October 20 will mark the 98th World Mission Day entitled “Go and Invite Everyone to the Banquet.” This day is part of the final phase of the synodal journey that follows the motto “ Communion, Participation, Mission.”
Pope Francis reminds us that mission is a tireless going out to all of humanity to invite them to encounter and communion with God. Therefore, it is necessary to awaken the missionary spirit in every believer, pray for the Church’s evangelizing mission and seek to meet and recognize each other as brothers and sisters, rejoicing in the harmony among diversity by following the voice of Christ’s Gospel.
The entire message is here:
World Mission Day October 20, 2024
The Lay Missionary Association St. Frances Xavier Cabrini of Palma di Montechiaro in connection by video call with WhatsApp , delves into Pope Francis’ message for World Missionary Day, with the valuable talk by Sister Assunta Scopelliti.
(Sister Assunta’s Talk)
ON MISSION AS PILGRIMS OF HOPE WITH THE OUTGOING CHURCH
TO MEET THE OTHER AND BUILD BRIDGES OF FRATERNITY
“A banquet for all the peoples”: ‘Go and invite everyone to the banquet’. The Pope invites us to renew the missionary dynamism of every baptized person and urges us again to be an “outgoing Church.” Here we have a call to go out of ourselves to encounter the other. It is missionary urgency that drives so many lay and consecrated men and women to daily choices of service on the margins of the peripheries of the world. We find a life witness with truly universal and missionary spirit in St. Frances Cabrini. May she help us to reflect on the motivations that must underlie the missionary nature to which we are called and urged in our pastoral commitment. May she, who understood that modernity would be marked by enormous migratory flows and by men, women and children fleeing towards peace and a better future, help us to rediscover our missionary nature and renew us in our missionary drive. So, the St. Frances Cabrini Lay Missionary Association is called to assume a missionary attitude towards multiethnicity and multiculturalism that we find is strong in Palma di Montechiaro. This is one of the characteristics of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini that emerges from Pope Francis’ reflections. In a letter to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Pope emphasizes how St. Frances “received from God the charism of a particular missionary vocation” – “to form and send throughout the world consecrated women, with an unlimited missionary horizon, not simply as auxiliaries of religious institutes or male missionaries, but with their own charism of female consecration, while in full and total willingness to collaborate both with the local Churches and with the different congregations dedicated to the proclamation of the Gospel ad gentes.” At this point we can ask ourselves questions that help us reflect: 1) Are we capable of true dialogue that can overcome closures, differences, prejudices and fears? Do we know how to be missionaries and missionaries to them with our life witness and also with our good news? Let us ask St. Frances Cabrini to be our mother and teacher with her example and teachings and especially with her charism by which she showed all her great missionary ability to understand multiethnicity and multiculturalism that led her to the United States to assist Italians seeking their fortunes there. In that situation she knew how to put forward Christian values, promoting integration and overcoming divisions and prejudices. On the first of her many ocean crossings, she shared with emigrants hardships, problems and the uncertainties of those who left everything behind in search of a better tomorrow elsewhere. She also cared for orphans and the sick. She initiated many works in Italy, France, Spain, Great Britain, various parts of the United States, Central America, Argentina and Brazil. Pius XII proclaimed her a saint on July 7, 1946, and through his efforts in 1950 she became the “Celestial Patroness in perpetuity and universal of all Emigrants”. She died on December 22, 1917 in the very hospital she had built for migrants in Chicago.
Precisely from the perspective of missionary commitment, Cabrinian lay missionaries, men and women of the front lines, with the example of St. Cabrini and with the support and recognition of the MSC Sisters, continue to walk alongside the poorest, the marginalized, sharing risks, needs and hopes. These lay men and women missionaries with their life experiences help all to build bridges of fraternity. Therefore, we entrust ourselves to you to always guide and accompany us on our missionary journey to respond to the Lord who asks us to be an “Outgoing Church”.
I like to leave us with a phrase from Mother Cabrini: “Today it is time for love not to be hidden, but to become operative, alive and true.” This phrase gives us much to reflect on and urges us to go out and be missionaries as the “Outgoing Church.”
Sister Assunta Scopelliti MSC