“Caring for the Earth – Our Responsibility”; this was the theme of this year’s Liturgy School at Mount St Benedict held July 31 to August 5.

Facilitators Helena , Bernadette and Susan

Fr Hudlin (left) leads the Alpha workshop in song

Painting a colourful Eucharist banner

The drama group has lots of fun using cloth to depict creation

To reinforce this theme, the workshops began with a lecture on Creation by Seminary rector, Monsignor Michael de Verteuil. The theme was taken from the Antilles Episcopal Conference Pastoral letter.

In this letter, the Bishops of the Antilles addressed a number of social ills and showed how they were directly affected by our care for the environment: “We are all in the world not as owners, but as stewards. It is stewardship in the wider sense, that is, the care for creation, which we concentrate on in this letter.”

A statement from the letter follows: “Undesirable human behaviour with respect to the environment has consequences for earth that are irreversible”; it is within this context the afternoon workshops were conducted.

There were sixteen workshops: Altar Servers, Basic Doctrine, Catechetics, Church Art, Conflict Resolution, Creative Expression: Drama, Formation for Lay Ministers, Guitar, Homilies, Liturgical Dance, Principles of Liturgy: Music, Principles of Liturgy: Rites, Creative Expression: Story Writing/ Story Telling, Liturgy and Social Justice, Youth Liturgies and Alpha.

The facilitators incorporated this year’s theme as much as possible focussing on topics such as: human poverty, soil preservation, waste dumping, energy usage, trees, our land, nuclear waste, oil spills and over-fishing.

All students were encouraged to see caring for the environment as part of their spiritual duty: “To thankfully take responsibility for the integrity of creation is an important part of what it means to be made in God’s image” (AEC pastoral letter).

The school is open to anyone who is interested and forms can be collected at parishes throughout the country. There are resident students who are provided all meals and accommodation; students can also commute on a daily basis.

The programme is sponsored by the Liturgical Commission and runs the first week in August annually at Mount St Benedict.