Lectio Divina — Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
First Day of the Season of Creation
know
1. Lectio — Reading
> “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
— Luke 4:34
The words are startling because the demon speaks the truth. It knows who Jesus is.
Yet knowing who Jesus is and living according to that knowledge are entirely different things.
I can say that I know God is Creator. I can say that I know the earth is our common home, that creation is gift rather than possession, and that my choices affect people, creatures and generations I will never meet. But today’s Gospel makes me uncomfortable: knowledge alone is not discipleship.
The unclean spirit knows exactly who Jesus is—and still resists him.
As the Season of Creation begins, perhaps the question is not how much more information I need before acting. Certainly I should continue learning. Climate, ecology and technology are complicated realities, and humility requires me to admit what I do not know.
But there are already things I know well enough to act upon.
I know creation is God’s gift.
I know I have been entrusted with a small portion of it.
I know my choices have consequences beyond myself.
And I know that following the Holy One of God must eventually change the way I live within the world he created.
So today I ask:
Does the way I care for creation demonstrate that I know who Jesus is—or do I merely know the right things to say about him?
[Luke 4:31–37 — USCCB](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/4?31=&utm_source=chatgpt.com)
2. Meditatio — Meditation
Yesterday there was a big change in life at The Glenn.
Morada and Rosa, two of our livestock guardian dogs, were rehomed to a large sheep farm and ranch in Stanton.
There was something about their behavior that made me wonder whether they knew change was happening. Dogs notice preparations, movements, emotions and disruptions in routine that we may hardly recognize ourselves. Perhaps they sensed that something unusual was underway.
But they could not possibly have known what the change meant.
Neither, in another sense, could I.
I knew where they were going. I knew why the decision had been made. I could understand circumstances that Morada and Rosa could not. Yet I could not know everything their departure would mean—for them, for their new flock, for The Glenn or even for me.
That seems an appropriate image as I enter this Season of Creation.
I know the climate is changing. I know human activity affects our common home. I know that patterns of consumption, energy use and land management matter. Yet there is also much I do not know. The ecological systems involved are enormously complex, predictions contain uncertainties, technologies bring both possibilities and unintended consequences, and I cannot know precisely what the coming decades will bring.
But perhaps uncertainty about everything should not become an excuse for doing nothing about what I already know.
Morada and Rosa did not need to comprehend everything about Stanton before taking the journey. And perhaps I do not need to understand every dimension of climate change before taking my next faithful step.
Pope Francis repeatedly insisted that things can change. But change begins when concern for our common home becomes something more than an individual project. That particularly challenges me today.
Am I willing during this Season of Creation to bring my family into the conversation?
Not to lecture them. Not to frighten them. Not to pretend I possess answers I do not have. But to pray, listen, learn and ask together: What can we actually do?
Perhaps that begins very simply today—with prayer.
The Season of Creation begins not with my mastery of the problem but with my acknowledgement of the Creator.
On this World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, I can stand before God and admit:
I do not know everything.
But I know enough to begin.
3. Oratio — Prayer
Creator God, teach me to know you through the world you have made.
Give me humility about what I do not understand and courage to act upon what I do. During this Season of Creation, bring my family together in prayer, conversation and care for our common home.
May what I know become what I live.
Amen.
4. Contemplatio — Contemplation
Know.
Magnifica humanitas gives this word another dimension. Artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology and cognitive science are dramatically increasing what humanity can know and what humanity can do.
But increased knowledge produces increased power, and increased power does not automatically produce wisdom.
Guardini’s warning therefore belongs beside today’s Gospel: humanity has not necessarily been trained to use power well.
The demon in the synagogue possessed correct information:
“I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
But that knowledge had not become communion.
Could the same contradiction exist in me?
I can possess extraordinary technological tools. I can obtain information about weather, soil, energy consumption, grazing, water use and climate almost instantly. Artificial intelligence can help me analyze possibilities that would once have required enormous amounts of time.
But none of these tools can make the fundamental moral decision for me:
What kind of relationship will I have with creation?
Technology can help me care for our common home, but it can also tempt me into believing that every ecological problem will eventually have a technological solution. Then I am back inside the technocratic paradigm: if I possess enough information and enough power, surely I can control everything.
Yesterday’s departure of Morada and Rosa reminds me otherwise.
I live among creatures whose lives intersect with mine but whose experience I can never completely know. Creation is filled with realities I can study, manage and sometimes manipulate, yet never entirely comprehend.
That should produce humility rather than paralysis.
During this Season of Creation, perhaps I need three different kinds of knowledge: to know more, to know my limits, and to know the Creator.
The first can make me informed.
The second can make me humble.
But the third can make me a disciple.
And that is why beginning the Season of Creation with prayer makes sense. Before deciding what I can control, calculate, build or change, I begin by recognizing the One before whom even the unclean spirit had to confess:
“I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
Today I want to go one step further.
I want to live as though I know who he is.
World Day of Prayer for Creation on Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
