MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER PAUL VI
FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 1971

Beloved children,
Brothers in Christ,
Beloved Missionaries,

With this greeting, the Pope addresses you, to acknowledge with trembling respect the apostolic dignity that our Lord Jesus Christ was pleased to bestow on each of his followers, from the greatest to the least.

When this message reaches you on World Mission Day, you will certainly understand that it does not come only from the Pope, as from an isolated person who alone must bear the full weight of missionary responsibility which, on the contrary, from the outset appears as a “commitment incumbent on the Church” (Ad gentes, 5 ) . Indeed, Christ’s command “Go into all the world, preach the Gospel to every creature” ( Mark 16, 15) given to the Apostles, “was inherited by the Episcopal Order, assisted by the priests and united with the Successor of Peter” ( Ad gentes , 5).

Therefore, on this Mission Sunday, We address you, not only in Our name, but also as the spokesman of Our brothers in the episcopate from all over the world, with whom we have the joy of being united by very close bonds of charity and happy collegial solidarity.

The shepherds of Christ’s flock, servants of all God’s servants, want you to share with them this wonderful thought today: that they and you are members of a missionary Church, a Church which exists to make known to all humanity the Gospel of salvation.

The People of God is a Missionary People.

Christ could have asked his Father, and He would have immediately made available to him “more than twelve legions of angels” ( Matt . 26, 53) to announce his redemption to the world. Instead, Christ has bestowed this duty and privilege upon us; to us: “the least of all the saints” ( Eph . 3, 8), who are truly unworthy to be called apostles (cf. 1 Cor . 15, 9). On purpose, to announce the good news to humanity, He did not want to use any other voice than ours. In fact, we have been given this grace “to evangelize to the pagans the unfathomable riches of Christ” ( Eph . 3, 8).

Furthermore, it falls to us to proclaim the Gospel in this extraordinary period of human history, a truly unprecedented time, in which, with unprecedented heights of progress, there are also unprecedented depths of perplexity and despair. If ever there was a time when Christians, more than ever in the past, are called to be a light that illuminates the world, a city situated on a mountain, a salt that gives flavor to human life (Matt. 5, 13-14), this, undoubtedly, is our time . Indeed, we possess the antidote to the pessimism, to the dark omens, to the discouragement and fear, from which our time suffers.

We have the Good News!

And each of us, by the very fact of being a Christian, must feel prompted to spread this Good News to the ends of the world. “We cannot fail to speak of what we have seen and heard” ( Acts 4, 20).

No Christian – be he Pope, bishop, priest, religious or lay person – can renounce his responsibility with regard to this essential Christian duty. You will certainly recall the insistence with which the recent Ecumenical Council inculcated this point: “Every disciple of Christ (without exception) has the duty to spread the faith as much as possible” (Ad gentes, 23 ) . «All the children of the Church must have a lively awareness of their responsibility towards the world. they must spend their energies in the work of evangelization” ( Ibid . 36).

Essential Duty

On this point we must have very clear ideas: Christ gave his Apostles an order so concrete and explicit as to exclude any possibility of uncertainty regarding his will. They must go all over the world (excluding nowhere) and proclaim the Good News to all men (without exception of race or time).

The Good News is this: God loves us, He became man to be able to share our life and so that we could participate in his. He walks with us – every step of the way – taking our distresses as his own, because He cares for us ( 1 Petr . 5, 7). Therefore men are not alone, because God is present in all their history, that of peoples and that of single individuals; and He will lead us – if we let Him – to an eternal happiness beyond any human hope.

You will certainly hear this objection repeated by well-intentioned people: What about the hungry, the underprivileged, the victims of oppression and injustice? What’s the point – and above all, is it according to charity? isn’t that rather an affront? – talk to them about nice future things? Wouldn’t it be better for Christians to help them reach a “human” standard of living before daring to tell them of a heavenly life yet to come?

Christ however, who also «was consecrated to preach the Good News to the poor . . . and set the oppressed free” ( Luke 4, 18) does not want us to exclude the poor and abandoned – indeed, as far as possible, no man of any race, colour, tribe or human condition – from the joy of hearing the Good News of the Gospel.

Faithful to his spirit, our missionaries never thought of separating the love of God from the love of men, much less of opposing one to the other. As they build up the Kingdom of God they invariably work at the same time to improve the condition of men on earth. Indeed, it must be firmly affirmed that the sweet message of the Gospel, in the experience of the Church, has never been felt by the poor and the oppressed as an insult.

Evangelization, A Leave for Development

Without claiming to intervene “proposing prefabricated models” of civilization ( Octogesima adveniens , 42), the heralds of the Good News bring to every people (with the fidelity due to the patrimony of Christ’s teaching and due respect for the various cultures) what they believe to be “the only, the true, the highest interpretation of human life in time, and beyond time: the Christian interpretation” (Address to the Parliament of Uganda, 1 Aug. 1969, AAS 61, p. 582 ) . Indeed, they believe that “Christ, who died and rose again for all, always gives man, through his Spirit, light and strength to respond to his supreme calling” ( Gaudium et Spes, 10). Thus Evangelization, responding to man’s noblest aspirations, also becomes a leaven for development.

This is how we see the perennial need to preach the Gospel, in order to offer men the supreme reasons for committing themselves to ever more progress: «man’s recognition of the supreme values, and of God, their source and goal. . . faith, a gift from God accepted by man’s good will, and unity in the love of Christ who calls us all to share, as children, in the life of the living God, the Father of all men” (Populorum Progressio, 31 ) .

The World Needs Spiritual Values

Perhaps never before has the world had such a great need for spiritual values ​​and, we are convinced of this, never has it been so willing to welcome their announcement. Indeed, even the most prosperous nations of the world are discovering for themselves that happiness does not consist in possessing many possessions; they are learning from a bitter “experience of emptiness” how true the Lord’s words are: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” ( Matt . 4, 4).

We must tell people, and keep repeating it, that “the key, the center and the goal of all human history” are found in Christ, our Lord and Master ( Gaudium et Spes , 10). We must tell them that this is true not only for believers, but applies to all men, for whom Christ died and whose ultimate calling is to correspond to Christ’s plan to “gather together in himself all things, both in heaven and on earth” (Eph. 1, 10 ) .

We must invite all men to join the People of God, his Church, that ever-growing society of hope, capable of looking to the future with confidence without closing its eyes to the present. Indeed, it finds that the present has meaning, validity and value precisely because it is related to that future, and can therefore engage in the present with ever greater energy and conviction.

No, “we are not ashamed of the Gospel” ( Rom 1:16). And the Pope and your Bishops are not ashamed to beg for help with which to spread the Gospel. You must therefore not be surprised or scandalized if on this World Mission Day, you see them with their hand outstretched to ask for your alms for the love of God and neighbor.

Didn’t Christ himself often ask those who approached him the means by which to do good? Didn’t he feed the multitude with a few loaves given to him by a boy in the crowd? Didn’t he borrow the fishermen’s boat to be able to proclaim the word of life to the people? Did he not gladly accept the help offered to him and to the disciples by the women who provided them with their resources? Didn’t he borrow the donkey to ride on to go to the place of his passion? And he didn’t want to depend on a rich man to have a grave from which he could rise again?

We would like to confide to you, to all the faithful – our collaborators in the divine mandate assigned to us to announce the Good News – something that causes us to blush and confuse. We feel unable to adequately provide for the needs of the Church’s missionaries, and to give sufficient help to the many good works of religion and charity that they continually undertake.

These missionaries consecrated themselves to the Gospel “for life”. They go to the nations in our place. They, on behalf of us, fulfill the Master’s command to “preach the gospel to every creature” (Matt . 16, 15). Nothing in our power to offer could repay the obligation we owe to these men and women; but at least we should provide for their daily bread and the necessities required by their works.

For many of us who cannot personally bring the Good News to the peoples of the earth, this is often the only way available to us to fulfill the missionary obligation incumbent on all Christians. Our continuous prayers bring down the grace of God on the enterprises of our missionaries; the sacrifices we freely impose on ourselves and the sufferings we gladly accept open many doors for them.

The Needs of Missionaries

To these spiritual aids we must add generous almsgiving, because in the current conditions of our earthly existence material assistance is also necessary.

For more than a century and a half, the organization of this aid by the faithful has been entrusted to a charitable body known as the Pontifical Mission Societies (sometimes also called the Pope’s Aid for the Missions). Through these Pontifical Societies in each country, under the direction of zealous National Directors presented by the Bishops, the offerings of the People of God are collected every year, above all in the parish collections of Mission Day.

These offerings are collected in a single fund and then distributed to the missions. Thus, your spontaneous and generous contribution, offered in response to the Pope’s appeal, is immediately put to work, providing for the daily needs of our missionaries, for the construction of churches, schools, hospitals, seminaries and novitiates; feed the hungry, relieve suffering and bring aid in emergencies.

Unfortunately, it must be admitted that the Pontifical Societies can now only meet a small part of the numerous requests for aid but this is not due to the fact that your gift has been less generous, but rather to the speed with which the evangelical work has progressed and to the enormous expansion of the social development works undertaken by the missionaries.

However, We feel obliged to urge each and every one of the Catholic faithful to make even greater sacrifices for the Faith; and not only those who find themselves in conditions of prosperity, but also those who, like the widow so praised by Christ, must give “out of their want” (Mark 12, 44). In doing so, we will more closely resemble the community of the first Christians, of which it is said: “none of them held anything that he possessed as exclusive” (Act . 3, 32).

Community of Hope, of Faith, of Charity

As the community of converts was one heart and one soul, in that springtime of Christianity, so the community of believers must be today; not only a community of hope, but also of faith and charity. And above all we must feel one with our missionaries, these apostles of our day, who go on our behalf to the ends of the earth to bring to light before all what is the providential plan of the mystery hidden for centuries in God (Eph. 3, 9) and to “unveil the overflowing riches of his grace, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 37) .

We must be close to and in solidarity with them in the urgency of the Christian apostolate, so that they can “testify with great fortitude to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 3, 33). Thus we too will accomplish, without ever failing, what every Christian heart must always ardently desire to do for its brothers: “to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge” to be “filled with the very fullness of God” (Eph. 3, 19) .

As we express all these thoughts to you, dear sons and daughters, we invoke upon you the grace and virtue of the Lord, so that you may remain faithful to your vocation in his missionary Church. And to you, our beloved missionaries scattered throughout the world, We send a special and affectionate greeting in Jesus Christ, whom you serve with love, sacrifice and joy. To all of you, who collaborate with him in building his Kingdom-«Kingdom of truth and life; of holiness and grace; of justice, love and peace” (Preface of the Feast of Christ the King) – we wholeheartedly impart, on this World Mission Day, our Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, June 25, 1971.

PAUL VI

Credit: Dicastery for Communication, to the Holy See