DRAPER — The 2019 Diocese of Salt Lake City Pastoral Congress drew about 500 people to the Skaggs Catholic Center on Sept. 14 for a day of faith, community and learning.
The gathering was an opportunity “not only for professing our faith but expressing and carrying on our identity as missionary disciples of Christ,” said Bishop Oscar A. Solis as he welcomed the congress participants.
Their attendance at the congress, which had the theme “Increase Our Faith, Confirm Our Hope,” was “a wonderful manifestation of your desire to become more effective ministers of the Gospel here in our local Church of the Diocese of Salt Lake City,” he said.
Bishop Solis presided at the Mass that was celebrated at the beginning of the congress. Concelebrants were the keynote speakers, Fr. Roger Keeler, J.C.D. and Fr. Sergio Serrano, O.P.; Fr. Wayne Cavalier, O.P., Ph.D., one of the workshop presenters; Msgr. Colin F. Bircumshaw, vicar general; Fr. Kenneth Vialpando, vicar for clergy; and numerous priests of the diocese. Deacon George Reade, chancellor, served as chaplain; other deacons assisted.
After the Mass, the event continued with keynote addresses in English and Spanish followed by workshops on a variety of topics presented by speakers who came from within the diocese as well as without.
“We are blessed and privileged to have wonderful men and women who are going to share with us wonderful insights in order to learn, in order to become more effective in our mission of evangelization,” the bishop said.
In his keynote address, Fr. Keeler spoke about the meaning of being missionary disciples, a role to which Bishop Solis calls Catholics in the local Church in his Pastoral Plan, which was released last year.
Fr. Keeler began his presentation by defining terms, such as testimony, which means “to make witness,” he said.
As a lawyer, the best evidence he can have in a case, other than signed written testimony, is “a person … who can offer witness first hand about what happened,” he said.
The root of the word “missionary” means to be sent out, he said, “so a missionary is one who is sent to testify.”
In the context of the Catholic Church, a missionary disciple is one who is sent “in response to Christ’s command to ‘Go, and make disciples of all nations,” Fr. Keeler said.
Disciples are more than followers, he said, because they allow themselves to be formed by their leader.
Jesus “is not asking us to make a bunch of friends for him; he wants people who are going to place themselves under his coaching. Why? … ‘That all may grow in full stature in Christ,’” he said, quoting Ephesians 4:13. “What Jesus wants is for all of us to become even as he is.”
Doing this requires the grace of God and a “community of fellow disciples who have a way of helping me to enter into that process of transformation, that process of growth, that process of becoming the one the Lord really knows me to be, the one that I haven’t necessarily met yet, or the one that I haven’t really allowed to grow yet,” he said.
Fr. Keeler quoted Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “… Anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are ‘disciples’ and ‘missionaries,’ but rather that we are always ‘missionary disciples.’ ...”
Pope Francis continually reminds people that “the Gospel is good news because at its core is the love of God made visible in the love of Jesus Christ,” Fr. Keeler said. “If we are called, then, to proclaim the Gospel, that means we are called to enflesh the love of God made visible in Jesus Christ. And we are able to do that, he says, because we have already encountered the love of God.”
Among the suggestions Fr. Keeler made during his presentation was “to have coffee with the Lord” – to sit down in the morning and “talk to the Lord about the day you’re going to have. You can tell him about the challenges and the worries and the things you’re looking forward to and the things you’re dreading. Maybe you’ll set before the Lord that one thing that maybe you’re going to work on a little bit. …”
After talking to the Lord, a person should sit in silence for a moment, and “be aware of the movement in that inner room where the Lord dwells. Then say thank you, and pray a Lord’s Prayer, and then take a shower, because you’re going to be late to work,” Fr. Keeler said.
This daily personal encounter with Christ and the knowledge of being loved that comes from it “gives us the impetus, the ground and the content of what it means to be missionary disciples,” he said.
After the keynote address, participants attended workshops of their choice. Several of the workshops were for catechists and youth ministry, others included vocations, social teaching and parish pastoral planning.
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