While I am writing this contribution, we remember the first anniversary of Pope Francis’s death on April 21, 2025. He left the Church a rich legacy. His 2015 Encyclical letter Laudato si’ is part of it. To this day, Laudato si’ remains a challenge for the Church and society because the issues addressed by Pope Francis, namely the ongoing “Triple Planetary Crisis” of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, continue to be urgent and relevant.[1] To mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of Laudato si’, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments published a Mass formula entitled “For the Care of Creation” in June 2025.[2] The Mass form addresses several key themes and metaphors found in Laudato si’. We will now highlight a few of these themes and metaphors.
Joy and Praise of God
The celebration of the Eucharist is, as the name suggests, an act of thanksgiving and praise to God. Through it, the Church expresses her understanding of the world and life as gifts from God. The whole of creation, history, and human life are presented to God, the source and fulfilment of all life, in whom the deepest reason for the existence of all things is revealed.
The idea that creation is a living praise of God, bearing witness to God’s greatness and glory, is found in the opening verse (Psalm 19:2), the reading from the Old Testament (Wisdom 13:1–9), and the first of the two optional responsorial psalms (Psalm 19:2–3.4–5b). In the acclamation before the Gospel (Psalm 104:24), God’s creatures, his “works”, point to his wisdom: “How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have made them all.” The selection of the reading from the Book of Wisdom adopts the metaphor of nature as a “book” through which God may be recognised. Alongside Holy Scripture, God can also be recognised in the “Book of Creation”, that is, through the reverent and awe-inspiring contemplation of nature, its beauty and grandeur.
The second optional responsorial psalm (selected verses from Psalm 104) focuses on God’s joy in creation. The refrain reads: “May the Lord rejoice in his works”. This delight is an expression of God’s playful creativity, as well as his approval of creation (cf. Genesis 1:1–2:4a). This theme is also found in Job 40, where God’s delight in observing his creatures is linked to his playfulness with them. This is an expression of the fact that he is the Lord of creation and is capable of taming the primal forces of nature and the wildness of living creatures. This idea of God as ruler of the universe and Lord of the forces and powers of nature is also present in the second optional acclamation before the Gospel (1 Chronicles 29:11d.12b) and the corresponding Gospel (Matthew 8:23–27), the pericope about the storm on the lake. Conversely, the other of the two texts from which the Gospel can be selected, Matthew 6:24–34, focuses on the theme of God’s providence and his knowledge and care for humanity and its needs and concerns, just as he feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field in splendour.
The Link between Creation and Salvation History
A central theme of the Mass formula is the soteriological link between the history of creation and salvation. In the Collect prayer, we encounter a distinctive feature of New Testament statements on creation: the idea that the entire creation was brought into existence by the incarnate divine Logos. He is referred to as the “firstborn of all creation”, a term borrowed from the Christological hymn in Colossians 1:15–20, which was chosen as the reading from the New Testament in the Mass formula. This hymn focuses less on chronological sequence and more on the theological insight that the histories of creation and salvation have been inextricably linked since the beginning. Through the divine Logos, the life-giving Word par excellence, all things were created in heaven and on earth. The central event of salvation is Christ’s death on the cross, through which God’s will is revealed: to lead the whole of creation, all things in heaven and on earth, to Christ and to reconcile it with himself. The profound unity of the whole of creation with God, who is its origin and fulfilment, is made manifest in the cross as a cosmological event of salvation.
The eschatological fulfilment of creation is closely linked to the soteriological motif. This concept is present in both the Prayer over the Offerings and in the Prayer after Communion. In the Offertory Prayer, the transformation of the fruits of the earth and the work of human hands — that is, bread and wine — is described as the fulfilment of creation. Through the action of the Spirit, these offerings are to become food and drink for eternal life. This motif recalls God’s rest on the seventh day of the first creation narrative. Eternal life is creation’s participation in God; it is in him that creation comes to fulfilment and rest. Significantly, the wording of the Sabbath commandment in Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:14 explicitly mentions animals too (“your ox, your donkey, all your livestock”), to whom rest is to be granted on this day, just as to humans. This requirement is repeated in Ex 23:12: “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may rest”.
The theme of eschatological fulfilment is addressed in the Prayer after Communion: “As we await the new heavens and the new earth, we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures”. This motif is found in Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21. Isaiah 65 describes a world in which evil and destruction have been overcome. Animals will live together in peace; predators will no longer harm their prey; and the serpent will feed on dust. This motif is also found in Isaiah 11:6–9, where humans are explicitly included in this peace and these non-violent relationships. Revelation 21 also describes the new heaven and new earth as a place where God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain (cf. v. 4).
“The new heaven and the new earth” will not be a second creation following the destruction of the first; rather, it will be a transformation and fulfilment, achieved by overcoming violence, suffering, corruption and sin. This reveals a deep awareness that violence and suffering, which humans inflict upon one another, animals and nature, as well as animals inflicting violence upon one another (such as predators upon their prey), are at odds with the good creation depicted in the two creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2. According to Genesis 1:29–30, humans are assigned only plant-based food, which can be interpreted as an expression of the belief that inflicting violence, particularly lethal violence, upon animals for the purpose of obtaining meat contradicts the original harmony of creation. It is only after the flood – in a world already marked by the consequences of human sin – that humans are granted permission to eat meat. However, the consumption of blood – the seat of life, belonging to God – remains forbidden (cf. Gen. 9:3–4).
The Metaphor of the Pilgrimage
The metaphor of the pilgrimage serves to express that all creatures are moving forward with us humans towards the common goal of God’s transcendent fullness, where the risen Christ embraces and enlightens all things (cf. LS 83). At the same time it serves to express that everything is interconnected, and all people are brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage together, bound by the love that God has for each of his creatures (cf. LS 92). Human and non-human creatures form a community of destiny consisting of their shared condition of being created, and their shared orientation towards fulfilment through the mystery of Christ’s salvation. According to Pope Francis, “the destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ, present from the beginning: ‘All things have been created though him and for him’ (Col 1:16)” (LS 99).
The Care of Creation
The Collect prayer states: “Grant, we pray, that docile to the life-giving breath of your Spirit, we may lovingly care for the work of your hands”. Although the two creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 are not included in the Mass formula as available texts from the Old Testament for the reading, this Collect prayer refers to them in two ways. Firstly, the “life-giving breath of your Spirit” refers to the Spirit of God, the Ruach, which hovered over the waters (cf. Gen. 1:2), and to the breath of life, the N’shamah, which God breathed into man’s nostrils (cf. Gen. 2:7). Secondly, the objective of preserving the work of God’s hands reminds us of the often misunderstood task of subduing the earth and ruling over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the animals that move upon the earth (cf. Gen. 1:26.28). According to Genesis 2:15, God placed the human being in the Garden of Eden to “cultivate and keep it”. As God’s image, man is entrusted with the responsibility of preserving the world and other living beings as God’s precious work, through the manner of his existence in the world and his relationship with the animals over which he is to rule like a good shepherd over his flock, not to exploit or destroy them (cf. also LS 67).
Living in Harmony with All Creatures
In the Prayer after Communion, the following (already quoted above) request is made: “As we await the new heavens and the new earth, we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures”. This acknowledges the eschatological caveat that, while the world has already been redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fullness of this redemption, “the new heaven and the new earth”, is yet to be realised. Non-human creation (in Greek: ktisis) is included in the expectation that the reality of salvation will be realised in full. In Romans 8:19–22 – a fitting reading from the New Testament, though not included in the Mass formula – St. Paul speaks of the ktisis’s longing and its groaning and labouring in pain in anticipation of the revealing of the children of God. Following the petition in the closing prayer, human beings should perceive the groaning of non-human creation. As Francis puts it in LS 2, they should hear the cry of the enslaved earth and suffering creatures and strive to live in harmony with them. According to Laudato Si’ 66, the two narratives of creation in Genesis 1–2 bear witness to a profound harmony between the Creator, humanity, and the whole of creation. This harmony was destroyed by humanity’s presumption to take God’s place, but it is restored in Jesus Christ. The Gospel passage under consideration testifies to this: “Who is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt 8:27). Jesus also lived in harmony with creation, as evidenced by Mk 1:13: Jesus lived among the wild beasts for forty days at the beginning of his public ministry.
Closing Remarks
The vision of harmony between humans, animals and nature, and of non-violent coexistence between humans and animals, as presented in Genesis 1–2 and Isaiah 11:6–9, is not merely a utopian ideal, but provides an important ethical foundation for reconsidering the relationship between humans and animals, and for overcoming violence towards animals.
The purpose of celebrating the Eucharist is not to have a moralising effect. Therefore, the liturgy does not primarily aim to foster ethical awareness. However, the Mass formula “For the Care of Creation”, drawing on themes from the encyclical Laudato si’, offers biblical and theological motifs encouraging us to reconsider our relationship with nature and non-human creatures. Laudato si’ expresses the connection between faithfully interpreting the world as creation and celebrating this in the Eucharist, and living in a way that makes the Eucharist a source of light and motivation for our ethical actions. These actions concern not only our fellow human beings, but also the environment, and orient us towards being guardians of the whole of creation (cf. LS 236). Those who celebrate this Mass without translating it into active charity, committed care for creation, a conscious life in harmony with nature and an attitude of solidarity and responsibility towards all creatures risk, to quote Pope Benedict XVI, the Eucharist remaining fragmented (cf. Deus caritas est 14).[3]
—
[1] Cf. Andrea Vicini, SJ / Philip J. Landrigan / Karen Bullock (ed.): Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, vol. 7: Plastic Pollution, Theological Ethics, and the Call of Laudato Si’, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications 2025; online:https://doi.org/10.55476/001c.141383 (21.04.2026).
[2] See https://www.catholicbishops.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mass-for-the-Care-of-Creation-July-2025.pdf (21.04.2026).
[3] A longer version of this article will be published in German in Stimmen der Zeit, May 2026 issue.