CCR National Rally- Full Recap!

On Sunday May 26th (Trinity Sunday), The Catholic Charismatic Renewal hosted its 38th Annual National Rally at St. Augustine Secondary School. Members from all Vicariates of the Archdiocese flooded the school compound for this event that occurs every year on this special day. The National Rally is ideally a condensed version of the Conference that is always held on the first weekend of January each year. Speakers included Fr. Ian Taylor and Fr. Cornelius Phillip that preached on the theme taken from Hebrews 10: 22, 24 "Let us be sincere in our faith and be concerned for each other" with Archbishop Joseph Harris leading the closing Mass which, at the end of the liturgy, he challenged each person present to invite at least one person to next year's Conference and/or Rally so that the number of attendees will be doubled. Deborah de Rosia, National Service Team Chair person, also hinted to the crowd that the venue for next year's Rally will return to the Grand Stand as it once was located.
The Day's proceedings kicked off with Praise & Worship being led by the Joint National Choir that included People of Praise under the directorship of Winston Garcia which immediately followed the first talk led by Fr. Ian Taylor. Fr. Taylor focused on 'Faith' and he explained that Faith 'comes from God's revelations and Man's acceptance of what God reveals'. He linked the theme of this talk to the Scripture Romans 10:17 "Faith comes from hearing the word of God". He then invited a parishioner from his community to share a touching testimony where she faced both Spiritual and Medical Challenges and how the Lord convicted her life last Sunday- Pentecost Sunday. Fr. Taylor then returned to conclude his talk by stating that "Through Faith, it leads us to love God even more and that our lives change, our decisions are even more inspired and we must strive to become more like Jesus all in the Name of Faith".

Fr. Cornelius Phillip of San Juan Parish came on next and his talk was based on the parent theme of the Rally, "Let us be concerned for each other" - Hebrews 10: 24 and he jokingly mentioned that when he was given this talk to do from Sr. Debbie, he was 'most pleased'. He began his segment in his style of a small  session of Praising and eventually went into his talk where he opened with a quote from Pope Emeritus Benedict stating that "We are called to be re-enactments of Jesus for our brothers and sisters and strive for holiness". Fr. Cornelius used this opportunity (in his talk) to 'attack' us Catholics on the lack of 'Concern' that we seem to render in and even outside our Parish Life. "If someone tells you to pray for them, you ignore them but we are more concerned at bringing people down instead of raising people up", said the F.M.I. preacher where he later emphasized that "we must be our brother AND sister's keeper".  He even challenged us, as a Christian community, to make ourselves secondary and make the needs of others primary because our goal is to 'fight down' Satan and not each other. For instance, when someone is under Spiritual attack, we must be concerned and pray for that person to come back. Another point he mentioned was that criticism is the 'work of the enemy' and if we are for God, we must resist all sorts of criticism towards our fellow parishioners and even our priest since criticism implies conflict against each other. In order for us to show our concern for others, we must encourage 'positive talk'. He ended by mentioning that when we practice Love to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, we must also be patient and practice the Corporal Works of Mercy.

The afternoon session included a Powerful Healing Service led by a Bajan couple (Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence) and Holy Mass with Archbishop Joseph Harris as the Chief Celebrant and Fr. Leslie Tang Kai as the Homilist.