‘We’re the fruits of mission, mission is our vocation’
“Mission is the deepest identity of the Church. After a joyful and meaningful celebration of 5th centenary jubilee for the arrival of Christian Faith, it’s high time that we proceed to be a missionary church. It’s time for giving rather than receiving more. To give back what we received from the early missionaries who brought the good news to us we should also become a missionary or support the missionaries.”- said Archbishop Moses M. Costa, csc in the pastoral assembly of Chittagong Archdiocese held on 20-22 February 2019 in the newly built Archbishop’s House in Chittagong.
This year the pastoral theme was “We’re the fruits of mission- mission is our vocation” Total 96 priests, religious and laity participated in the program. The participants paid their respect to the language martyrs on 21st February by walking barefooted in the morning procession to the central ‘Shahid Minar’. The main assembly began with the presentation of the parish report on the activities during the ‘year of mission’. All the 11 parishes and a sub-parish presented their activities during the ‘year of mission’ in the prescribed format. In the open discussion every parish was enlightened by the experiences of other parishes.
After a short presentation of a video documentary on Chittagong Archdiocese and the celebration of the 500 jubilee, a priest- Fr. Subrato Bonifas Tolentino, a religious brother- Br. Mantrojoy Tripura, csc and a sister- Sr. Rina Palma, LHC, a catechist- Mr. Brinda Tripura, a parish pastoral council member- Mr. Michael Soarish and a Young laity- Miss Raquel Randolph shared their feelings on the jubilee celebration. In his very touching sharing, catechist Brinda Tripura stated how much struggle and social obstacles he had to face in order to take the good news to the most remote areas of the hill tracts.
The next day Archbishop Moses M. Costa, csc presented his pastoral letter for the 2019. He stated the scope, responsibilities and the measures to be a missionary. He said that we are always ‘missionary disciples’ by the rights of our baptism. We can fulfill this duty by praying for the missionary, donating money for the missionaries or we can ourselves be a missionary. Click here to see the full pastoral letter for 2019
This year the pastoral assembly had some changes in the program structure. The participants attended in group workshop divided in three groups as priests, religious and laity. Each group had a speaker who presented a 15 minutes paper giving the participants a basic idea of how they can do missionary works from their own positions. After the presentation each group had open discussion through which they took action plans for the year 2019. The assembly ended with a holy mass offered by the Archbishop. Click Here to See More Photos