The Extraordinary Missionary Month «October 2019» also opened in Iraq with a liturgical celebration presided over by Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako in Baghdad, in the Cathedral of St. Joseph, on the evening of Tuesday 1st October.
The celebration was marked by biblical prayers and readings and the recitation of the Rosary. In his homily, the Chaldean Patriarch re-proposed the mission as a constitutive trait of the dynamism with which the salvation promised by Christ is communicated to men of all times and underlined that this missionary vocation also calls into question the Churches of apostolic tradition present in the Middle East, reported Fides News Agency.
The «method» valid even today to announce the joy of the Gospel to one’s contemporaries – the Chaldean Patriarch suggested – is the same used by the Apostle Philip with Nathanael, and narrated in the first chapter of the Gospel according to John: «Philip was from Bethsaida, the town of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him: «We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth». Nathanael said to him: «Can anything good come from Nazareth?» Philip said to him, «Come and see».
