Summary of online lecture

Ekaterini Tsalampouni

“COSMIC LITURGY” AND THE CARE FOR THE CREATION

The online lecture of Professor Ekaterini Tsalampouni “‘Cosmic Liturgy’ and the Care for the Creation” took place on Thursday, April 10, 2025. It was organized by the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, as a part of the series of events “Time for Action”, and also as a part of the “Liturgy after the Liturgy” series, organized by the Holy Metropolis of France and the Vicariate of French-Speaking Parishes (Ecumenical Patriarchate), in collaboration with the Volos Academy. The event was moderated by Dr. Nikolaos Asproulis, Deputy Director of the Volos Academy.

Starting from the idea that the entire creation is a praise to the Creator, the speaker presented the biblical origins of this concept, focusing on the fact that such ideas are rarely discussed in the context of the ecotheological dialogue. The prevailing conceptions are generally anthropocentric, even anthropomonistic, overlooking “the ways in which the rest of the Creation is connected to God, independently of the human kind”; however, in the biblical text it becomes clear that the entire Creation sings in praise of the creator God (indicatively, Psalm 148) and, even more so, Creation maintains this doxological role, which also acquires the character of testimony, as in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday or in the Prophecies of Habakkuk. “The praise of the stones becomes the response to human failure and at the same time the fault of human cruelty and self-sufficiency”. Thus, it become clear that in many aspects, the idea that man is the exclusive administrator or even the priest of Creation is simply a metaphor, which needs to be reinterpreted in light of the current climate crisis, as its inner anthropocentrism poses obstacles to a deeper, unifying understanding of Creation itself.

The speech was followed by a discussion. The video recording of the Greek version of the event is available on the YouTube channel of the Academy, at https://youtu.be/4oq8af-Vn9c, while a French version is expected to appear on the channel of the Vicariate. The events of both cycles will continue in May.