Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church: The "Missionary Decade" from June 2-9, 2019

The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church will celebrate the "Missionary Decade" during the ten days from Ascension to Pentecost, June 2-9, 2019. The initiative, which was approved by the Synod of Bishops of the Greek-Catholic Church in 2014, is held annually as part of the liturgical tradition of this Church, seeing the Holy Spirit as the principal advocate of the Christian mission. 

During this “Decade,” each parish carries out five activities: reading the Word of God (from the Gospel of St. John); reflecting on the Word of God; citing a missionary theme of the day with extensive references to the Magisterium of the Holy Father Francis; prayer intentions for missions; and formation in missionary work on three levels: personal, within the family and the parish, and outside the parish.

In doing so, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Archbishop of Kiev-Halyč, emphasizes in a letter, in response to the message of Cardinal Fernando Filoni regarding the Extraordinary Missionary Month October 2019 proclaimed by Pope Francis, that every member of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church grows in the awareness that every family, as Domus Ecclesiae, and every parish, as the place of the encounter with the living Christ, is marked as a missionary by its very nature. It is the gift of Baptism, as stated in the theme of the Extraordinary Missionary Month, that makes all Christians "sent" with the task of living, believing and sharing the experience of faith outside the parish by spiritually and physically supporting those who work in missionary activities, making all the faithful increasingly aware that missions are not only the prerogative of the missionaries.