World Mission Day will be celebrated on Sunday, October 23, entitled “To Me You Will Be Witnesses.”
Three are the key words of Pope Francis’ Message : witness, to the ends of the earth and the Holy Spirit.
– The plural form (you) emphasizes the communitarian-ecclesial character of the missionary call of the disciples. Every baptized person is called to mission in the Church and at the Church’s mandate: mission therefore is done together, not individually, in communion with the ecclesial community and not on one’s own initiative. Disciples are asked to live their personal lives in the key of mission: they are sent by Jesus to the world not only to do mission, but also and above all to live the mission entrusted to them. The universal character of the disciples’ mission emerges clearly here.
– The “centrifugal” geographic movement is highlighted, almost in concentric circles, from Jerusalem, considered by Jewish tradition as the center of the world, to Judea and Samaria, and to “the ends of the earth.”
– It is the Spirit who is the real protagonist of the mission: it is He who gives the right word at the right time in the right way.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/messages/missions/documents/20220106-giornata-missionaria.html
This was the message of Sister Maria Eliane Azevedo da Silva, Superior General of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on the occasion of this important anniversary:
“You will be my witnesses” is a positive affirmation of Jesus chosen by Pope Francis for World Mission Day in the year 2022.
On this day, we remember St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, consecrated religious, missionary without borders who witnessed to the hope of a Missionary Church in the world.
May Saint Cabrini intercede to God that we may be witnesses of communion, as a global family, able to move from the “I” to the “we”. This witness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s action in us.
ós.
