Mumbai Archdiocese Observes Harvest Festival
from Dr Eugene D'Souza - pics - Deepak D'Souza
for Daijiworld Media Network – Mumbai (SM)
Mumbai, Oct 9: In keeping with the tradition, the Mumbai archdiocese observed Sunday October 7 as the ‘day of thanksgiving’ for all good things received.
Thanksgiving masses were offered in all churches of the Arch-diocese, in gratitude for a good monsoon, bumper crop and harvest. Various cultural programmes and vegetarian meals were organized in different parishes.
The entire programme of the harvest festival at Dombivili was organized by the parish council under the guidance of Fr Peter D'Cunha and Fr Tony Robinson.
The practice of combining the 'Day of Thanksgiving' with harvest festival was introduced by the late Fr Thomas Kuruvilla in 2002 in the Infant Jesus Parish of Dombivli here.
He not only constructed the new church but also built up the Basic Christian Community (BCC) which became a model for the Archdiocese. In order to foster a community feeling and cooperative spirit, Fr Kuruvilla started celebrating the harvest festival.
Three main linguistic communities - Konkani, Tamil and Malayalam - come together and plan and execute the activities for the Harvest Festival. This tradition was continued by the succeeding parish priests Fr Edward D'Souza and at present by Fr Peter D'Cunha.
In preparation for the grand fellowship lunch, in the afternoon of Saturday October 6, about a hundred volunteers, men and women, came together and helped in preparing the lunch as well as decorated the church.
On Sunday October 7 at 10 am, various cultural programmes were presented by the three linguistic communities. Fr Peter D'Cunha and Fr Tony Robinson offered the thanksgiving mass.
This was followed by the fellowship vegetarian lunch on plantain leaves. Traditional vegetarian dishes of the three linguistic communities such as avail, inchi curry, karela, chana-tendli, sambhar, etc were served which were well appreciated.
About 1400 people belonging to different communities participated in the lunch as a united parish community.
The logistics of supply and cooking was supervised by Michael Rodrigues.