The parish mission took place in the chapel of Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús from 4 to 11 January 2025. Since 2024, the Redemptorist parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Villa Angela has taken the initiative to live the Missionary Novena 2024-2033, thus preparing for the Great Jubilee of Redemption in 2033.
This year, the mission covered the area of the chapel Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús, one of the ten chapels in the village belonging to the parish. In addition to the town with 70,000 inhabitants and these 10 chapels, 16 rural chapels are also part of the parish. In this large area with 26 chapels, three Redemptorist priests are currently ministering.
The mission in the chapel mentioned above began on 4 January with the opening Mass and the sending out of the missionaries. During the mission, about 220 lay missionaries, 5 Redemptorists, 4 seminarians, and 4 religious sisters ministered.
The area of St. Theresa’s Chapel was divided into three mission centres, which allowed the faithful to feel the closeness and care of the Church. Each centre had its own ‘mission team’ in charge of the mission. Each day’s programme included house visits (about 1700 houses were visited), preaching the word, and evening meetings in which the day’s theme was presented to different groups: adults, youth, and children.
During these days, many people could renew their faith and reconcile with God in the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. Within the mission, a vocational retreat was also held, with the participation of about 20 men, who were able to experience the charism of the Redemptorist missionaries more closely. The mission’s closing saw an extensive participation of the faithful in the Eucharist, celebrated on 11 January.
The mission will continue with small group meetings to prepare for future kerygmatic retreats. After the kerygmatic retreats, the faithful will continue to prepare for the koinonia retreat to form the small communities of the parish.
This type of mission is part of the pastoral plan SINE (Integral System of the New Evangelisation), which has been carried out in the parish for several years. The aim of this programme is to lead the baptised to a conscious experience of the sacraments of initiation and to form the parish as a community of communities, ready for permanent mission—in other words, to create the structure and spirit of an evangelising parish.
It is worth noting that the mission was spiritually supported by the constant prayer of the parishioners in the perpetual Eucharistic adoration chapel, where many faithful have been praying for the parish for the past two years.
P. Martin Zubik CSsR
