Matters India Reporter

Kolkata, September 14, 2020 — A priest catechist in Kolkata has marked Year of Laudato Si’, with the launch of what he calls ‘Stations of Creation – a Way of Beauty’ on Feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14.

The full text of the Stations of Creation – a Way of Beauty is posted on the Website of Season of Creation and is available at https://seasonofcreation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Way-of-beauty-5.pdf

Acknowledged and appreciated by the Vatican Dicastery of Promoting Integral Human Redevelopment, this Way of Beauty is going to be a landmark in the popular piety especially in this anniversary Year of Laudato Si’,” says the author of the popular devotion and editor of Catechetics India Salesian Dr Gilbert Choondal.

“WAY OF BEAUTY is an invitation to contemplate creation. It is an invitation to look all creatures with God’s own eyes who saw everything as “good” at the dawn of creation,” says Coordinator of Laudato Si’ Year at Vatican Dicastery of Promoting Integral Human Development Salesian Fr. Isaac Joshtrom.

Dr Joshtrom adds, “We intend to shift this resource on Way of Beauty to the Laudato Si’ Year website of the Dicastery at the close of the Season of Creation.”

Each of the 14 ‘Stations of Creation’ has an Introduction, Word of God, Reflection, A Quote from the Encyclical, Laudato Si’, and Conclusion with sequences from Canticle of Creation, the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.

The first Seven Stations are from the Old Testament and the subsequent Seven Stations are from the New testament. Thus, the entire Stations of Creation is a journey from the beginning of Creation (Genesis) till the end of our World / Revelation / Second Coming.

The 14 stations include: God Creates our Home; God Creates Everything Good and Beautiful; God Entrusts the Earth, the Garden Planet, to the Care of Humanity; God Enters into an Eternal Covenant with Creation; God Introduces the Jubilee to respond to the Cry of the Poor and the Earth; The Creation Groans with Pain; The Heavens Proclaim the Glory of God; Creator Becomes the Creature; God Lives in Full Harmony with the Creation; God Commands the Powers of the Universe; God Teaches ‘Human Ecology’; God sees the Interconnectivity; God Conquers Sin and Death; and Creation longs for the New Heaven and New Earth.

“[Way of Beauty] is beholding creation in the spirit of kinship with all that exists and cry out in praise and gratitude as the ‘poverello of Assisi’ did. It is seeing the natural world with the eyes of wonder and joy as children do. It is perceiving the wounds of creation with pain and empathy as so many committed eco-apostles do around the world,” says Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta.

Fr. Choondal has already authored earlier, Stations of Mercy – 14 Stations based on the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in the life of Jesus (2016) and Stations of Family – life of Jesus according to the Gospels in 14 Stations (2017).

Presently, Fr. Gilbert Choondal is the director of Nitika Don Bosco Catechetical Centre Kolkata established in 1977. END