April 6, 2020


Our next gathering of Accompaniment and Solidarity is Holy Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 12:00 pm (noon) Eastern Time. You must REGISTER for the video call on Zoom. Zoom added two security procedures: 1) an access code to enter the meeting and 2) a waiting room until the host welcomes you in. Zoom instituted these changes because of security breaches where uninvited individuals enter a meeting and disrupt it.  

26 USCMA members participated in the April 2, 2020 Accompaniment and Solidarity video call.

The conversation focused on mission appeals and how people are doing.

• Mission Appeals – the regular schedule of mission appeals has been declining in dioceses before the Coronavirus. With the pandemic, dioceses are cutting back, suspending, or seeking new solutions to mission appeals.
  1. The Pontifical Mission Societies USA is offering a program to dioceses to use Missio to honor mission appeals. To get more information, contact Fr. Andrew Small, OMI at asmall@missio.org. The financial arrangements are unclear.
  2. Nancy Schramm shared the Joliet model: a social media strategy through diocesan networks to encourage people to remember the missions, highlighting mission groups accepted to the program, with donations accepted online and pooled and divided among participating mission groups.
  3. Antoinette Mensah shared the Milwaukee model which focuses on those mission institutes within the archdiocese.
  4. Don McCrabb outlined a social media effort to promote 14 mission organizations from Pentecost to the end of August. There was considerable conversation about this possibility and people favored pursuing it. A task force is being formed to guide its development. If interested, contact Don at dmccrabb@uscatholicmission.org.
  5. Many institutes really see the mission appeal for 2020 as mission education.
• What’s on our hearts?
  1. This is turning everything on its head. The poor are leading the way.
  2. The pandemic is revealing the fissions in our society.
  3. The pandemic has given us something. More, and deeper, connections with others.
  4. The future is unfolding as we see teenagers use the new technologies and adapt.
  5. Deep concern for people who are disconnected from reality, still in denial.
• Prayer - I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)

Solidarity

The Economy of Francesco. Looking at the economy from the perspective of the poor.

Resources

Christopher White reports in CRUX the efforts Church leaders are making to advocate for the immigrants during the pandemic.

Our friends at Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) have a special website they update daily on the latest information on immigration and migration during the Coronavirus pandemic. Here is the link: https://cliniclegal.org/covid-19.

Congratulations to Maryknoll Lay Missioners on the article published by the Catholic News Service on the challenges to their mission in Haiti. Check it out.

Marie Dennis, our friend from the Catholic Nonviolent Initiative, shared some insights on how to build our security on solidarity. Here is the LINK to her insights.

One way to deepen our prayer life during the pandemic is through the Lectio Divina. Our friends at Paulist Evangelization have put together this short (9-minute) introduction.

Prayer

No Greater Love – Meditations on the Way of the Cross is a resource offered to all USCMA Members as we enter Holy Week. Jesus’ way of the cross is also our way of the cross. Through meditation, we enter a moment of encounter, accompaniment, solidarity, communion with Jesus as we see his suffering in ours and ours in his. All USCMA members are encouraged to meditate on Holy Saturday when, in the tomb with Jesus, we cling to our faith.