Diocese of Wangaratta – Synod Service

On the afternoon of  Friday 28^th.May the Diocese of Wangaratta held the usual Eucharist Service that precedes their annual Synod.  This was not quite the usual service and a number of us from Melbourne Cursillo were privileged be present and participate in a small way in this service.

What made this particular Synod Service slightly different was the placing of Cursillo ‘front and centre’ in that worship.

Most of you would be aware that Bishop John Parkes had been very active in requesting that Cursillo be introduced into the Diocese of Wangaratta.  You would also be aware that both Bendigo and Melbourne Cursillos have been working with Wangaratta to advance that introduction and, that after a relatively short time and spearheaded by a very expert and hard-working committee, the first weekends will be under way in September of this year.

What Bishop Parkes has done with the program of the Synod service was to make a very public statement via the Synod of the Diocese that Cursillo is going to play an important part in the life of the Diocese.

He invited Bishop Keith Slater, the National Episcopal Overseer for Cursillo to attend the Synod Service both to commission him as Episcopal Overseer for Wangaratta and to preach the sermon at the Synod Eucharist Service.

The service started with an explanation by Bishop Parkes of the introduction of Cursillo and what the content of the first part of the service would be in relation to his commissioning and then in relation to the commissioning of the Diocesan Spiritual Director and the Diocesan Lay Director.  Bishop Slater then commissioned Bishop Parkes and then Bishop commissioned Fr.Malcolm Halford as Diocesan Spiritual Director and Alan Garside as Diocesan Lay Director

After that the Lay Directors of Bendigo and Melbourne processed the Cursillo Banner and a special Bible which were gifts from Perth Cursillo  and these were presented to Bishop Parkes by Allan Reed , National Lay Director.  The Banner and Bible were then blessed by Bishop Parkes.

The sermon was preached by Bishop Keith Slater and he took as his theme ‘ New Directions’ and after discussing ways in which the Church was trying to move in ‘new directions’ he tied the advent of Cursillo in the Diocese of Wangaratta as an important ‘new direction’ for the Diocese.

After the completion of the service a number of photographs were taken to commemorate the event and then the gift from Melbourne Cursillo of a Chalice and Patten was blessed by Bishop Parkes.

The Bishop expressed himself as being extremely grateful to Melbourne and Bendigo Cursillos for the way in which they had responded to the challenge to bring Cursillo to his Diocese.

All of the members of the small organising committee can be very proud of manner in which they worked in such a caring and effective way to achieve their goal in such a relatively short time.  We also are very grateful to them for all their hard work.

    Alan Smyth