PROVIDENCE — It may have been a Mass for the Care of Creation, but sometimes creation doesn’t care to cooperate.
Plans had originally been made for Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, C.Ss.R., to celebrate the newly promulgated Missa pro custodia creationis outdoors at Providence College’s War Memorial Grotto on Wednesday, Sept. 24. But heavy showers and the threat of a thunderstorm pushed the celebration into the school’s St. Dominic Chapel.
That didn’t faze the bishop, however.
“Because of creation, we had to celebrate indoors,” Bishop Lewandowski warmly quipped during his homily. “But rain and thunder, like snow, or trees, or animals, reminds us of the Author and Creator of all that is.”
It was a fitting sentiment for Rhode Island’s first celebration of the newest formulary of the Mass to be added to the Roman Missal. The Mass was formally approved by Pope Leo XIV in June of this year, with the first celebration occurring in Italy’s Castel Gandolfo on July 9. Appropriately, Pope Leo chose to celebrate the first Mass at the Borgo Laudato Si’, the ecological and educational center founded by Pope Francis and named after his first encyclical.
The name for that encyclical, in turn, was drawn from the opening line of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun, a poem which marked its 800th anniversary this year. The publication of the encyclical in 2015 was a watershed moment in Catholic ecology, bringing the call to faithful stewardship into sharper focus for moral theologians and inspiring prayers and projects at parishes throughout the world.
“I am so grateful both to Pope Francis and to Pope Leo for the opportunity to celebrate this Mass,” Bishop Lewandowski said. “It’s one thing to be able to read the words of Laudato Si’ on the page, but it’s another to be able to share the Word of God with you as we give thanks for Creation in this Mass.”
The Mass for the Care of Creation joins the 50 votive Masses and Masses for Special Needs and Occasions, included in the Third Typical Edition of the Roman Missal, which also includes a Mass for Human Life, a Mass for the Election of a Pope, and a Mass in Time of Pandemic. Each formulary follows the same liturgical structure of the Mass but offers unique prayers (the Collect, Prayer over Offerings, Prayer after Communion, etc.) and readings framed around a specific intention.
In the case of the Mass for the Care of Creation, that intention is framed upon the Church’s belief in integral ecology: the Mass is designed to give thanks for the beauties of God’s creation and to pray for God’s guidance as we work to safeguard and preserve it as responsible stewards. This is not merely an ecological concern—when he promulgated the Mass, Pope Leo affirmed that “environmental justice is… much more than simply protecting the environment. It is a matter of justice—social, economic and human.”
This recognition of humanity as interconnected with our environment is underscored in the very first words of the Mass, the Collect: “God our Father, who in Christ, the firstborn of all creation, called all things into being; Grant, we pray, that docile to the life-giving breath of your Spirit, we may lovingly care for the work of your hands.”
In his homily, the bishop reflected on what this spiritual connection with the created world means to us today.
“It’s easy for us to love nature when we look at a beautiful sunset, but it might not be so easy for you when a mouse sneaks into your dorm and starts nibbling on your snacks,” he said to a crowd of students and community members.
“But reading ‘Laudato Si’ in light of the Gospel, we understand our call to befriend creation. True friendship is always mutually beneficial—it means that each party gains something from the relationship. Entering into meaningful dialogue with nature is a way of returning to Eden, of overcoming the way that Original Sin has estranged us from one another and from nature.”
The Mass occurred during what the Church recognizes as the season of creation, a period stretching from September 1 to the Feast of St. Francis on October 4. It drew a congregation of students and professors from Providence College, along with members of the public and members of parishes throughout the diocese. Appropriate for the theme of the Mass, this included a few Franciscan Apostolic Sisters from St. Philip Church in Greenville.
“As Franciscans, we were very excited when the Bishop announced he would be celebrating the first Mass for the Care of Creation here in Rhode Island,” said Sister Gina Gille, FAS. “It’s so important to reflect on our connections as brothers and sisters of creation.”
After the Mass, students and faculty members were invited to join Bishop Lewandowski for dinner and a roundtable talk at the college’s Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies. Although it is traditionally easy to lure college students to events with an offer of free food, the young Friars who attended were clearly just as interested in theological discussion as in dining.
“I was interested as soon as Father [Christopher] Brophy mentioned the event to me,” said Maeve Kelly, a sophomore from Maryland studying pre-law. “He’s currently teaching one of the best classes I’ve ever taken, so of course I said ‘yes.’ It’s always enlightening to have conversations like this, and I was really curious to experience this new Mass.”
Kelly’s thoughts were echoed by senior Isabelle Camion: “We read ‘Laudato Si’’ in my Western Civ class, and I really enjoyed it,” she said. “I was planning on going to evening Mass today anyway, but this was a great opportunity.”
During the roundtable discussion, Camion dug into Pope Francis’s argument in ‘Laudato Si’’ that “technology is not neutral,” inquiring how Catholics could respond to the “technocratic paradigm” that posits artificial intelligence and similar developments represent the next stage in human evolution.
“At moments like this, we need to question to what extent we need new technologies and to what extent these companies are creating ‘needs’ that their products can fill,” the bishop replied.
“Advances in science and in medicine are certainly important, but how often are we being told that we ‘need’ things just to make a small number of people much, much richer? Why do we consider it progress when technologies take the human person out of focus? What we need to do now is to reassert the place of the human in the face of technology, to insert human beings as the crown of God’s creation.”
The topic foreshadows an upcoming roundtable discussion on artificial intelligence that PC will be hosting later in the year; additional information can be found on their website, www.providence.edu.
“This was really a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Mass with all of you,” Bishop Lewandowski said at the end of the event. “We’ll have to do it again—outside, next time.”
