To all the Parish SCC Coordinators, Archdiocese of Bombay
My dear Collaborators,
I am writing to thank you sincerely for the keen interest you take to foster the spirit of the Small Christian Communities (SCCs) in your parish. Your selfless love, dedication and commitment, and most importantly, your sacrifices, are all instrumental in keeping the SCCs alive and vibrant. What has struck me most during these trying times of the pandemic is your thoughtfulness to contact your SCC Coordinators and Animators regularly, and to remind them to ensure that no one is in want in their respective SCCs. I am indeed grateful to you.
I also take this opportunity to thank the Editor and Team of The Examiner for reserving the issue of August 28, 2021 for the SCCs; you will find a link to all the articles and reports on our SCC website https://mumbaiscc.in
We begin a new month of September, and our focus of attention is the Birthday of Our Lady and the Day of the Girl Child (September 08). Incidentally, we are in the midst of the Novenas to prepare ourselves for the Nativity of Our Heavenly Mother. May our prayer to Our Blessed Mother be, “guide us along our pilgrim way, today and always.”
As Christians and followers of Christ, we are urged to celebrate the Season of Creation from September 01 to October 04. September 01 was proclaimed as a day of Prayer for Creation only for the Eastern Orthodox Church; later, it was embraced by other major Christian European Churches in 2001, and by Pope Francis for the Roman Catholic Church in 2015. The Season of Creation invites us to pray and protect Creation from decay, so that as caretakers of God’s Creation, we may strive to renew the face of the earth and safeguard a home for God’s creatures. For more information regarding the Season of Creation, you may log on to https://seasonofcreation.org
Keeping the Season of Creation in mind, Fr Joshua D’Souza, Executive Secretary of the CCBI Commission for Ecology has prepared the attached paper (download here) for our common reflection. May I request you to circulate it to all the SCC Coordinators and Animators, so that it reaches all the families of your parish community.
The monthly activity for September may be chosen from the website https://seasonofcreation.org. Please send photographs of this activity at the family, cluster or SCC level to bombayscc@gmail.com for our Archdiocesan SCC website.
And before I conclude, it is my earnest desire to see that the people in your SCCs and clusters have taken both the vaccines. Pope Francis (in the week of August 19, 2021) said, “being vaccinated with vaccines authorized by the competent authorities is an act of love. And contributing to ensure the majority of people are vaccinated is an act of love – love for oneself, love for one’s family and friends and love for all people.”
May I also remind you to get all your Community Coordinators and Animators to submit their Quarterly Reports to you by the end of this month, so that you are in a position to collate the same and present it to the Parish Priest and/or Priest in-charge of the SCCs, before submitting it to my Office. All the Quarterly Reports (July 2021 to September 2021) from your parish must reach my Office via e-mail by October 15, 2021. A sample copy of the Quarterly Report is enclosed herewith (download here).
God bless you and the members of your family
Yours in Christ,
✠Barthol Barretto Auxiliary Bishop of Bombay & Bishop in-charge of SCCs, Archdiocese of Bombay
September 1, 2021