Two smiling children holding up their drawing during a Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens community event.
Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens is excited to offer this devotional prayer resource to our parish communities in Brooklyn and Queens. Prayer, along with charity and fasting, is a time honored part of our Lenten practice. Our ecological consciousness, affirming the goodness and integrity of creation, connects us deeply with our Lenten tradition because it calls us to develop a simple Christian lifestyle. A lifestyle that is free from the materialistic and consumer attitudes that distract us from our obligations to God and one another. Pope Francis reminds us in his ecological encyclical that:
Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption. We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”… Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack… Even living on little, they can live a lot, above all when they cultivate other pleasures and find satisfaction in fraternal encounters, in service, in developing their gifts, in music and art, in contact with nature, in prayer.
These stations of the cross are developed for this very purpose. The stations are traditional, we journey with Christ as he undergoes his passion and join Him as we bring attention the suffering of those crucified in our midst. The victims that we call to mind include those that suffer from natural catastrophes and of course, the earth itself. These station allow us to highlight this connection, connecting the suffering Christ with the sufferings of our Earth and our brothers and sisters who are victims of environmental tragedies.
We invite you to share this resource and to take some time to meditate on these stations as you reflect on how you will also adopt your own simple Christian lifestyle.
Click here to download:
- The Stations of the Cross in the wake of our climate crisis as a pdf, as a flip book or as a prayer card with a scannable QR code.
- Carbon Fast Calendar created by the Church of St. Francis Xavier’s Environment Ministry, NYC