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November 2002

As the Father has sent me, so I send you
Jn 20:21

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In two weeks, from 6 to 8 December 2002, CFC Thailand will be hosting the First CFC Southeast Asian Regional Conference at the Baan Phu Waan Pastoral Training Center in  Sampran, Nakornpathom, about an hour’s drive from Bangkok. About 400 participants are expected to attend from CFC communities in the region. So far, 335 participants have registered through the CFC Thailand website. They come from eight countries of Southeast Asia, namely, Brunei (2), Cambodia (28), Indonesia (2), Malaysia (7), Philippines (85), Singapore (36), Thailand (155) and Vietnam (12), and from Australia (2) and Hong Kong (6). Participants from the new CFC community in Myanmar are also expected to attend.

The responsibility for organizing the regional conference falls on the shoulder of Edgar Dante, the Chapter Head of CFC Bangkok. A couple of years ago, CFC Bangkok had barely a hundred members. Today, it has almost 300 members. This year alone, Bangkok organized 7 CLPs, when it used to have only one CLP a year. But it is still a small community. And many members are new having completed their CLP only this year, a number just a few weeks ago. Thus the task of hosting a regional conference appears formidable and daunting.

The music ministry has been practicing regularly during the past few weeks. Boni Manikam has been coordinating accommodation and other physical arrangements. Boy Contreras is in charge of airport arrangements and pick up while Arnold Itao looks after hosting arrangements. Thirteen working groups have been formed, and many of the members are assigned to multiple tasks for lack of other available people. Funding and hosting appear to be the biggest concerns, particularly the latter because there are just not enough members to accommodate requests for private hosting.

My brothers and sisters, the theme of our conference has been taken from the book of the prophet Isaiah 49:6: I will make you a light to the nation, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. The purpose of the conference is to determine how the community of Couples for Christ could “implant itself” among what Ad Gentes Divinitus calls “large and distinct groups united by enduring cultural ties, ancient religious traditions, and strong social relationships” so that Christ’s “salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”

We hope to exchange experiences among the different CFC communities on the challenges of evangelization in the context of the particular circumstances that they are in. We hope to share with each other how individual members of the community are touched by God and transformed by Christ into dedicated and committed Christians that they are now. We hope to learn from each other how the social ministries could be used as effective tools for the evangelization of both Christians and non-Christians. We hope to encourage one another to greater commitment and wider involvement in the work of evangelization. At the end of the conference, we hope to adopt a Bangkok resolution on Couples for Christ’s mission ad gentes.

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia, issued at the end of the Special Assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops in Vatican from 18 April to 14 May 1998, Pope John Paul II wrote at the end of the first chapter the following: “At this moment, I call to mind what I wrote in Redemptoris Missio: ‘God is opening before the Church the horizons of a humanity more fully prepared for the sowing of the Gospel.’ This vision of a new and promising horizon I see being fulfilled in Asia, where Jesus was born and where Christianity began.”

In the following chapter, the Holy Father continued, “What distinguishes the Church from other religious communities is her faith in Jesus Christ; and she cannot keep that precious light of faith under a bushel (cf. Mt 5:15), for her mission is to share that light with everyone. This faith in Jesus Christ is what inspires the Church’s evangelizing work in Asia, often carried out in difficult and even dangerous circumstances. Far from discouraging the Synod Fathers, the challenges facing their evangelizing efforts were an even greater incentive in striving to transmit ‘the faith that the Church in Asia has inherited from the Apostles and holds with the Church of all generations and places.’ Indeed they expressed the conviction that ‘the heart of the Church in Asia will be restless until the whole of Asia finds its rest in the peace of Christ, the Risen Lord.’ “

My brothers and sisters, these words should guide our deliberations during the coming regional conference. When Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, He said to them: Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you (Jn 20:21). The Father sent Jesus to Asia, where He was born. Jesus lived, preached and died in Asia. And from Asia, He sent His disciples “as the Father had sent Him.”  

Jesus had compassion for the poor. We should use Gawad Kalinga to bring others to Christ. Jesus cured the sick. We should use our medical ministry to proclaim the Good News. Jesus mixed and ate with tax collectors. We should use STMA to witness to others who still do not know or barely know Christ. Jesus taught in the synagogues. We should use EFI for the conversion of non-Christians. Jesus chose a Samaritan woman in irregular marriages to make the first proclamation of God’s kingdom in Gentile territory. We should pray that the numerous Christian women in mixed-faith marriages would become God’s instruments for the conversion of non-Christians. Jesus called fishermen to be his closest disciples. We should be fishers of all men and women, Christian and non-Christian alike.

The regional conference is a gift to us by God to enable us to participate in the building of His kingdom. It is a special privilege to be able to host this conference for many hearts will be touched and many spirits will be revived and strengthened at this conference. For it will not be just any gathering – as when we attend conferences for our respective offices – and we should not treat it that way. We should come to the conference as pilgrims – as when the old people of God come to Jerusalem to gather in the temple.

My brothers and sisters, the coming conference will be an encounter. It will be our encounter with Jesus who will revisit the place of His birth – Asia. As we all know, when we encounter Jesus, we are changed – for we cannot meet Jesus without being transformed. Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Father will transform us to witness to His Son among “large and distinct groups united by enduring cultural ties, ancient religious traditions, and strong social relationships.” The Holy Spirit will stir our hearts to be “restless until the whole of Asia finds rest in the peace of Christ.” At the conference, Jesus will once again tell us, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And this will inaugurate the beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Holy Father in Ecclesia in Asia of a vision being fulfilled in Asia – a vision of a new and promising horizon of a humanity more fully prepared for the sowing of the Gospel.

That is why we should all come to the conference as pilgrims – for a pilgrim is one who journeys to a sacred place from religious motives. There will be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the conference and it will become a sacred place. Therefore, we should come to the conference motivated solely by a desire to encounter Jesus – to see Jesus on the faces and in the hearts of our other brothers and sisters. And to partake of the grace that God will so generously bestow on all those present. For only the grace of God can convert Asia. May God in His mercy make us worthy of all this. Amen.