Let the Living Water Flow: 4 Ways to Put the Season of Creation into Action

From September 1 to October 4, Christians around the world will celebrate the Season of Creation 2026 under the theme “Living Water.”

The image comes from the prophet Ezekiel: water flowing outward from the temple, bringing life wherever it goes. Barren places become fertile. Damaged waters are restored. Trees grow along the riverbanks, offering food and healing. The 2026 theme invites Christians not only to recognize ecological damage and our interconnectedness, but to “immerse” ourselves more deeply in the work of renewal.

It is a powerful image—but also a challenging one.

Because living water does not remain still.

Across the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, we have seen the same movement again and again: prayer becoming encounter, encounter becoming commitment, and commitment becoming action in families, parishes, schools, dioceses, religious congregations, and communities around the world.

This Season of Creation, the invitation is not simply to admire the river. It is to step into its current.

We have already seen what can happen when communities act together

In Uganda this July, 85 young people representing 40 parishes traveled together to Bethany Land Institute for an Eco-Tourism and Green Skilling Tour. Young people from the Kampala Archdiocese Youth Apostolate encountered regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, forest ecology, and tree breeding—not simply as environmental concepts, but as skills they could carry back into their own communities.

One gathering connected dozens of parishes. One experience created possibilities for many more actions.

Elsewhere, the actions often begin much smaller. We recently shared the story of a surfer whose ecological journey started with a single plastic bottle. Paying attention to one piece of waste eventually became a much wider mission of education and advocacy—one that would ultimately reach Pope Leo XIV.

In Colombia, Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Belén de los Andaquíes has been discovering what it means to become an Eco-Parish, rooting ecological conversion in ordinary parish life through an ecological orchard that has become a space for prayer, learning, and care for creation. In South Korea, Catholic sisters and local communities have raised their voices for the threatened Sura tidal flats, connecting prayer and pilgrimage with education, public witness, and advocacy. 

The circumstances are different. So are the actions.

But the pattern is familiar: someone prays, notices, gathers others, begins—and keeps going.

That is ecological conversion made visible.

This Season of Creation, choose something concrete

Not every community needs to begin with a major project. The Laudato Si’ Action Platform includes actions that can help participants translate the Season of Creation into practices that fit their own reality. Our My Actions tool is designed precisely to help families, parishes, schools, communities, and institutions move from reflection toward actions grounded in their local context. 

This year, consider completing one or more of these four actions:

Organize a Season of Creation event with another community.
A parish could partner with a neighboring parish. A school could invite families or a religious congregation. A diocesan office could bring together communities already working separately. The goal does not have to be complexity. Sometimes the most important step is simply creating a space where people who care about our common home can meet one another, listen, pray, learn, and imagine what they might do together.

Pray publicly during the Season of Creation.
Organize a public act of prayer for social and ecological redemption. Where possible, invite people directly affected by ecological crises as well as religious or civic leaders. Prayer can happen inside a church, but it can also lead us toward the places where creation is wounded: a riverbank, a neighborhood affected by pollution, a forest, a coastline, or another place that helps a community encounter what is at stake.

Develop a Season of Creation spiritual practice—and return to it every year.
Perhaps your community begins a yearly ecological examen. Perhaps it holds Eucharistic Adoration, a creation-centered rosary, a pilgrimage, a prayer walk, or time for contemplation outdoors. Repetition matters. When a practice returns year after year, care for creation begins to move from a special event on the calendar toward part of a community’s spiritual identity.

Publish an annual statement supporting the Season of Creation.
Institutions have voices. A parish, diocese, school, university, congregation, organization, or other community can publicly name why the Season of Creation matters and what it is committing to do. A statement can be brief. What matters is making care for our common home visible—and allowing that public commitment to invite accountability.

Then tell the Platform what you did

There is one final step for Laudato Si’ Action Platform participants.

Once you complete one of these actions, log in to your Laudato Si’ Action Platform dashboard and mark it as completed on the My Actions page.

Your action may feel local: a prayer gathering in one parish, an annual spiritual practice in one school, a statement from one congregation, an event connecting two communities.

But when those actions are recorded together, they reveal something larger.

They show a Church responding.

They help us understand how communities around the world are putting the seven Laudato Si’ Goals into practice. They allow individual actions to become part of a shared global story. And they remind us that ecological conversion is not measured only in ambitious plans, but also in faithful actions repeated over time.

Explore the 2026 Season of Creation Celebration Guide and resources

Log in and record your completed action in My Actions

The river in Ezekiel’s vision restored everything it touched because it kept flowing outward.

This Season of Creation, may our prayer do the same: flowing outward into encounter, cooperation, public witness, new habits, and concrete care for our common home.

Where will the living water flow through your community?