|
May 28, 2000
To the Diocesan Clergy of Mindanao:
In your last Convention you resolved to make A Jubilee Pilgrimage to
Butuan City and tasked us to devise a module for that pilgrimage.
This may well be the most long-lasting resolution of the Diocesan
Clergy of Mindanao.
For this will go a long way to provide the Mindanao Churches with a
Mindanao identity.
It was in Butuan that the First Christian Community in Mindanao
built a church.
It was solemnly blest on September 8, 1597. People in the area of
the original site still retain the memory of this providential event; they
invoke the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin as their Patron Saint under its
Cebuano name, Ang Birhen sa Kasilak.
It is as if in this Year of the Jubilee the Pastors of Mindanao are
coming home: "It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is
to return to his family property and each to his own clan (Lev
25:10)."
For one of the meanings of a pilgrimage is precisely to return to
the place where our ancestors first encountered the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and with the help of His Spirit imbibe again the values
and virtues that made them strong in the faith.
That is what Filipinos have been doing for centuries, going to such
places as Santo Niño de Cebu in the Visayas, to Our Lady of Peñafrancia
in the Bicol Region, to Antipolo in the Tagalog Region, to name just a
few.
The Pilgrimage of the Pastors of Mindanao singing our own songs or
at least in our own language to the Shrine of the Birhen sa Kasilak
in Butuan will pave the way to pilgrimages by Mindanaoanons for centuries
to come and at the same time mark them with an identity as Sons and
Daughters of the Birhen sa Kasilak.
A pilgrimage reminds us that we have no permanent place on the
earth, we are on a journey to the heavenly city (cfr. Heb 13,14).
A pilgrimage shows a willingness to detach oneself from temporal
things even if only FOR a brief moment.
A pilgrimage demonstrates through the inevitable discomfort and
denial entailed, a need FOR repentance and expiation.
A pilgrimage affirms the belonging of all pilgrims, from every
nation and every social class, to the one family of God.
In its purest form, a pilgrimage constitutes the highest expression
of piety, FOR the motivation at its origin, FOR the spirituality which
inspires it, FOR the prayer that marks its fundamental moments: the
departure, the journey, the arrival, the return.
It is an auspicious portent of greater things to come that the
Diocesan Clergy of Mindanao decided to make this pilgrimage.
We are sending you, after the preliminary meeting with the Bishop
Juan de Dios Pueblos of Butuan some materials which incorporate the ideas
mentioned above for your perusal and comments.
The Pilgrimage Module as such has already been prepared; it is a
ritualization of the blessing of the First Church in Mindanao as described
in a letter by the First Missionaries and contained in the writings of
Pedro Chirino, S.J.
Yours Sincerely,
Archbishop Jesús Dosado, C.M.
Chairperson, Federation of Mindanao Diocesan Commissions on Liturgy |