EUROPE/RUMANIA - “This people and this land in this part of eastern Europe are a field for new evangelisation”: Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate report on popular mission

Wednesday, 23 March 2005

Bucharest (Fides Service) - From 13 to 20 March four Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate held a popular mission in the parish of St John of Capestrano, in Targu Jiu, archdiocese of Bucharest (see Fides 11/3/2005). One of the priests, Fr Elio Filardo, send Fides a report on the mission.
“We visited each of the 350 Catholic homes among the 70,000 people in Târgu Jiu. On some occasions not all the family was present but in others neighbours and friends had joined the family to welcome us. A brief 30 minute visit served to meet each other and share views and experience. From what people said it was clear they have suffered. There were many testimonies of faith and married life lived to the full. We prayed together to God the Father and we gave them our blessing and left them with the missionary cross. There were many questions about the faith and some would have liked a longer visit: one person said “The visit to our family was over too soon. I would have liked the missionaries to stay for 3 or 4 hours. Am I being selfish? It is not easy to talk about spiritual matters in the first ten minutes of a conversation”.
Some visits started contact which continued at the Family Counselling Centres and daily Mass, celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and other celebrations. As one young father said: “When the missionary came to visit my home I felt God was with us as we conversed. At the Counselling Centres I had a chance to talk about matters of which I had heard in Church but never had the opportunity to discuss more deeply and understand. I was also deeply moved by the Mass for the Feast of St Joseph, because it was also about the love of a father”.
The Family Counselling Centres were hosted by parish families who opened their homes to the word of God and welcomed the missionaries. At first people were shy, this was a new experience. For some it was the first time they had said more than good morning to a priest at Sunday Mass. But an hour together was sufficient to remove all fear and reveal the joy of sharing the faith, to realise that we are the family called by God who speaks to us.
At one of these meetings there was a young Orthodox parish priest whom we had met on a previous occasion in Târgu Jiu. People were moved to see him there because he had just lost his mother for whom there had been a requiem Mass the day before. At the end of the meeting the priest asked to speak and he explained his presence: “Meeting the missionaries I learn from them a new way of living and sharing the faith which comes from the heart. When we look for love it makes everything easy and all we can do is to be grateful. We should not be ashamed to learn from the people whom the Lord makes us encounter so we can know more about his love and increase our own love”.
A young mother said it had been an experience of communion: “I felt deeply God’s love for us all but that my love for my husband and children had grown cold. During the week of mission the ice thawed I something I thought had been lost forever returned. I learned to listen and to be calm and patient when faced with difficulties of life”.
Listening to the Word of God I realised the need to listen more, to enter into communion with God revealed in Scripture. The Gospel heard in a climate of fraternity highlighted God’s identity often falsely perceived as a judge. Our gods, our dreams, are nothing like the God revealed by Christ in the Gospel.
Archbishop Ion Robu of Bucharest opened the popular mission on Sunday 13 March and handing the cross to the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate and the lamps to the Family Counselling Centre. During his homily for the Mass which was the 5th Sunday of Lent and the Gospel was the resurrection of Lazarus, the Archbishop said that the Church was not given the power to resurrect the dead but she has the much more onerous task of forgiving sins and he urged the people to live mission as an opportunity to receive grace and open hearts to reconciliation. This call received a warm welcome and the Word of God was sown and took root. This people and this land are a field of new evangelisation. Here too the Church, missionary by nature, spreads the Gospel which gives new life and hope to man”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 23/3/2005; Righe 66; Parole 920)


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