A month ago today, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (DDWDS) published a new Mass—for the Care of Creation. In the accompanying decree, the following was noted as a rationale:

The mystery of creation is the beginning of salvation history, which culminates in Christ and from the mystery of Christ it receives definitive light; in fact, by manifesting His goodness, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1,1) God already from these origins had in mind the glory of the new creation in Christ.

Sacred Scripture exhorts humankind to contemplate the mystery of creation and to give endless thanks to the Holy Trinity for this sign of His benevolence, which, like a precious treasure, is to be loved, cherished and simultaneously advanced, as well as handed down from generation to generation.

At this time it is evident that the work of creation is seriously threatened because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods God has endowed to our care (cf. Laudato si’ n. 2).

This is why it is considered appropriate to add a Mass formulary “pro custodia creationis” to the Missae “pro variis necessitatibus vel ad diversa” of the Roman Missal.

That is, part of the originating plan of salvation asks us to gratefully contemplate God’s creation, and since the goodness that is the proximate object of that Christian contemplation (the Creator being the ultimate object) is subject to grave constraints and dangers, a new variation on the Mass has been created. Contemplation features heavily in the reasoning presented under Pope Leo’s DDWDS—just as it always did in Pope Francis’ thinking and magisterial teaching on our common home, particularly when he proposed the eighth spiritual work of mercy as grateful contemplation of creation, connected to an eighth corporal work that involves active care for our common home. For the themes relevant to this blog, we have here some of the strongest continuity between the two pontificates yet.

Up until now, I would have considered the Easter Vigil to be perhaps the most “eco-spiritual” of the Masses that the Church—or at least the Latin Rite—has in its portfolio. That’s no longer the case. I look forward to participating in a Mass for the Care of Creation when one becomes available near me. I don’t know how long that will be, but I’ll pray for it.

Who to pray to for this? Well, aside from the loving Father, of course, and Pope Francis and the other usual suspects, I settled a bit on two of today’s saints. When I saw the announcement on the Vatican website, I at first thought that the DDWDS decree had been postdated for today, and in that frame of mind I started to ponder the appropriateness of July 8, the optional memorial of Paul’s trusted companions, Prisca and Aquila. Well, that wasn’t the case. I’d misread July for June.

Still, I started thinking about it. And, as with Paul’s Philippi-based associate Lydia, there is an environmental theme to the story of Prisca and Aquila, particularly in Ephesus (Acts 18:19; 19:1–41). Or maybe it’s less of a theme and more of an afterlife. At any rate, Ephesus is a major part of the history of environmental change. Now, it’s not a story of anthropogenic change. Humans didn’t cause it. But they witnessed it and didn’t adjust their behaviour.

As pictured, this Ephesian street used to end at the Aegean Sea. Right at the edge of the frame was the water. But the meandering Cayster River kept depositing silt, and the harbour receded. In two thousand years, the coastline has moved almost 10 km (6 mi) from Ephesus. All that new ground is solid. That’s how much earth has gathered here. Of course, during the early stages, the propagation of swampy conditions resulted in the arrival of mosquitos. This led to uncontrollable malaria, which was not understood and could only be attributed, as the Latinate name suggests, to bad air. Worse came to worst. Long after their time, everyone had to leave the city that Paul, Prisca, and Aquila worked so hard to spread the Gospel in and around.

Climate change? No. Water pollution? Not likely a contributing cause. Driven by “irresponsible use and abuse of the goods God has endowed to our care”? Well, no, not, as far as we know, driven by it. But the attachment of some, particularly those most invested in a certain economic model, might not have helped with the suffering of all, particularly the most vulnerable. The relationship remains spiritually pregnant. The “fall” of empire (Rev 18:2) and the lament of “merchants of the earth [who] weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargo anymore” (Rev 18:11) certainly were addressed to the Church of Ephesus, which was Asia Minor’s port city and which had “fallen” from their true love (Rev 2:5). This says nothing about who deserves suffering. It says a lot about our attitudes to our common home, economy, and empire.

So, if ever there were any causality between crisis and abuse, the new Mass for the Care of Creation would be exactly what the people of Prisca and Aquila’s Ephesus would have wanted—because of their needs (their necessitates, to hearken back to the language of the DDWDS’ rationale). The need for us today, in our economic and ecological polycrisis, is for divine assistance and saintly intercession, to be sure; but it’s also for us to re-right our action and the prayer life that undergirds it. For we not only need to work on the practical solutions, we also need to fix our attitudes towards God’s creation. It was created—as were we, too—not just for influence and change, but also, and more deeply still, for contemplation.