Mass for Creation for United States Approved by the Holy See

The United States Church is very blessed to receive the approval of the USCCB Mass for Creation for English and Spanish from the Holy See.  Last year, Pope Leo XIV himself celebrated the First Mass for Creation on July 9, 2025.  The newly approved Mass for Creation for United States church is now available for use given the formulary and the lectionary which can be found in the USCCB website.  We thank all the Arch/Bishops and the faithful for supporting the cause to advocate for the mass that is available for the church in this part of the world.

Why is it important to celebrate the Feast of Creation?  We are creatures and we are not God.  All of the things on heaven and on earth belongs to our Creator.  As people of God, we are people of rituals. We move in habits.  We wake up in the morning according to what help us to move from one phase to another.  Some start their day in prayer, some start their day making coffee, some people start their day taking a bath and sing!  When we move in phases, our body gets prepared for what is to come or what state of the day are we in.  When someone is born, we gather and bless the baby and after a few weeks for Catholics, we baptize the baby to formally welcome him or her into our society of Christian faith that we believe exist in both heaven and earth.  We are people of ritual.  Through rituals, we function as one.  We unite ourselves towards a common awareness, function, and mission.  We feel, we move, we belong to each other by a common ritual.  What a blessing to be united with our Creator through the Eucharistic celebration with the awareness of our Creator as the center of our being. 

In this day and age, where there is a challenge not to be overwhelmed by the demands of our responsibilities, the desires of the world, the false needs of having more of the materials than having less but depth of meaning and relationships, we are called to go back to our roots.  We are called to connect to our Creator.  God created everything and he was pleased with everything which includes the evening and the morning (Gen 1:31).  Indeed, there is a time for everything.  God created the world in phases.  Every time God created and finished, God pause at the Creation and was please with it,

We are created in the image and likeness of God.  There is a time for everything.  We do not do everything all at once.  There is a power in reflecting, moving from one phase to another.

This is an invitation to all the Arch/Bishops, pastors and priests to pause and honor our Creator through the Mass for Caring for Creation.  

This year's Season of Creation that starts from September 1 and ends on October 4 is an opportunity to celebrate this liturgy to be mindful that we depend on God's Creation and more importantly we depend on our Creator who entrusted to us the care of our brothers and sisters.  We pause to contemplate that we are creatures and human being is not the Creator.  The Word of God care for all that are visible and invisible, and we are united as one through prayers, contemplation and actions.   We build relationships through time and through this Season of Creation, we are intentionally offering our prayers for the heaven and earth that holds us.  This year's season of creation is inspired by Ezekiel 47: 1- 12 which is for the whole church to contemplate having water as the literal source of life.  Given the ecological crisis where drought is the reality in a lot of cities of our world, we are called to be mindful of our practices that deplete our water source.  How is God calling us to ecological conversion?

In this Jubilee Year of Saint Francis, we are especially called to feel for our brother Earth, Sister Moon, Brother Trees, Brother Fire, Sister Water and all that we can see bearing in mind that God was pleased with them.  This year is another good example of using the Mass for Creation, knowing that Saint Francis is a man of peace who treated everything as his sister and brother.  Our World needs to be connected to a man of peace, Saint Francis and Christ, the Prince of our Peace (Isaiah 9:6).

How do we take care of our brother or sister?  How do you take care of your loved one?  We are bridges and we are peacemakers through the heart formed by our Creator as the center of our being.  We are called to love.  We are called to be nothing but to be made for love, the love of Christ who has given everything.

Reference:

Catholic Climate Covenant - Mass for Creation Explanation

USCCB Mass for Creation

When to use of the Mass for Creation

Mass for Creation on July 9, 2025 by Pope Leo XIV

Feast of Creation in Christ - World Christians

Season of Creation

Jubilee Year of Saint Francis

800th Anniversary of Canticle of the Creature

Evolution of Rituals

Advocacies on Protecting Our Common Home, the Impact of Data Centers to Our Ecosystems

Advocacies available from Laudato Si' Movement Texas Chapter

The resources below aim to guide you on the key points on the impact of AI and Data Centers to our ecosystems which encompasses the basic necessities for clean and accessible air, land and water, peaceful environment.  This is an invitation to read, reflect, and take actions before the data centers come into your neighborhood, there is an enough deliberation for the basic natural resources to be protected, and that the mental health of the people is also safeguarded where the people can have access to quiet and peaceful neighborhood.  

Data. Center: Energy Use and Production

Data Center: Noise, Light and Heat

Data Center: Land Use

How to Set-up Legislative Meetings

Data Center Issues, Policy solutions & theology

Reflecting on the Data Centers and the Technology Footprint

Virginia is the number one in terms of the number of data centers followed by Texas.  While it is important to realize that data centers have already been in our midst from the start of technology as the data centers are the storage of our digital data, it is important that the data centers that are being discussed in the most recent time is the massive data centers that consumes significant energy, land use, and water for cooling.  Given that these data centers are machines, there are noise and air pollution that come with this infrastructure.  Apart from the impact to the environment, it is important to recognize the mental health of the people who live near the massive data centers.  This is like having to manage the noise coming from the building, the generators and the back-up power supplies, etc.

Before any data centers can occupy the land, consume the water, air and land, there are questions that must be asked,  There are also a question of how do you use the AI right now.  How is your technology footprint is already impacting the need for data centers?

• Who are in the frontline?  
• What are the impacts to our environment of AI and Data Centers?  
• How is your use of ChatGPT and other AI functions need more Data Centers?  What is the limit to these functions?
• What organizations are involved in the data centers?  How is your technology footprint makes use of their applications?

Laudato Si' Articles To Ponder on Technology

Laudato Si' is the encyclical of Pope Francis written for the people of good will.  It aims to raise awareness and invites people to see the reality of our world.   If we do not reflect on what is the common good, we can find ourselves that we have not manage to take care of our health but let other people degrade the quality of our Common Home where our brothers and sisters are also enjoying.  With Saint Francis, he treated the environment and those that may seen inanimate and all living things as brothers and sisters.  And what is seems inanimate, the people are not giving an importance, without knowing that they are also part of our existence without discounting their own value and importance to exist.  And in some occasions, even fellow human beings are treated as insignificant, unworthy of quality of life or decent life.  How is the Divine in this challenging time given the technological dependence of our society calling us to be transformed for the sake of our brothers and sisters? Can we sincerely call everything he had made was very good? What happened to God’s Creation?

Genesis 1:31: "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."

Article 9. At the same time, Bartholomew has drawn attention to the ethical and spiritual roots of environmental problems, which require that we look for solutions not only in technology but in a change of humanity; otherwise we would be dealing merely with symptoms. He asks us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which “entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion”. As Christians, we are also called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbours on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet”.

Article 16. Although each chapter will have its own subject and specific approach, it will also take up and re-examine important questions previously dealt with. This is particularly the case with a number of themes which will reappear as the Encyclical unfolds. As examples, I will point to the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected, the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the call to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, the value proper to each creature, the human meaning of ecology, the need for forthright and honest debate, the serious responsibility of international and local policy, the throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle. These questions will not be dealt with once and for all, but reframed and enriched again and again.

Article 20. Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. People take sick, for example, from breathing high levels of smoke from fuels used in cooking or heating. There is also pollution that affects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general. Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.

Article 54. It is remarkable how weak international political responses have been. The failure of global summits on the environment make it plain that our politics are subject to technology and finance. There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected. The Aparecida Document urges that “the interests of economic groups which irrationally demolish sources of life should not prevail in dealing with natural resources”. The alliance between the economy and technology ends up sidelining anything unrelated to its immediate interests. Consequently the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.

Article 60. Finally, we need to acknowledge that different approaches and lines of thought have emerged regarding this situation and its possible solutions. At one extreme, we find those who doggedly uphold the myth of progress and tell us that ecological problems will solve themselves simply with the application of new technology and without any need for ethical considerations or deep change. At the other extreme are those who view men and women and all their interventions as no more than a threat, jeopardizing the global ecosystem, and consequently the presence of human beings on the planet should be reduced and all forms of intervention prohibited. Viable future scenarios will have to be generated between these extremes, since there is no one path to a solution. This makes a variety of proposals possible, all capable of entering into dialogue with a view to developing comprehensive solutions.

Article 103. Technoscience, when well directed, can produce important means of improving the quality of human life, from useful domestic appliances to great transportation systems, bridges, buildings and public spaces. It can also produce art and enable men and women immersed in the material world to “leap” into the world 

Action Centers: 

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/06/12/stop-data-centers-coalition/

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/04/why-are-communities-pushing-back-against-data-centers/

https://www.datacenterresponsibility.com/

https://www.datacenterresponsibility.com/whatyooucando

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/data-center-moratorium-may-2026

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/stop-data-centers

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-our-decision-makers-put-people-over-data-centers

https://naacp.org/campaigns/stop-dirty-data-centers

Groundswell Watch Party + Live Q&A by Climate Reality Project

From Climate Reality Project of San Antonio:  Regenerative Advocate Training

Empowering Your Voice & Participation in the Movement to Regenerate the Earth

Join Finian Makepeace, co-founder of Kiss the Ground and Executive Producer of Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, and Groundswell, for a live, 2-hour online training. The session will explore regenerative agriculture, the power of storytelling, and how our voices, relationships, skills, and influence can help create change. You don’t need to be an expert—just a willingness to participate.

 Invite friends, colleagues, and others who are interested in regenerative, low-water agriculture. Each of us can be a storyteller and advocate—sharing what we learn and bringing more people into this important movement.

A Q&A will follow, with additional seminars planned. Use QR code to RSVP for watching this documentary tomorrow. 

   

Nature and Spirituality: Water Desalination and Toxicity and The African American Community on History, Traditions and Healing on Sep 5 10am CT

 

Third Pax Christi Texas Quarterly Forum of 2026: Women in the Catholic Church Today on Aug 17 7PM CT

 Women in the Catholic Church Today

 Monday August 17, 2026

A presentation will be given followed by an open forum dialogue

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85856131410?pwd=8OAxwx5eXCI7fBWCaiCM9Eu3Ycg5SF.1