Friday, June 1, 2018

Encouragement for Directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies

At 12:10pm today (6:10am EDT), in the Clementine Hall at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the National Directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies, on the occasion of their annual General Assembly which took place this week (from 28 May to 2 June) at the Fraterna Domus in Sacrofano.


Greetings of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
addressed to National Directors
of the Pontifical Mission Societies

Your Eminence,
Dear brothers and sisters,

I welcome you with joy on the occasion of your General Assembly and I greet all of you most cordially.  I thank Cardinal Filoni for his words of introduction, and I greet the new President of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Monsignor Giampietro Dal Toso, who is participating for the first time in this annual meeting.  To all of you, I express my sincere gratitude for your work of missionary sensitization of the People of God and I assure you of my remembrance of all of you in my prayer.

We have an interesting journey ahead of us: the preparation for the Extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019 which I wanted to hold during the World Missionary Day during the year 2017.  I strongly encourage you to experience this phase of preparation as a great opportunity for renewing the missionary commitment of the entire Church.  This is also a providential occasion for the renewal of our Pontifical Mission Societies.  We must always renew things: renew hearts, renew our work, renew organizations, because otherwise we would all find ourselves in a museum.  You are well aware of my concern for the danger that your work should be reduced to a merely monetary dimension of material help - this is a real concern - which would transform you into an agency just like so many others, even though you are based in Christianity.  This is certainly not what the founders of the Pontifical Societies and what Pope Pius XI desired when they established this service on behalf of the Successor of Peter.  This is the reason why I have proposed as a current and urgent need, the renewal of missionary awareness on the part of the entire Church today, a great and courageous proposal made by Pope Benedict XV in his Apostolic Letter Maximum illud: the need to evanglically renew the mission of the Church in the world.

This common objective can and should help the Pontifical Mission Societies to live in strong communion of spirit, mutual collaboration and mutual support.  If this renewal is to be authentic, creative and effective, the form of your Work must consist in a re-foundation, a redevelopment according to the dictates of the gospel.  It is not simply a matter of rethinking the motivations for doing better what you already do.  The missionary conversion of the structures of the Church (cf Evangelii gaudium, 27) requires personal holiness and spiritual creativity.  In this way, it is not only a question of renewing that which is old, but of allowing the Holy Spirit to create something new.  Not us: the Holy Spirit.  Making space for the Holy Spirit, allows the Holy Spirit to create something new, to renew all things (cf Psalm 104:30; Mt 9:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Rev 21:5).  He is the protagonist of the mission: it is He who is the coordinator of the Pontifical Mission Societies.  It is He, not us.  Do not be afraid of this novelty that comes from the Crucified and Risen Lord: this newness is beautiful.  Be afraid of other novelties: that are not good!  Those that are not founded in the Spirit.  Be bold and bold in your mission, working with the Holy Spirit, always in communion with the Church of Christ (cf Gaudete et exsultate, 131).  And this boldness means going out with courage, with the fervour of the first people who proclaimed the gospel.  Your usual book of prayers and meditation should be the Acts of the Apostles.  Go there to seek out your inspiration.  And the protagonist of that book is the Holy Spirit.

What does Pontifical Work mean to you, who, together with the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples are preparing for the Extraordinary Missionary Month, a chance to re-evangelize yourselves?  I believe that it simply means a specific missionary conversion.  We need to re-evangelize ourselves - Benedict XV's institution - in order to re-qualify ourselves beginning with the mission of Jesus, re-training our efforts to collect and to distribute material aid in the light of the mission and formation that each case requires, so that conscience, awareness and missionary responsibility may return to being a part of the ordinary experience of all the holy and faithful people of God.

Baptized and sent: the Church of Christ on a mission in the world.  This is the theme that we have chosen for the Missionary Month of October 2019.  It emphasizes the fact that being sent in response to a call begins at Baptism and is a call issued to all the baptized.  In this way, the mission is a matter of being sent out for salvation which is at work within the one who is sent as well as the one to whom he is sent: our life is a mission in Christ!  We ourselves are part of the mission, for we are the love of God communicated, we are made holy by God who has created us in his image.  The mission is therefore a matter of our own sanctification and that of the whole world, since the moment of creation (cf Eph 1:3-6).  The missionary dimension of our Baptism is thus translated into a witness of holiness which gives life and beauty to the world.

Renewing the Pontifical Mission Societies therefore means taking to heart, with serious commitment and courage, the holiness of each person and of the entire Church as our family and our community.  I ask you to renew with generous creativity the nature and the work of the Pontifical Mission Societies, placing them at the service of the mission, so that the heart of our preoccupations may be the holiness of life of today's missionary disciples.  In fact, in order to collaborate with the salvation of the world, we must love it (cf Jn 3:16) and be willing to give our lives in service to Christ, the only Saviour of the world.  We do not have a product to sell - this has nothing to do with proselytism, we have no product to sell - but rather a life of communicating God, his divine life, his merciful love, his holiness!  And it is the Holy Spirit that sends us out, who accompanies us, who inspires us: He is the author of our mission.  It is He who inspires the Church, not us.  Neither does our inspiration come from the Pontifical Mission Societies.  Do I allow Him - we can ask ourselves - do I allow Him to be the hero?  Or do I seek to tame Him, to cage the Spirit in the many worldly structures which, in the end, lead us to perceive the Pontifical Mission Societies as a series of firms, businesses, something that is ours, but that has God's blessing?  No, this is not good.  We must ask ourselves this question: do I leave it to Him or do I try to cage Him?  He, the Holy Spirit, does everything; we are only His servants.

As you are well aware, during October 2019, the Extraordinary Missionary Month, we will celebrate the Synod for the Amazon.  Welcoming the concerns of many of the faithful, lay people and pastors, I hope that this will be a moment of encounter for prayer and reflection on the challenges facing evangelization in the South American lands where important particular Churches are present.  I think that this coincidence will help us to fix our gaze on Jesus Christ as we deal with the problems, challenges, riches and poverty; they will help us to renew our commitment to serving the gospel for the salvation of men and women who live in those lands.  Let us pray that the Synod for the Amazon may evangelically renew the mission also in that region of the world which has been so sorely tried, unjustly exploited and now stands in need of the salvation of Jesus Christ.

When Mary went to Elizabeth, she did not do so as her own gesture, she did so as a missionary.  She went as a servant of the Lord who she was carrying in her womb: on her own, she said nothing, she only carried the Son and praised God.  One thing is true: she went in a hurry.  She teaches us too to hurry in faith, this spirituality of hurrying.  The hurrying of faithfulness and adoration.  She was not the protagonist but she was a servant of the only protagonist of the mission.  This icon helps us.  Thank you!

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