Caceres archbishop and pastors initiate Season of Creation

By Lilette P. Manauis

Archbishop Rex Andrew C. Alarcon and priests across the archdiocese of Caceres, on the celebration of Creation Sunday 2025, deliver bold and moving homilies aimed at awakening and urging their congregations to act on being responsible stewards of God’s creation.

September 7, 2025, marks the start of the Season of Creation which is annually held to consistently encourage consciousness, reflective action, and renewed commitment to caring for God’s creation – our own home.

In his homily, the archbishop invited the congregation to recall how it had been since we were little children when we were taught not to steal, to return what we borrow, and to always share equally. He even recalled how we were taught to “think about those who haven’t eaten yet, never to waste food, and always to take care of our things.” Furthermore, he emphasized that these small but greatly valuable teachings are taught to children, but are indeed reminders to all of us [today] these days.

Sequentially, Bishop Rex delved into the verity of not being alone rather than having families and neighbors to think of. Explicitly, he pointed out one by one all the abuses of natural resources and even to indigenous people, which leaders and politicians commit for the sake of their own business monopoly and personal interests. And how all these hurt biodiversity and even our own safety.

Continually, he emphasized upon environmental justice by reiterating that the earth’s resources gives us “ay para sa gabos.” He was direct in saying that God’s creation is for everyone, and we are accountable for that to God Himself.

In a separate homily delivered by Rev. Fr. Albert Orillo in one of his masses at the Holy Cross Parish, Nabua, Camarines Sur quoted Pope Francis who spoke of the earth as “our common home.”

Fr. Albert instinctively ushered his parishioners to an imagery of whether they will be happy to wake up in the morning smelling bad air, or to walk on the streets seeing garbage scattered everywhere. He then pointed out examples of very specific acts, such as bringing one's own tumbler or water container to lessen, if not to eliminate the use of disposable plastic containers and planting trees or plants, which could contribute to re-greening the surroundings.

Truly, he claimed that these practices are not new, but we are being reminded constantly. Once again invoking Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato Si,” Fr. Orillo prompted his parishioners to show much care and act thoughtfully for the environment. He restated the late Pope in his advocacy for not only spiritual conversion but also ecological conversion.

He ended with a provoking statement saying, “While there’s time…let us not wait for a bigger catastrophe because for what it will cost us, our health gets affected too.”

Celebrating mass in St. Bernard Abbot Parish, Ocampo, Camarines Sur, Rev. Fr. Francis A. Tordilla buoyed for the pilgrims of the Camino de Peñafrancia a reflection on the Season of Creation, identifying with them in “usually forgetting that we are part of and we are one of God’s Creation.”

Bluntly, he expressed how we pretend to be “gods” and how power and money make us think we own the world. We put our selfishness before our “kapwa’s” welfare and become “dios-diosan,” claiming everything and not saving anything for other people. Another thing we forget he said is that “Man as a creation and not a creator needs to listen to the environment.”

Fr. Francis talked about two kinds of voices God wants us to hear, “mga inagrangay,” he said, using its Bikol sense. First is the voice of the environment and second is the voice of the poor. According to him, in “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis called us into universal fraternity, and part of it is the relationship and oneness with the environment and the compassion to those in need.

By this, he pointed out how nature has a way of getting back at us and that the calamities and natural disasters that we experience are pained voices by Mother Earth. Likewise, he expressed how the poor have become “powerless and victims of the pride of the few.”

He capped his homily by highlighting the devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia as being closely related to love of nature. According to him, it is through roads and the river that we celebrate Ina’s fiesta year after year and taking care of these natural features of the environment is a devotion to both Our Lady and our surroundings.

Finally, he urged the pilgrims of the camino to pray to Ina for strength to stand for the powerless and the poor, and the maturity of their cause from a personal to a communal mission so that the Season of Creation and the devotion to Ina be “seamless and synchronized because what we do will reflect that we are sons and daughters of Ina and Mother Nature.”

As we are continuously urged to remind ourselves of our responsibility as stewards of God’s creation, these sermons should not just resound as words throughout the archdiocese, but must be demonstrated in particular acts of ecological conservation and compassion.