The Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) held its first Parish Mission Retreat from September 22 to 24 to focus on how “I, as a disciple of Jesus, can make Him known to the world.”
In recent years, the focus of the parish has been on forming intentional, missionary disciples, and the Parish Mission Retreat was to help people become precisely that. It focused on what the call to mission or evangelisation is all about, answering questions such as, “To whom do we reach out, and how?”, and “What are concrete tools for evangelisation?”
Fifty-four retreatants attended the retreat which was held at St. Gregory’s Hall. Opening with a word of welcome by our parish priest Fr Paul Ngo on a Saturday morning, parts of the retreat were conducted like a workshop on evangelization, along with sessions given by our parish worker Mike Arents and his fellow missionaries of the Institute for World Evangelisation (ICPE) Mission. The retreat also included an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament on Saturday evening, and closed with Sunday evening Mass. Mr Robert Lee, an accountant in his seventies, shared that he took part in the retreat as he wished to learn how to evangelise his younger relatives, and one of the things he noted was to be open to the promptings and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The follow ups
The Parish Mission Retreat was a follow-up to the Parish Discipleship Retreat held in 2017. That retreat was to help parishioners have a renewed encounter with Jesus and understand more deeply what it means to be a disciple of Christ and how to live that concretely. In coming years, the intent is to continue to run both the Parish Discipleship Retreat for those who have yet to attend it, and the Parish Mission Retreat for those who have already attended the Parish Discipleship Retreat (or Conversion Experience Retreat or Life In the Spirit Seminar).
The aim is to take steps as a parish in fulfilling the vision of Cardinal William Goh for our archdiocese: To build a vibrant, evangelistic and missionary Church.
