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Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - "The Church, a community of Christ's missionary disciples", is today "sent to revive hope in a world over which dark shadows". "Despite facing persecutions, tribulations and difficulties, as well as her own imperfections and failures due to the weakness of her members, the Church is constantly impelled by the love of Christ to persevere, "prolongs" the mission of Jesus" offering her life for all in the midst of the nations".
This is the essence of Pope Francis' message for World Mission Sunday 2025, which will be celebrated on October 19.
The Document is dated January 25, the Feast of the Conversion of the Apostle Paul, and is published today, February 6, the liturgical memorial of Saints Paul Miki and his companions, a group of 25 Japanese martyrs, eight of whom were priests and religious of the Society of Jesus and the Order of Friars Minor, European missionaries or those born in Japan, and seventeen lay people. All of them were arrested and, as the Roman Martyrology reports, “seriously mistreated and sentenced to death. All of them, including the young ones, were crucified because they were Christians.”
These dates are not accidental, considering the themes addressed in the message entitled “Missionaries of Hope Among All Peoples”
At the heart of the message, divided into three paragraphs, is the theme of hope, the theological virtue that is also at the heart of the Ordinary Jubilee that the Catholic Church is currently celebrating. The theme – explains the Pope – was chosen because it “reminds individual Christians and the entire Church, the community of the baptized, of our fundamental vocation to be, in the footsteps of Christ, messengers and builders of hope”.
Hence “the desire” of the Bishop of Rome to “recall some relevant aspects of our Christian missionary identity, so that we can let ourselves be guided by the Spirit of God and burn with holy zeal for a new evangelizing season in the Church”. And first of all to “keep our gaze fixed on Christ, the centre of history”, “the fullness of salvation for all”, as well as “the supreme model of all those down the centuries who carry out their own God-given mission, even amid extreme trials”.
“Through his disciples, sent to all peoples and mystically accompanied by him, the Lord Jesus continues his ministry of hope for humanity”, bending over “all those who are poor, afflicted, despairing and oppressed, and pours «upon their wounds the balm of consolation and the wine of hope»”, writes the Pope, quoting the Preface “Jesus the Good Samaritan”.
The Pope's thoughts also go to the missionaries ad gentes who “following the Lord’s call”, “have gone forth to other nations to make known the love of God in Christ. For this, I thank you most heartily! Your lives are a clear response to the command of the risen Christ, who sent his disciples to evangelize all peoples. In this way, you are signs of the universal vocation of the baptized to become, by the power of the Spirit and daily effort, missionaries among the nations and witnesses to the great hope given us by the Lord Jesus”.
The horizon of this hope, the Pope points out, “transcends the passing things of this world and opens up to those divine realities in which we share even now.” The Bishop of Rome then cites Paul VI, who fifty years ago, in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntandi (n. 27), wrote that the salvation offered by Christ is not only “immanent, meeting material or even spiritual needs… completely caught up in temporal desires, hopes, affairs, and struggles. Rather, it exceeds all such limits in order to reach fulfilment in a communion with the one Absolute, which is God. It is a salvation both transcendent and eschatological, which indeed has its beginning in this life, but is fulfilled in eternity.”
Hence the invitation to put into practice the actions suggested in the Bull Spes Non Confundit, living above all in “personal contact” with brothers and sisters, “with particular attention to the poorest and weakest, the sick, the elderly and those excluded from materialistic and consumerist society. They are the ones who teach us how to live in hope. Through personal contact, we will also convey the love of the compassionate heart of the Lord”. In fact, all the baptized, continues the Pontiff, quoting the speech he himself gave in June two years ago to the General Assembly of the Pontifical Mission Societies, are “have been sent to continue this mission: to be signs of the heart of Christ and the love of the Father, embracing the whole world”.
To this end, Pope Francis stresses, “we need to be renewed in the Easter spirituality experienced at every Eucharistic celebration and especially during the Easter Triduum, the centre and culmination of the liturgical year”. Moreover, “missionaries of hope are men and women of prayer, for “the person who hopes is a person who prays”, in the words of Venerable Cardinal François-Xavier Van Thuan, who was himself sustained in hope throughout his lengthy imprisonment thanks to the strength he received from faithful prayer and the Eucharist (cf. The Road of Hope, Boston, 2001, 963). Let us not forget that prayer is the primary missionary activity and at the same time the first strength of hope”.
“So,” urges the Pope, “let us renew the mission of hope, starting from prayer, especially prayer based on the word of God and particularly the Psalms, that great symphony of prayer whose composer is the Holy Spirit. The Psalms train us to hope amid adversity, to discern the signs of hope around us, and to have the constant “missionary” desire that God be praised by all peoples”.
In the third and final paragraph, the Bishop of Rome describes evangelization as a “communitarian process,” which “does not end with the initial preaching of the Gospel and with Baptism, but continues with the building up of Christian communities through the accompaniment of each of the baptized along the path of the Gospel. In modern society, membership in the Church is never something achieved once for all. Therefore, the missionary activity of handing down and shaping a mature faith in Christ is “paradigmatic for all the Church’s activity,” he adds (Evangelii Gaudium, 15).
“I would emphasize once more the importance of this missionary synodality of the Church, as well as the service rendered by the Pontifical Mission Societies in promoting the missionary responsibility of the baptized and supporting new Particular Churches. And I urge all of you, children, young people, adults and the elderly, to participate actively in the common evangelizing mission of the Church by your witness of life and prayer, by your sacrifices and by your generosity,” concludes Pope Francis. (F.B.) (6/2/2025)
