The Jubilee of Hope has come to an end. It has been an intense year, rich in opportunities to grow in faith and discipleship, and therefore in mission. With this treasure of experience of God and fraternity, we face a new year of grace, reflecting as the Church in Mongolia on our identity and mission.
The pastoral letter with which I usually address you, dear brothers and sisters, priests, religious men and women of the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar, comes this time with the year already begun. However, I would like to reach all of you to reflect with you on the time we are living, from a missionary perspective.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
As we prepare to live a new year of grace in the Lord, we still have in our eyes and hearts the days of Pope Francis’ visit to our country. How blessed we have been by this rare and important event! It is precisely so that his words – as well as his gestures – may descend deeply into our consciences and inform our pastoral and missionary choices that I propose not my own personal reflection, but to return to what the Successor of St Peter said to us on 2 September 2023.
“Mary, for her part, kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (cf. Lk 2:51). In Luke’s Gospel, the Mother of the Lord is presented to us in this way, as the guardian of all that was happening in the life of her Son Jesus. We too would like to start from this inner attitude of attention to the Lord present in our lives, as we begin a new pastoral year. The year 2022 has given us the gift of gratitude for the ecclesial journey that began thirty years ago, thanks to the sacrifice of the first CICM missionaries, especially our first, beloved bishop, Bishop Wenceslao Padilla.
Very dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I turn to you with trepidation. I am sending you this letter on the day of Mary, the Immaculate Conception. She is our guide, our beacon, our most tender Mother who knows all our anxieties and our desires. I entrust these reflections to her, so that she may be the one to help us in our faith.
