Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Assisi (Fides Service) - A “Letter to our Parish Priests” was issued at the end of the National Week of Missionary Formation and Spirituality held in Assisi 26 to 31 August organised by the Italian national office for missionary cooperation among Churches. Some 192 pastoral workers, religious and lay, reflected on the theme "The laity in the missionary parish". As the director of the office for missionary cooperation Mgr Giuseppe Andreozzi underlined “this third edition of the Week certainly received more attention and this means people feel the need to reflect on the subject of the missionary parish. We started with a sociological reading of the parish and worked our way to the theological contents of missionary ministry and a proposal for pastoral guidelines. The basic element emerging from the week was that lay people will be really co-responsibilie in the Church if the Church opens to mission because only mission allows the ministerial role of the laity to emerge”.
Conferences, discussion, testimonial were all inspired by the icon of the apostolic experience of Philip who meets the Ethiopian (Acts 8, 26-40), and this passage of scripture is quoted in the Letter to Parish Priests fruit of the work of the participants in three workshops: a sort of concluding document on the co-responsibility of the laity for mission in a parish which must be authentically missionary. “Dear brother parish priest we offer you our willingness to comunicate the faith, to shoulder with you responsibility for evangelisation” the letter says, stressing that the mission dimension is a call to the entire community. “We must not resign ourselves to a decline in participation… to the fact that many, including the faithful, look at the parish simply as a place which dispenses religious services and alms” the participants write, urging Catholics to undertake the ‘fatigue of renewal’ so as ‘to reach out’ with courage to the men and women who want to find in us a home and a school in which to grow in the faith”.
“We need to become ever more familiar with the Word, understood and lived individually and as a community, to live authentic experiences of prayer” says the letter and it concludes: “We may never know how far the good news travels once it is put on the roads of the world. And this we find is a reason to be happy and proud to work for the Kingdom. The Gospel of Jesus is a treasure offered to all men and women. We are ready for demanding proposals, for more radical commitment so as not to soffocate with the shallow breath of conservation pastoral. Mission brings fresh air to our communities, it fosters the lay ministry and develops the resource of youth. The more the Church is missionary the more it will be able to make prophetic gestures which give hope.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 2/9/2005, righe 32, parole 456)
