This year, as we celebrate World
Mission Day, the Year of
Faith, which is an important opportunity to strengthen our friendship
with the Lord and our journey as a Church that preaches the Gospel with courage, comes to an end. From this
perspective, I would like to propose some reflections.
1. Faith is God’s
precious gift, which opens our mind to know and love him. He wants to
enter into relationship with
us and allow us to participate in his
own life in order to make our life more meaningful, better and more
beautiful. God loves us! Faith, however, needs
to be accepted, it needs our personal
response, the courage to entrust
ourselves to God, to live his love and be grateful for his infinite mercy. It is a gift, not
reserved for a few but offered with generosity. Everyone should be able to experience the joy of being loved
by God, the joy of salvation! It is a gift that one cannot keep to oneself, but it is to be shared. If we want
to keep it only to ourselves, we will become isolated, sterile and sick Christians. The proclamation of
the Gospel is part of being disciples of Christ and it is a constant commitment
that animates the whole life of the Church. Missionary outreach is a clear sign
of the maturity of an ecclesial community" (BENEDICT XVI, Verbum Domini,
95). Each community is "mature" when it professes faith, celebrates
it with joy during the liturgy, lives charity, proclaims the Word of God endlessly, leaves one’s own to
take it to the “peripheries”,
especially to those who have not yet had the opportunity to know Christ. The
strength of our faith, at a personal and community level, can be measured by
the ability to communicate it
to others, to spread and live it in charity,
to witness to it before those
we meet and those who share the path of life with us.
2. The Year of Faith, fifty years after the beginning of the
Second Vatican Council, motivates the entire Church towards a renewed awareness
of its presence in the contemporary world and its mission among peoples and
nations. Missionary spirit is not only about geographical territories, but
about peoples, cultures and individuals, because the "boundaries" of
faith do not only cross places and human traditions, but the heart of each man
and each woman. The Second Vatican Council emphasized in a special way how the
missionary task:, that of broadening the boundaries of faith, belongs to every
baptized person and all Christian communities; since “the people of God lives
in communities, especially in dioceses and parishes, and becomes somehow
visible in them, it is up to these to witness Christ before the nations"
(Ad gentes, 37). Each community is therefore challenged, and invited to make
its own, the mandate entrusted by Jesus to the Apostles, to be his
"witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of
the earth" (Acts 1:8) and this, not as a secondary aspect of Christian
life, but as its essential
aspect: we are all invited to walk the streets of the world with our brothers
and sisters, proclaiming and witnessing to our faith in Christ and making
ourselves heralds of his Gospel. I invite Bishops, Priests, Presbyteral and
Pastoral Councils, and each person and group responsible in the Church to give
a prominent position to this missionary dimension in formation and pastoral
programmes, in the understanding that their apostolic commitment is not
complete unless it aims at bearing witness to Christ before the nations and
before all peoples. This missionary aspect is not merely a programmatic
dimension in Christian life, but it is also a paradigmatic dimension that
affects all aspects of Christian life.
3. The work of evangelization often finds obstacles, not only externally, but also from within the
ecclesial community. Sometimes there is lack of fervour, joy, courage and hope
in proclaiming the Message of Christ to all and in helping the people of our
time to an encounter with him. Sometimes, it is still thought, that proclaiming
the truth of the Gospel means an assault on freedom. Paul VI speaks eloquently
on this: "It would be... an error to impose something on the consciences
of our brethren. But to propose to their consciences the truth of the Gospel and salvation in Jesus Christ, with
complete clarity and with total respect for free options which it presents...
is a tribute to this freedom" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 80). We must always
have the courage and the joy of proposing,
with respect, an encounter with Christ, and being heralds of his Gospel. Jesus
came amongst us to show us the way of salvation and he entrusted to us the
mission to make it known to all to the ends of the earth. All too often, we see
that it is violence, lies and mistakes that are emphasized and proposed. It is
urgent in our time to announce and witness to the goodness of the Gospel, and
this from within the Church itself. It is important to never to forget a
fundamental principle for every evangelizer: one cannot announce Christ without
the Church. Evangelization is not an
isolated individual or private act; it is always ecclesial. Paul VI wrote, "When an unknown
preacher, catechist or Pastor, preaches the Gospel, gathers the little
community together, administers a Sacrament, even alone, he is carrying out an
ecclesial act." He acts not "in virtue of a mission which he
attributes to himself or by a personal inspiration, but in union with the
mission of the Church and in her name" (ibid. 60). And this gives strength
to the mission and makes every missionary and evangelizer feel never alone, but
part of a single Body animated by the
Holy Spirit.
4. In our era, the widespread mobility and facility of
communication through new media have mingled people, knowledge, experience. For
work reasons, entire families move from one continent to another; professional
and cultural exchanges, tourism, and other phenomena have also led to great
movements of peoples. This makes it difficult, even for the parish community,
to know who lives permanently or temporarily in the area. More and more, in
large areas of what were traditionally Christian regions, the number of those
who are unacquainted with the faith, or indifferent to the religious dimension
or animated by other beliefs, is increasing. Therefore it is not infrequent
that, some of the baptized make lifestyle choices that lead them away from
faith, thus making them need a "new evangelization". To all this is
added the fact, that a large part of humanity has not yet been reached by the
good news of Jesus Christ. We also live in a time of crisis that touches
various sectors of existence, not only the economy, finance, food security, or
the environment, but also those involving the deeper meaning of life and the
fundamental values that animate it. Even human coexistence is marked by
tensions and conflicts that cause insecurity and difficulty in finding the
right path to a stable peace. In this complex situation, where the horizon of
the present and future seems threatened by menacing
clouds, it is necessary to proclaim courageously and in very situation,
the Gospel of Christ, a message of hope, reconciliation, communion, a
proclamation of God's closeness, his mercy, his salvation, and a proclamation
that the power of God’s love is able to overcome the darkness of evil and guide
us on the path of goodness. The men and women of our time needs the secure
light that illuminates their path and that only the encounter with Christ can
give. Let us bring to the world, through our witness, with love, the hope given
by faith! The Church’s missionary spirit is not about proselytizing, but the testimony of a life that
illuminates the path, which brings hope and love. The Church – I repeat once
again – is not a relief organization, an enterprise or an NGO, but a community
of people, animated by the Holy
Spirit, who have lived and are living the wonder of the encounter with
Jesus Christ and want to share this
experience of deep joy, the message of salvation that the Lord gave us.
It is the Holy Spirit who guides the Church in this path.
5. I would like to encourage everyone to be a bearers of the good
news of Christ and I am grateful especially to missionaries, to the Fidei Donum
priests, men and women religious and lay faithful - more and more numerous –
who by accepting the Lord's call, leave their homeland to serve the Gospel in
different lands and cultures. But I would also like to emphasize that these
same young Churches are engaging generously in sending missionaries to the
Churches that are in difficulty - not infrequently Churches of ancient
Christian tradition – and thus bring the freshness and enthusiasm with which
they live the faith, a faith that renews life and gives hope. To live in this
universal dimension, responding to the mandate of Jesus: "Go therefore and
make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28, 19) is something enriching for each
particular Church, each community, because sending missionaries is never a
loss, but a gain. I appeal to all those who feel this calling to respond
generously to the Holy Spirit, according to your state in life, and not to be
afraid to be generous with the Lord. I also invite Bishops, religious families,
communities and all Christian groups to support, with foresight and careful
discernment, the missionary call ad gentes and to assist Churches that need
priests, religious and laity, thus strengthening the Christian community. And
this concern should also be present among Churches that are part of the same
Episcopal Conference or Region, because it is important that Churches rich in
vocations help more generously those that lack them. At the same time I urge
missionaries, especially the Fidei
Donum priests and laity, to live with joy their precious service in the
Churches to which they are sent and to bring their joy and experience to the
Churches from which they come, remembering how Paul and Barnabas at the end of
their first missionary journey "reported what God had done with them and
how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles" (Acts 14:27). They
can become a path to a kind of "return" of faith, bringing the
freshness of the young Churches to Churches of ancient Christian tradition, and
thus helping them to rediscover the enthusiasm and the joy of sharing the faith
in an exchange that is mutual enrichment in the journey of following the path
of the Lord. The concern for all the Churches, that the Bishop of Rome shares
with his brother Bishops finds an important expression in the activity of the
Pontifical Mission Societies, which are meant to animate and deepen the missionary
conscience of every baptized Christian, and of every community, by reminding
them of the need for a more profound missionary formation of the whole People
of God and by encouraging the Christian community to contribute to the spread
of the Gospel in the world.
Finally I wish to say a word about those Christians who, in
various parts of the world, experience difficulty in openly professing their
faith and in enjoying the legal right to practice it in a worthy manner. They
are our brothers and sisters, courageous witnesses - even more numerous than the martyrs of the early centuries - who
endure with apostolic perseverance many contemporary forms of persecution.
Quite a few also risk their lives to remain faithful to the Gospel of Christ. I
wish to reaffirm my closeness in prayer to individuals, families and
communities who suffer violence and
intolerance, and I repeat to them the consoling words of Jesus: "Take courage, I have overcome the world"
(Jn 16:33).
Benedict XVI expressed the hope that: "The word of the Lord
may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere" (2 Thes 3:1): May this
Year of Faith increasingly strengthen our relationship with Christ the Lord,
since only in him is there the certitude for looking to the future and the
guarantee of an authentic and lasting love" (Porta fidei, 15). This is my
wish for World Mission Day this year. I cordially bless missionaries and all
those who accompany and support this fundamental commitment of the Church to
proclaim the Gospel to all the ends of the earth. Thus will we, as ministers
and missionaries of the Gospel, experience "the delightful and comforting
joy of evangelizing" (PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 80).
From the Vatican, 19 May 2013, Solemnity of Pentecost
