The title for the World Mission Sunday of this year, which will be observed in October 23, is taken from John’s Gospel, when the Risen Lord says to his disciples: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). Its theme bears a dual ‘going’ movement. Firstly, a vertical ‘going’, when the Son of God became man so as to save us,
broken humanity. Secondly, a horizontal ‘going’ in virtue of which Christ’s disciples are sent by Him to proclaim his message to the world’s farthest end.
The Church exists thanks to her missionary task, as entrusted to her by Jesus. The Decree on the Church’s missionary activity, ‘Ad Gentes’, states that the Church is “by her very nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, … has her origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit” (§ 2). Furthermore, Pope Paul VI, in his apostolic exhortation ‘Evangelii Nuntiandi’, pointed out that “the Church … exists in order to evangelise” (§ 14). Due to her evangelisation the community of Christ’s believers is renewed. In his encyclical on the permanent validity of the Church’s missionary mandate, ‘Redemptoris missio’, Blessed John Paul II affirmed that the “missionary activity renews the Church, revitalises faith and Christian identity, and offers fresh enthusiasm and new incentive. Faith is strengthened when it is given to others! It is in commitment to the Church’s universal mission that the new evangelisation of Christian peoples will find inspiration and support” (§ 2).
The missionary mandate is inherently present within the liturgy itself. Hence, the Eucharistic Liturgy’s conclusion carries a missionary impetus: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”.
Moreover, as Pope Benedict XVI notes, “the Liturgy is always a call ‘from the world’ and a new missionary mandate ‘in the world’ in order to bear witness to what has been experienced: the saving power of the word of God, the saving power of Christ’s Paschal Mystery.” On the example of the two disciples of Emmaus, who, after recognising the Risen Jesus’ presence in the breaking of the bread, “rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together” so as to tell them what occurred to them on the road (Lk 24, 33-34), all Christians are likewise called to embrace the same missionary spirit of the early Church. In the apostolic letter marking the close of the great Jubilee of the year 2000, ‘Novo Millenio Ineunte’, Blessed John Paul II’s exhorted us Christians to be “watchful, ready to recognise his face and run to our brothers and sisters with the good news: ‘We have seen the Lord!" (Jn 20:25)’” (§ 59).
Since the missionary activity is the Church’s global task, all members of Christ’s Mystical Body are invited to actively participate in the overall dissemination of the Good News of salvation. Thus, Pope Benedict reminds that “through co-responsible participation in the Church’s mission, the Christian becomes a builder of the communion, peace and solidarity that Christ has given us, who cooperates in the implementation of God’s saving plan for all humanity. The challenges that this plan encounters calls all Christians to walk together and the mission is an integral part of this journey with everyone. In it – although in earthenware vessels – we bear our Christian vocation, the priceless treasure of the Gospel, the living witness of Jesus dead and Risen, encountered and believed in the Church.”
Let us go together as a Church to meet every man and woman with the person who is himself the saving message: Jesus Christ!
■ Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
San Ġwann