(Aparecida, Brazil) – The missionary congress of Aparecida, San Paulo in Brazil, was inaugurated on Monday, January 29 with the theme: Holy Mission: Redemptorist identity in an outgoing Church. The opening Mass took place in the National Shrine of Our Lady Aparecida, presided over by General Consultor Father Rogério Gomes.
In his reflection, referring to the Gospel of the day (Mk 5,1-20) he said: “Jesus was always in a situation of reaching out to people, making an exodus, to seek, touch and to heal. The context in which we live today is no different, there is a wounded world that often rejects the Word of God and there are many schizophrenic traditions that obscure the purity and beauty of the Gospel, even in our Christian community. We should not be afraid. Jesus is with us. Thinking of the mission in a context of going out means relying on rejection when one thinks of doing good because going out always involves starting again, making personal and group conversions and breaking with obsolete and sterile traditions. To go out means to experience the uncomfortable, meaningful and renewing encounter with Jesus.”
After the Mass, the provincial of São Paulo, Fr. Inácio de Medeiros welcomed participants from Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Central America and the members of the URB in the Seminary of St. Alphonsus.
The topics covered during the congress are:
Ecclesiology: the outgoing Church (inspirations for ecclesiology from Vatican II and the Fifth Conference of Aparecida, pastoral conversion, models that we find on the Church that we propose in the missions),
Missiology: renewed understanding of mission (concept and foundations of mission, challenges, horizons and fields of mission, paradigmatic and programmatic mission),
Redemptorist identity: The mission as the theological motivation of the life of the Redemptorist (to continue the mission of redemption to the world).
Current indications in the Congregation, starting from the last General Chapters: the process of restructuring in view of the mission.
The relevance of the Redemptorist popular mission in the Church of Latin America and in Brazil.
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We ask your prayers for this meeting so that each of us can reinvigorate our missionary commitment to give a faithful and authentic response of Jesus to the wounded world.
Fr Hever Hugo Sánchez Gómez
