MISSION AT INVERCARGILL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 41, 8 February 1884, Page 13

MISSION AT INVERCARGILL.

The Mission of the Redemptorist Fathers commenced here on Sunday, and has already made a deep impression. Just before the High Mass the ceremony of formally transferring to the Missionaries the spiritual charge of. the pariah was gone through. It was simply this : The parochial clergy were led by a procession of the acolytes from the sanctuary to the porch of the church, and there, where the missionaries were in waiting, they resigned to their keepin g for the time of thß Mission their pastoral charge, solemnly handing them a crucifix in token of the trust transferred. The procession being then formed anew, the Missonary Fathers were conducted to the sanctuary. On their arrival there, Father M'Enroe, turning to the large congregation, said that he felt intense pleasure in announcing to them that the long-expected and much-desired Mission had begun ; that many of them, indeed, knew by their own experience the singular blessings attending Missions given by the Redemptorists ; and to those who might not hav.e had such experience, he would say that there were few large centres of population in the United Kingdom which had not been blessed by their labours and where their memory is not held in veneration. Their Missions in the principal towns of" this diocese also had been all most successful. He was confident, he said, that this Mission would not be less successful than any of them, and quite certain that if at the end of the fortnight any drawback should be found it would not be the Missionaries on whom the blame should fall. After the first Gospel Father Hegarty, in an able discourse, explained the purpose for which the Missionaries had come amongst us— solely, but with all their might, to promote that very work wbich our divine Lord Himself had come on earth to do, and appealed forcibly to his hearers to correspond to the great grace now offered them. Father Hegarty's was one of those discourses that make you half unwilling to quit the place where you have heard it, and eager to return to hear more from the same preacher. But in the evening, the church being then so filled that seats had to be provided within the sanctuary itself, the sermon preached by .Father O'Farrell was impressive to the last degree. The importance of salvation was so put before us by the truly eloquent missionary as to make it felt as perhaps it had never been felt before by anyone of the congregation — a common subject treated in a most uncommon manner — an effort truly of the rarest ability. The clergy and people alike express themselves surprised to see what large congregations from the very first have been attending every exercise of the Mission.