By Fr Michael Moore SM
Last Sunday afternoon, in a carpark in Northbridge, approximately 70 adults and children sang songs, prayed the Evening Prayer of the Church and participated in a catechesis touching on their actual experience of God.
Similiar numbers of people gathered at Manners Hill, Peppermint Grove and next to the Mirrabooka bus interchange. And they will be there the next four Sundays.
A European backpacker wandering by in Northbridge seemed to mutter something about these foolish, noisy people.
When he saw the cross he genuflected, blessed himself and kept walking. He could have been quoting from the account of the first Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles.
After receiving the Holy Spirit the apostles went out into the streets of Jerusalem announcing that the Father had raised Jesus from the dead and constituted him Lord and Christ. Some of the listeners were bewildered, the Acts records, but others laughed and said they had been drinking too much wine. It seems a new pentecost is occuring.
At the beginning of Lent this year, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ, now our Holy Father, Pope Francis, wrote to all the parish priests of Buenos Aires concerning the important topic of the new evangelisation.
We pray many times at Mass, he said, that all members of the Church learn to discern the signs of the times and grow in fidelity to the Gospel; that we try to share in charity the anxieties, sorrows and hopes of the people; and in this way to show them the way of salvation. We all know that the reality of the parishes is bound by the number of people who come and also by the number of people we are not able to reach.
The Church is constantly calling us to a new evangelisation and she asks us to make concrete gestures that express the anointing that we have received.
We are called to go out to share and to announce the Good News we have received personally. How many young people spend their lives stunned from drugs and noise because they have no meaning.
Any weekend night in Northbridge you see hundreds of young people drinking in order to forget life. How many good people live for appearances only?
All these people are waiting for some good news.
The Cardinal concludes his pastoral letter saying that it is impossible for a person who has accepted the Word and given themselves to the Kingdom not to become a person who witnesses to the Word and announces it.
For many years the Neocatechumenal Way has been working to ensure that the Church be present in the streets manifesting the presence of Jesus alive and risen from the dead with the power to forgive sins.
With this marvellous coincidence of the Holy Spirit, the Neocatechumenal Way across the world is offering in the Year of Faith a Mission in the Squares to the people.
Every Sunday of Easter groups of around 50 brothers and sisters will meet in a public park or square or an available area.
They will spend half an hour inviting people in the vicinity to come at 3pm for a catechesis. Each Sunday will have a different topic – like “Who is God for you?”, “What is the meaning of your life?” and so on. There will be a dialogue with the people who come.
Last Saturday morning across Australia the blessing and sending out of communities for this mission took place – in Brisbane with Archbishop Coleridge; in Sydney with Bishop Brady; in Wollongong with Bishop Ingham; in Melbourne with Bishop Vincent Long and in Parramatta with the Vicar General, Mgr Williams, representing Bishop Anthony Fisher OP.
In Adelaide, Archbishop Wilson invited the communities to conduct the Mission in front of St Fancis Xavier’s Cathedral.
On Divine Mercy Sunday, after the Angelus in St Peter’s Square, the Holy Father greeted “in particular the neocatechumenal communities of Rome who today begin a special mission in the Squares of the City.
I invite everyone to bring the Good News in every area of life ‘with sweetness and respect’ (1 Peter 3:16)! Go to the squares and announce Jesus Christ, Our Saviour.”
Here. in Perth, Bishop Donald Sproxton blessed and sent out over 160 people from the parishes of St Mary’s Cathedral, Star of the Sea Cottesloe, St Gerard Majella Westminster, Good Shepherd Kelmscott, St Brigid’s Northbridge, Corpus Christi Mosman Park and Baldivis with a number of priests and the seminarians of the Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary Redemptoris Mater.
There are three locations for the Mission in the Squares in Perth – in Aberdeen Street, Northbridge; in Manners Hill, Peppermint Grove and in the park next to the bus interchange in Mirrabooka.
For the next four Sundays there will be a mission at 3pm at each location. You are warmly invited to come along, bringing your family and friends.
St Paul said that God chose to save the world through the foolishness of the preaching of the Gospel.
Perhaps the backpacker recognised Christ!