Wednesday 3 May 2017

Easter Rally Demonstrates Unity Among Christians

- Dominic J. Azavedo

Kolkata: The Christians of Kolkata came on the streets of the city to display their unity as one follower of the Risen Christ. The Heads of the Churches and even the ordinary believers showed that we are united and we do not wish to live in the past in our differences. The Christians from all denominations walked down in procession with banners and flags and gathered at St. James’ Ground on Easter Sunday, 16th April, 2017 singing and dancing mainly from 4 designated centers: Bishop College, Beg Bagan; Sacred Heart Church,Dharamtala; Entally Baptist Church; and Union Chapel.

Earlier, letters of appeal were sent by Archbishop Thomas D' Souza of the Catholic Church, Bishop Ashoke Biswas of the CNI Church, Rev. Dr. Ivan Satyavrata, Senior Pastor of the Assembly of God Church,Kolkata. For the Catholics special appeals were also sent by Fr. Dominic Gomes, Vicar General and Fr. Timir Singha, S.J., Director of Ecumenism and Inter-Faith Dialogue in the Archdiocese of Kolkata.

There were present also Heads of other Churches: Very Rev. Movses Sargsyan of the Indian Armenian Spiritual Pastorate, Rev. Abraham of the Indian Orthodox Malankara Church, Rev. Sudip Biswas of the Baptist Church, Major Johnson of the Salvation Army, etc. From the Government side, there were Mr. James Kujur, Minister of Tribal welfare who came all the way from North Bengal, Mr.Solomon Nesa Kumar, D. C.Traffic and Mrs. Susmita Bhattacharya, Councellor.

There was melodious singing from Mrinalini & Group, Seed Ministry Lead Society, Worship Team,Roman Catholic Archdiocese and Worship Team, Diocese of Calcutta, CNI.

Rev. Shreeraj Mohanty, Vicar, St. James Church, welcomed and said the Opening Prayer. This was followed by singing bilingually the Congregational Hymn – Jesus Christ is Risen Today, Hallelujah. Rev. Sudip Biswas gave Easter greetings; while the Scripture Reading was done by Rev. Saikat Nath (CNI) in Bengali, Major Pande (Salvation Army) in Hindi and Mrs. Angelina Mantosh (Catholic Church) in English. A very meaningful Offertory prayer was said by the Catholic Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta and Fr. Moloy D’Costa gave a short message saying that on Good Friday, men had their way while on Easter Sunday, God conquered all. This brought new life to the Apostles and all those who believed in the Resurrection. The Closing Prayer and Benediction was given by CNI Bishop Ashoke Biswas of Kolkata. Rev. James Gomez, (Joint Convenor with Rev. Martin A. Pakhare) did a good job as the compère and proposed the Vote of Thanks.

Mention was specially made of Mrs. Angelina Jasnani Mantosh who helped the organizers in many ways like inviting the dignitaries, getting the police permission for the processions to come from all the 4 Centers, arranging drinking water for the people, etc. Thanks to Mr. Francis Ganpat who got the Catholic Volunteers from different Churches and Fr. Timir for the necessary arrangements.



2 comments:

  1. Sudip Biswas

    Sudip Biswas is a software engineer of Facebook & Microsoft that work for building Facebook App monetization Infrastructure and Microsoft Xbox app maintenance. it's also provide retire advice to early planning.

    to get more - http://sudipbiswas.com/

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive