What's Happening

September 8, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – Again this year, Catholic communities will receive special guidance for Sunday liturgical celebrations during the Season of Creation, thanks to Father James Hug, SJ, and Denise Mathias, who created the 2025 Catholic Liturgical Guide.  

Stretching from September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, through October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, this liturgical season has been set aside by Christians worldwide as “a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment together,” according to the Season of Creation website.

In this guide, Father Jim, Priest Chaplain for the Adrian Dominican Sisters Motherhouse since 2013, offers introductory comments; points of reflection on the Sunday Scripture readings; and suggested prayers for the opening sign of the cross, the Penitential Rite, General Intercessions, Prayer over the Gifts, Prayer after Communion, and the Final Blessing.

Denise, Music Minister for the Adrian Dominican Sisters, offers suggestions for the Responsorial Psalm and the music for each Sunday during the Season of Creation. 

The two have been collaborating on these guides since 2020.

Father Jim has long been concerned about environmental issues. He noted that Pope Francis, shortly after the publication of his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, encouraged Catholics to become involved in the ecumenical celebration of the Season of Creation. Father Jim began integrating the theme of the Season of Creation into the prayers and homilies during Sunday liturgies for his Masses at the Motherhouse.

“The identification of the Season of Creation as a new liturgical season invites the whole Christian community into focused prayer and action,” Father Jim writes in his introduction to the 2025 Catholic Liturgical Guide. “The Catholic community, however, does not yet have official seasonal liturgical texts proper to the Season of Creation, and many pastors might not feel free to use the ecumenical texts of other participating Christian communities.” 

In response to this need, Father Jim in 2020 created a liturgical guide for the Sundays that year during the Season of Creation and shared it with other Catholic organizations, particularly the Global Catholic Climate Movement. His aim has been to help Catholic pastors “to focus on issues of climate change and ecological spirituality” in reflections on the Sunday readings in the Catholic lectionary. “How can we get these readings and prayers and hear them in the context of our ecological dimension?”

Each year after Easter, Father Jim and Denise begin their work on the liturgical guide, following the theme set for the year by the worldwide ecumenical community. This year’s theme is “Peace with Creation.” The destruction brought on the planet through the burning of fossil fuels, overproduction, and overconsumption can be seen as “violence against the Earth,” Father Jim said. “What’s strong through this season is humility before creation and a sense of the sacredness of what we’re doing.… There’s an emphasis on what discipleship calls us to do.” 

As a music minister, Denise offers suggestions on how others in the field can approach the music during the Season of Creation. “When people plan music, they can choose one song to be a theme for the season or bookend it – the same song at the beginning and the end,” she said. She also suggested that choir members learn new music first and teach it to the assembly.

Denise recommends music based on the texts of the day. “I use a lot of different resources: Catholic music resources and texts from other denominations – any musical texts that I feel are viable for the day. I read Jim’s prayers and reflections so I know what to focus on.”

Denise found it particularly gratifying to discover that the new editions of the publication, Gather, include some of the newer musical texts about ecology. “It’s coming,” she said. “Some hymn writers have been writing about creation for some time. It’s good to be able to include their texts.”

Father Jim has long been concerned about global climate change and ecological devastation. “One of the things that really hit me was the talk by the scientists of the tipping points,” the point at which various aspects of the environment can be irreversibly changed and cause great damage to the environment, Father Jim said. “We’ve already passed some of the tipping points. There’s going to be a lot of pain and suffering. We’re already seeing it.” 

Denise echoed his concern for the environment. “I wonder what my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to deal with,” she said. Still, she added, people are beginning to take action. “They have reversed some terrible situations. The Cuyahoga River was burning in the ’70s, but now it’s doing better.” 

Denise sees signs of hope in new hymn writers who understand the threat of climate change, as well as in local communities who are also aware of the environmental threat. “There’s an awareness out there in many communities,” she said. “They might have community gardens. When you think about this from a spiritual point of view, this is very important – to live as sustainably as you can and to see that it’s a spiritual [matter].”
 
Father Jim said that consciousness is growing. “One of the things that gives me hope is that consciousness doesn’t rise gradually. It rises in fits and starts and then very quickly. God is in all this, working to bring about enough rise in consciousness that can change the world.” 

And as this ecological consciousness grows, so does the interest among Catholics in the Catholic Liturgical Guide. “The list grows every year,” Father Jim said. He sends the guide to various Catholic organizations and networks, including communities of women and men religious and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. There also has been talk of a Catholic publishing company eventually turning the liturgical guide into a book.

In the meantime, the Catholic Liturgical Guide is available on the Season of Creation website and on the website of the Dominican Center: Spirituality for Mission. 

 

Caption for above feature photo: Left to Right: Father James Hug, SJ, and Denise Mathias.

By Sister Maria Yolanda Manapsal, OP
Chapter Prioress, Our Lady of Remedies Mission Chapter

August 28, 2025, Angeles City, Pampanga, Philippines – On the second day of their monthly Mission Chapter recollection, members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters Our Lady of Remedies Mission Chapter gathered outside their Motherhouse and started the day with meditative morning prayer before beginning a tree planting event. 

Staying true to their Dominican heritage, the Sisters practiced communal prayer to sanctify a mission that each holds close to her heart as an environmental advocate: connecting with nature and being responsible stewards of humanity’s common home.

The tree-planting ritual was the Sisters’ humble response to the call of Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ to “care for creation and hear the cry of the Earth and the poor.” The initiative is timely and vital, given the unrelenting typhoons and floods that recently have plagued the province of Pampanga and other areas of the Philippines. Each Mission Group planted one tree in the empty plot of grass next to the Adrian Dominican Sisters covered court. 

After a hearty breakfast and short break, the Sisters congregated in the conference room to share updates and reflections about seminars they had recently attended and their various ministries. 

Sisters Liberty Mendoza, OP, and Ruby Lumanlan, OP, shared their experience of serving as the Congregation’s delegates to the HOPE 2025 Convention in Rome. Sister Liberty highlighted three insights that she thought impactful: the challenge to grow in connection with God, self, and others; the spirit and power of global sisterhood; and the chance to marvel at and connect with God’s works. 

Sister Ruby added that being in Rome enabled her to experience a sense of “deepened spirituality” as she surveyed the city’s landmarks. The conversations with her fellow sisters allowed her to see firsthand the importance of “women’s participation in the revival of the Church.” Participants were challenged to “step outside your comfort zones and into global sisterhood and transformational leadership, converting walls into bridges and keeping united despite adversity.”  

The Congregation’s delegates to the recently concluded Philippine Convention on New Evangelization 2025 (PCNE), held at the University of Santo Tomas, were the next to speak. Sister Rosa Yaya, OP, shared her key takeaways from Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David’s talk, particularly on “walking together in hope” with Jesus and recognizing that “Christian hope is the gift of the Holy Spirit toward eternal life in the Kingdom of God.” She invited the Sisters to reflect on the questions: What makes us happy? What helps us persevere in our vocation?

Sister Marie Garcia, OP, expounded on Sister Rosa’s reflections, saying that the encounter at the convention inspired her to “seek the invisible and connect with the individual and with nature. We are all one under God – persons, plants, flowers. [We are reminded that] His Promise is kept.” 

In her sharing, Sister Romina Bautista, OP, marveled at the grace that was manifested in the 5,000 participants who graced the event despite a heavy downpour. What struck her the most was the emphasis on Pope Francis’s last encyclical Dilexit Nos (He loved us) and the theme of Jubilee Year 2025, Spes non confundit (Hope does not disappoint).

The last sharer among the delegates, Sister Liza David, OP, recounted her experience during a small group sessions focused on ministering with those in the margins. She said that the encounter allowed her to gain a deeper appreciation for the Congregation’s various ministries, particularly those that cater to the indigenous people, persons with disabilities, and women. “It reminded me that there is hope despite suffering,” she said. Hearing the reflections of the participants she had met from that panel also inspired her to “move forward and walk with them in the spirit of mission and through life.”

The final segment of the session was allotted for the foreign missionaries of the group, Sisters Alma Zapanta, OP, and Salvacion Valenzuela, OP, who shared updates and firsthand experiences about their mission in Norway. 

Since the mission’s foundation in June 2005 through the guidance of the late Sister Zenaida Nacpil, OP, the Congregation’s former prioress, Sisters Alma and Salve have sustained the efforts to keep the Adrian Dominican presence vibrant. 

The two missionaries have continued various apostolates started by Sisters who previously ministered in Norway, including pastoral, conventual, and educational ministries. In keeping with the needs of the times, they also established an online media apostolate where they share Sunday Gospel reflections, Rosary and Faith-Life sharing sessions through Google Meet, as well as counseling and prayer sessions. This expansion into the online space has widened the reach of the Sisters as they minister to people from Norway, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Vietnam. 

Sisters Alma and Salve also preached the Gospel on EWTN Norway. They reported that their apostolates, and more so their presence, have inspired those around them to seek the Lord and encouraged some young women whom they have met and touched to discern a vocation to religious life.

The Sisters spent the afternoon discussing their hopes and vision for the future of the Congregation.

The day overflowed with many of God’s graces upon the Sisters: meditative prayer, connection with nature, and camaraderie through sharing and ministry. It was truly an echo of God’s peace and sending forth in the Gospel of John 20:21, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you!”