All baptized who have experienced the love of God are called to fulfill Jesus’ mandate, to make disciples to all peoples, recalled the bishop of Cúcuta, Mons. José Libardo Garcés Monsalve.
The Prelate published a reflection at the end of the second congress of the evangelizing process of the particular Church that celebrated the diocese with the motto Pilgrims of hope “go and make disciples.”
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In the text, published in the Diocesan newspaper the truththe prelate indicated that “this mission is fulfilled by each of those baptized in the environment and place where it is”, where “their presence and testimony of life become a missionary action, which speaks of Jesus to whom they are in their environment.”
To do this, he explained that it is important that the starting point is “a sincere personal, pastoral and structures conversion, according to what the church documents teach us, to enliven the missionary spirit.”
“Our mission is in the Word of Our Lord Jesus Christ who has told us ‘go and make disciples’, aware that the internal force to evangelize comes from the Holy Spirit to whom we recognize as the first protagonist in the task of the announcement of the Gospel and that Jesus himself has promised us,” he said.
With regard to the Diocese of Cúcuta, he said that “the second Congress of the Peip has left us the call to live the audacity to make more evangelical, disciple and participatory, the way we think and perform the pastoral, which has to be based on the catechetical action, which breaks the catechesis schemes that we bring so far.”
Mons. Garcés said that “this needs pastoral conversion, which allows us to look at catechesis as a process.” That is, to go from a pastoral of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral. “
In that sense, he encouraged the faithful of Cúcuta to arrange “to convey the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a lot of pastoral fervor.”
“That the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the custody of the glorious patriarch San José, reach the Lord the grace for each of us, of a real pastoral conversion, to go on missionary exit to announce the message of salvation everywhere, fulfilling the mandate of the Lord: be my witnesses,” he said.
Eduardo Berdejo
Professional in Social Communication of the National University of San Marcos in Peru, I have more than 20 years of experience in Catholic digital journalism. As part of ACI Press, I have been sent to cover the trips of Pope Francis to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, in addition to the Synod of Sinodality in the Vatican in 2023.