DYNAMICS
The gestation of the Punjab-Rajasthan Mission of the CST Fathers 50 years ago embodied many a unicity unparalleled in the history of the Indian Church – the first formal collaboration between the Syrian and the Latin Rites for a missionary cause; an unprecedented interface between the Southern and Northern Catholicism of India; a pioneering trade-off between a Diocese and a Religious Congregation; the first gesture in the outreach of the Syrian Christianity to the religious legacy of Sikhism, to name a few. Unsurprisingly, CST Fathers had the exclusive legacy of having a woman saint, St. Little Flower – the Patroness of the Universal Mission, as the Patroness of a clerical congregation – a choice driven by the personal passion of Fr Basilius Panatt, our Founder, for her spirituality and missionary zeal.
The unique confluence of the Theresian Missionary zest and the humanistic compulsions of the evangelical dictum, “Go and Do Likewise” (Lk 1:37) – the priestly motto of our Founder – coupled with his exceptional imagination and characteristic heroism, landed the congregation on this promising missionary land. Geographies earmarked by the paradoxical features of five rivers (panch-ab, Punjab) and desert (Rajasthan) must have been a symbolic prefiguration of the prospects and perils at stake in the Punjab-Rajasthan Mission. Over the past five decades, the complexion of the CST Punjab – Rajasthan missionary landscape was defined by three-pronged ministries of education, social work and pastoral service. 50 years into the mission, a Jubilee retrospection instils the confidence that the charism of the congregation, “be little, serve the little,” was vivid enough on its missionary flagship.