[Homily: 3 September 2021. Based on: Col 1:15-20]

In the Philippines September starts the Season of Christmas normally with the strains of Joe Mari Chan's  "Christmas In Our Hearts."  Many of us know the lyrics by heart, or at least we recall significant phrases or images like: "I remember the Child in the Manger as he sleeps" or "Let's light our Christmas Tree for a bright tomorrow, when nations are at peace and all are one in God."

Peace:  So different from what we have all recently witnessed in Afghanistan:  Suicide bombers killing 183 people and wounding many more – "Allahu Akbar" - in praise of God.  An angered American President vowing non-forgiveness and vengeance praying, "God bless our troops."   Peace:  so different from the ongoing conflict between the powerful state of Israel and the stateless people of Palestine, between the communist rebels in Tigray and the elected government of Ethiopia;  between the sullen silence of youthful pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Myanmar and the military commands that imprison, that torture, that kill all who challenge their greed and brutality.

Peace:  So different from the fear, anxiety, frustration, loss of property and lives due to extreme hurricanes such as Ida, the wildfires in northwestern USA, in Italy, in Greece, in France and Morocco, the killer landslides in Japan, the extreme floods in China.  Peace:  so different from the anguish and death in the lives of friends and relatives afflicted by COVID 19 and its Delta variant, "delta" standing for "deadly." Or "dead."

"Let love like that starlight on the First Christmas morn lead us back to the manger where Christ the Child was born."  He was born as our Savior from our offences against God, from our trespasses against one another, but also from our sins against Creation. 

As September starts the Season of Christmas in the Philippines, it also starts the Season of Creation:  a worldwide celebration of prayer and action to protect "our common home"  - our environment, our God's Creation.  This has been celebrated by the Christian Family since 1989, by not only the Catholic Church but by many non-Catholic Christian communions.  It is celebrated from the beginning of September till October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  St. Francis experienced deepest communion with God in communion with his Creation, in fraternity with all creatures.  He expressed this fraternity in his Canticle of Creation, Laudato Si'!  - a song of praise.  "Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures!"  He praises God for Sir Brother Sun, for Sister Moon and the Stars, for Brother Wind, for Sister Water, for Brother Fire, for Sister Mother Earth, even for  Sister Bodily Death.

The theme of this year's Season of Creation is first a question:  "A Home for all?"  The environment is meant to be "our common home."  But how do we treat it?  How do we tend to make it my home and not yours, my land and not yours, my water and not yours,arrogate it as humankind's home and not also that of God's other creatures?  Presuming it is "our common home,"  this year's Season of Creation is dedicated to "Renewing the Oikos of God." The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) envisions us "journeying together this Season of Creation 2021 towards renewing the oikos of God."

The Season's organizers are keen on using the Greek word oikos.  In its original Greek usage, oikos referred to the home wrought from three essential elements: the house, the family, and the family property. 

In scripture, in the first Creation account of Genesis, God creates a home for all creatures by creating a dome separating the waters of the heavens from the earth, creating the domus, the domicile, the home for the human family, who share the earth with other creatures on which they all live.  This is the oikos of God, the created home, the family of creatures, the world, given by God as a gift for all.

But unfortunately this common home is disrespected, abused, destroyed, debased - implicated in humankind's sin.  God's created garden is where Adam and Eve disobey God;  it is in the created world where Cain murders Abel.  Romans recalls how people made creatures into idols, repugnant to God, "While claiming to be wise, [people] became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes" (Rom 1:25).  Creating idols out of things in creation continues to be a major temptation and sin;  we worship created things in our fixated greed for land, property, wealth, food, pleasure, the flesh.  In our frenzy to satisfy our increasing need to consume, our envy and greed, we kill not only one another, as Cain killed Abel, but we murder Mother Earth in our decimation of her forests, in our destruction of her biodiversity, in our world-class disembowelment of Mother Earth through large-scale, open-pit mining.  The signs of abuse are now more than ever before manifest:  in climate change which heats up the planet, melts the glaciers, causes the levels of the oceans to rise, bringing hurricanes of unprecedented strength, tsunami and devasting floods in the east and angry wildfires in the west.  COVID 19 as a pandemic is not just a random widespread viral disease;  it is Mother Nature's indictment  of how the human being has mishandled and abused her. 

So is Creation alienated from its proper functioning by the sinful abuse of humans.  St. Paul says that Creation, subjected by sin to futility, hopes to be set free from corruption and share in the freedom of the children of God.  With them, it groans awaiting redemption.  It groans in hope of being restored to its meaningful, not futile, but glorious role in the oikos of God (cf. Rom 8:18-25).

The Season of Christmas:  it's not just a soft celebration of pious sentimentality… but urgently a Season of Creation when we need to examine our relationship with Creation and grasp how urgently Creation needs to be rescued from our sins, from us.

Christ for whom there was no room in the inn and so lain in a manger does not come only to save human beings from their sins against God and one another.  But he comes also to save the oikos, the world, from our destruction.  Christ hears the cry of the earth.  He hears creation groaning.  He cares.  He has a personal stake in it. 

For it was not only the Father who created the world.  Our first reading is the lyrics of yet another song.  It is actually an ancient song about Jesus, quite similar to the Prologue of John's Gospel.  It is an extraordinary testimony of the profundity of the faith in the early Church of Colossae and in the role of Christ in creation:

He is the image of the invisible God,
The firstborn of all creation.
For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,
The visible and the invisible,
Whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;
All things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things
And in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in all things
he himself might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile all things for him,
making peace by the blood of his cross
[through him] whether those on earth or those in heaven. 

                                                                                 (Col 1:15-20)

In this song the invisible Creator becomes manifest in the image of Christ, just as in John's prologue the invisible God is manifested in the Word-made-flesh.  He existed before things were made.  All things are created through him and for him.  He is the preeminent one.  In him all things are held together.  In him the fullness [of grace, of love] reconciles all things for him making peace by the blood of the Cross.  That we can also appreciate on this First Friday:  For from the Cross "the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit…  God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" … that we might be "saved by his life." (cf. Rom 5:5-11)

The Season of Christmas begun in the Philippines in September ultimately also celebrates Jesus the co-Creator of all creation who comes also to reconcile us by his blood  with the Creation we have abused and misused in our sin.

The Season of Christmas calls for the Season of Creation where we journey together to a triple restoration of the oikos, the home the Father gave us in love through Jesus Christ:

To restore the dome of our domicile which we have broken through our carbon emissions, thereby causing our planet to overheat and to react in violence;

To restore the earth which we have ravaged through our unbridled consumption, turning rainforests into monocrop farms, turning biodiverse mountains into gaping mines, turning rushing rivers into parched riverbeds, turning habitats for wildlife into cemented-over settlements for human consumption.

To restore the fraternity not only of human beings but of all creatures:  Where we can speak of Brother Afghans and Sister Ugandans, Mother Malaysia and Sister China,  Brother Sun and Sister Moon. 

In the Season of Creation we know we need redemption, we know we need a Savior from ourselves.  Remembering "the Child in the manger as he sleeps," we behold "the Light for a bright tomorrow."

Graphics from https://seasonofcreation.org/
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