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July 6, 2020
Our next Accompaniment and Solidarity gathering is Thursday, July 9, 2020 at noon Eastern Time, 11 am Central Time, 10 am Mountain Time, and 9 am Pacific Coast Time. Please REGISTER for the meeting.
Agenda- Opening Prayer
- Heart Speaks to Heart – an open forum to share hopes and joys, griefs, and anxieties. We will try Zoom Breakout Rooms to give people more “talk time.”
- What are we seeing and hearing in our own culture and from the missions around the world?
- How do we understand what we see and hear theologically?
- What are we to do?
- Global Solidarity – how can we accompany others in their journey into global solidarity? How can we accompany each other as we attempt to hold God’s people in our hearts?
- Encourage – what is strengthening our hearts for mission?
- USCMA Updates
- Closing Prayer
Any USCMA member can add an agenda item to our Accompaniment and Solidarity gathering. We also welcome volunteers to lead us in our opening prayer or our closing prayer.
June 25 Newsletter
Twenty of us gathered for prayer, accompaniment, and solidarity.
Opening Prayer – Fr. Frank opened us with prayer.
Heart Speaks to Heart – The struggle with mission and Covid-19 continues. How are parishes opening and when will people return? Mission in India is facing many challenges. Medical mission trips are being cancelled. When will missionaries – relatives – be able to come home? While we are facing the pandemic and protests, places like Palestine and South Sudan are closed. This is the 45th anniversary of the Massacre in Honduras when 13 people, including two priests, were killed. There are some efforts to connect with missions – such as reaching out to groups via video calls.
Global Solidarity – Fr. Dan Groody visited with the Third Wave of Mission and shared about his work on spirituality and migration. He has a forth coming book looking at migration and the Eucharist. The group has raised the possibility of reviewing the bishop’s statement on global solidarity and see if there is a need to update it. Fr. Gerry shared that Maria Giblin’s article encourages people to move from compassion to solidarity. The Third Wave of Mission is also working on a module to assist people in the process of integration following mission trips and even months or years after a mission trip based on the work of From Mission to Mission (Julie Lupien and Kelli Nelson). Sr. Mary McGlone will do a webinar for USCMA in September on the development model for international solidarity. Pope Francis has issued his statement for World Mission Sunday. It was noted that the Bishop of Lima Peru had pictures of all who had died line the cathedral for the Feast of Corpus Christi and the Bishop of Eswatini called for a new approach to mission.
Encouragement – People shared where they get encouragement during these days. The Haitian People were lifted as a people who never give up hope and always put their hope in God. Others remember the depth of the call to mission and the need to honor that call even during difficult times. Pope Francis has called us to be “sentinels of the dawn.” It is important to stay grounded in prayer. There is a humbling quality to the pandemic – it reminds us of how little we are but that we can still do something even if it is praying the rosary for others. Others found the generosity of the poor to be deeply encouraging.
USCMA Updates – The USCMA Board of Directors decided to cancel Mission Alive! due to misunderstandings and the poor reception of this program by some Diocesan Directors of Mission. USCMA is recruiting volunteers to serve on a Webinar Committee to identify and plan webinars for the rest of the year and into 2021. The Conference Planning Committee will consider ways to advance the Mission and Migration theme in October even though the conference has been postponed to October 2021. Anyone interested in reading Maria Cimperman’s book, Social Analysis for the 21st Century, can contact Don McCrabb. USCMA’s publications include its monthly newsletter, this newsletter for Accompaniment and Solidarity, reflections on missionary saints, and book review.