MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER PAUL VI
FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 1974

Introduction

Once again, in the light of the mystery of Pentecost which marked the beginning of the Church’s missionary activity, we wish to announce the annual Mission Sunday next October.

This celebration is framed within the framework of the Holy Year, which with its theme of renewal and reconciliation in Christ sets itself a goal of universal dimensions, and this is only achieved to the extent that humanity knows and recognizes Christ. Evangelizing, as an action which makes Christ known to peoples and tends to renew and reconcile them with him and in him, means extending the area and degree of knowledge and acceptance of his person and his message, it means expanding the spaces for reconciliation in justice and charity.

As we noted in the Bull of Induction of the Holy Year 1975 Apostolorum Limina , these fundamental reasons for the Jubilee impose, as a necessary consequence, a more vigorous apostolic and missionary action of the Church: “During the Holy Year, therefore, a generous commitment must be rekindled in promoting evangelization, which must undoubtedly be considered as the first point to be achieved in the context of such an activity. In fact, “sent by God to the nations to be the universal sacrament of salvation”, the pilgrim Church is by its nature missionary, and is renewed in its historic journey, insofar as it makes itself available to welcome and deepen in faith the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and at the same time to give the salvific announcement, with the word and the witness of life”.

If we have affirmed of the Holy Year that “it must reflect the catholic character of the vocation to the Gospel”, and that it “must give the heart of the Church the dimensions of the world”, what better occasion to implement, in practice, a similar purpose than the celebration of Mission Day, called by its first promoters “the true feast of apostolicity, the great day of catholicity”? (Cf. Letter from Card. van Rossum, former Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, dated 8 August 1927)

Missionary Significance of Conversion and Reconciliation

Conversion, as required by baptism, does not only have a negative aspect of turning away from and detachment from sin, but also and above all a positive aspect – as confirmed, moreover, by the etymology itself – of orientation and drawing closer to God and, in God’s name, to one’s neighbour. For an authentic Christian, the glorification of God, love for him and the advent of his Kingdom on earth must constitute the main objective of his life, in perfect coherence with the fundamental requests of the Pater Noster. Now, it is precisely thanks to the missionary activity of the Church that «God is fully glorified, at the moment in which men accept his work of salvation in an aware and full form that he accomplished in Christ. Thus, thanks to it, God’s plan is fulfilled, to which Christ consecrated himself in a spirit of obedience and love for the glory of the Father who had sent him, so that all mankind may form the one People of God, be reunited in the one Body of Christ, be built in the one Temple of the Holy Spirit. And this, while reflecting fraternal harmony, responds to the intimate desire of all men” ( Ad Gentes , 7).

This universal fraternity, inasmuch as we are members of the same family with Jesus Christ, as an older brother, under the same Father who is in heaven, requires a conversion, an openness, an approach to all our brothers. And conversion obliges us, in the first place, to know them, since we must love them and also share with them both goods of a material order and those of a moral and spiritual order. In fact, one cannot conceive of a family in which some members die of hunger and others are in abundance; in which some live exposed to the elements and others in comfortable homes; in which some have never heard of Jesus Christ and others have at hand all the means of salvation that the Church possesses. If we form one family with all men, fraternal love also obliges us to be reconciled with brothers of all races, languages, cultures and conditions of life. There are indeed in our “account” many sins of omission and injustice, for which we must ask our neighbor for forgiveness.

Reconciliation with our brothers includes the reparation for such shortcomings of justice and charity, and furthermore constitutes the surest sign of our reconciliation with God: “If we love one another, God dwells in us” (1 John . 4, 7; cf. also Matth . 5 , 25 ) .

 

 

The Need and Importance of a Missionary Renewal

This concern for all men, in feeling their problems as ours and in having a profound awareness that “every man is our brother”, this lively desire to repair the selfishness of our countries and of ourselves, are an essential element for setting up, in a genuinely evangelical sense, a pastoral care of conversion and reconciliation, which necessarily leads to a renewal of the whole Church.

The formation of an authentic missionary awareness must be based on a radical spiritual renewal: before preaching the Gospel, one must live it! It is the life of a Christian or of a community which constitutes his first missionary announcement (cf. Acts 3, 44; 5, 14): if one has not first experienced personally that Christ is the Saviour, one will hardly feel the need to make him known to others. Since catholicity – as our Predecessor Pius XII says in his Encyclical Fidei Donum – is “the main note of the true Church” ( AAS 49, 1957, p. 237), this catholicity, which means a universalistic missionary spirit, must be the principal element in the pastoral care of the particular Churches, in which the very being of the Church subsists alive and active, and must inform all the pastoral action that is intended to be renewed. “Nor must we forget – he adds in the same Encyclical – that this spiritual missionary fervor, fomented in your dioceses, is a pledge of renewed religious vitality, by which they will be inflamed (…). If, therefore, the supernatural life consists in charity and is increased by the commitment to give oneself, one can rightly say that the Catholic life of any country is measured by the sacrifices it spontaneously assumes and sustains for missionary work” (Ibid. p. 243 ) .

This principle finds confirmation in the Second Vatican Council: “The grace of renewal cannot develop in communities unless each of them expands the spaces of its charity to the ends of the earth, showing the same concern for those who are far away as it has for those who are its own members” (Ad Gentes, 37 ) .

Necessity and Urgency of Evangelization

Our incorporation into the very life of Christ, begun in Baptism, increased by Confirmation and perfected by the Eucharist, commits us totally to the divine plan of salvation which he came to bring about on earth. Yes, it is true that God “wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim . 2, 4). But this plan, revealed in a progressive manner and which reaches its culmination in Christ “mediator and fullness of all Revelation” ( Dei Verbum, 7), has two specific properties. The salvific plan does not extend only to some men or to some human groups, but to all men and all peoples. On the other hand, “the call to faith and the response of the believer do not occur in isolation and in the exclusion of any reciprocal bond”, but within a people “that recognized Him in truth and served Him faithfully” (Lumen Gentium, 9; cf. Ad Gentes , 2 ) .

This People of God, the community subject of faith and of supernatural life, is the Church, to which the deposit of Revelation has been entrusted not to keep it underground, but to make it available to all men (cf. Ad Gentes , 1, 29, 35; Apostolicam Actuositatem , 2; Lumen Gentium , 13 ) . We hope and trust that, during the Holy Year, all the faithful and all communities will become aware of this universal missionary commitment which, deriving from the very missionary nature of the Catholic Church, is also proper to all Churches and local communities, and to each and every Christian.

We also consider that the Holy Spirit, who always works in perfect harmony with the saving plan of the Father and with the essentially missionary nature of the Church, at the same time brings about a twofold convergent movement: on the one hand, he impels non-Christian peoples towards the Church and, on the other, he infuses the missionary spirit into the souls of the baptized. Christ from heaven – the Council affirms – through the Spirit “works without ceasing in the world, to lead men to the Church” ( Lumen Gentium , 48). “The Holy Spirit unifies the whole Church (…), enlivening ecclesial institutions and instilling in the hearts of the faithful the same missionary spirit by which Christ himself was impelled” (Ad Gentes, 4 ) .

The work of evangelization, as well as necessary, is urgent: first of all by reason of divine charity, which is the supreme motive that urges it, and then also as a response to the serious spiritual needs of today’s world. Caritas Christi urget nos (2 Cor. 5, 14): ever since Saint Paul dictated this expression, the religious panorama of the world has presented characteristics that worry and sadden us. The development of the Church’s missionary action continues too slowly. It is said, by way of excuse, that the Church must imitate God’s patience. This is true: God is patient, because he is eternal; God has his hour, nor can we, in our anxiety, expect to anticipate God’s hour. We forget, however, that it is we, with our guilty selfishness, with our sloth and lack of missionary zeal, who oblige, so to speak, God to show himself patient, to almost follow the step that we want to take.

God is Love and, as such, He sincerely desires to communicate Himself to men. Didn’t these words flow from the Heart of Christ, burning like the lava of a volcano: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and what do I desire except that it be lit?” ( Luke 12, 49). Likewise, today’s world, which, through the signs of our times, turns to the Church to come to her aid and give a complete response to her growing anxieties and aspirations, is like the Macedonian of Saint Paul’s vision: “Come to Macedonia, and help us”! (See Act. 16, 9-10) As many of us as children of the Church, we can and must respond like the Apostle to the Gentiles and repeat with him: «I do not boast if I proclaim the Gospel, because it is an obligation that is imposed on me; and woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel! (1 Cor. 9, 16).

The Pontifical Mission Societies Effective Tools to Help Evangelization

At present the Church has a providential instrument at its disposal, so that all the People of God can adequately fulfill its sacred missionary task: the Pontifical Mission Societies. If these did not exist, they would have to be created.

At the immediate disposal of the Vicar of Christ and, with him, of the Episcopal College, they constitute the principal and most effective instrument for educating the People of God in an authentic universalistic and missionary spirit; to promote missionary vocations in their multiform variety (do not forget that one of these institutions, the Missionary Union, has made this purpose the main practical reason for its existence); and to permanently develop charity in its double aspect, spiritual and material, always under the banner of the fullest catholicity.

It is our sincere desire, as our venerable Predecessors have already expressed repeatedly, that such Societies be established, consolidated and flourish not only in the Churches of ancient Christianity, but also in the young Churches, including the more recent ones, as a clear sign of ecclesial communion and of the missionary universalism which is connatural to all of them.

We like to repeat to the directors and collaborators of these Societies, scattered throughout the world, the words we addressed recently during the meeting of their General Superior Councils, held in Rome: «You (…) have the burden and the honor of keeping this awareness awake in your countries, and of tirelessly instilling in all strata of public opinion, and especially in Catholic parishes and organizations, that sensus Ecclesiae who, uniquely, can keep them immune from any particularism, and constantly feed the flame of conscious and joyful generosity in a broad scope that embraces all the Missions and takes their fate ever more to heart, entrusted to the good will, zeal, and initiative spirit of the children of the Church” (May 17, 1974).

We like to end our Message by repeating the prayer that we read in the liturgy of the feast of the Patron Saint of the Missions, Saint Francis Xavier: «May, O Lord, that your Church find its joy in the evangelization of all peoples». In the name of the Lord, to all of you who work with true zeal for the Missions and are preparing to celebrate the next Mission Sunday, we wish a profound joy that the world cannot give: that of having found the true meaning of your life, participating with Christ in the realization of the divine plan of universal salvation. 

From the Vatican, on the solemnity of the Apostles Peter and Paul, 29 June 1974, the twelfth of our Pontificate.

PAUL VI

Credit: Dicastery for Communication, to the Holy See