed Blessed Sacrament. It was a Green Heart Campaign in prayer seeking for an ecological conversion for each of us and for the world, an urgent need of today. The celebration concluded with a Laudato Si’ Evening where our young members shared their poems on earth and purpose of life inspired by the messages of Laudato Si’. It was an enriching time for all of us in the community. The COVID-19 lockdown is helping us to delve deeper into the realities of the earth and the poor and to look at our own lifestyle as we spend more time in prayer and reflection.