MESSAGE OF JOHN PAUL II
FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 1984

Dear brothers and sisters!

“The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians” (Tertullian, Apologeticus , 50: PL 1, 534).

During my recent apostolic journey to the Far East, I had the joy of canonizing one hundred and three confessors of the Catholic faith who, by evangelizing Korea by announcing Christ’s message, had the privilege of testifying with the supreme holocaust of their earthly life the certainty of eternal life in the risen Lord.

This circumstance prompted some reflections that I would like to bring to the attention of all the faithful for the upcoming World Mission Day.

1. Redemptive value of the cross.

In reality, the Letters and Acts of the Apostles confirm that it is a special grace to be able to suffer “pro nomine Iesu”. For example, we read how the apostles “went away . . . glad to be insulted for the sake of the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41), in perfect adherence to what the Redeemer had proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount: against you for my sake. Rejoice and be glad. . .” (Mt 5, 11).

Christ himself carried out his redemptive work of humanity above all through his painful passion and the most atrocious martyrdom, also pointing the way to his followers: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” » ( Mt 10, 24). Love therefore inevitably passes through the cross and in this it becomes creative and an inexhaustible source of redemptive power. “You know,” writes St. Peter, “that you were freed from the empty conduct inherited from your fathers, not at the price of corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pt 1, 18-19; see 2 Cor 6, 20).

We meditated deeply on this extraordinary mystery of divine love in the recently concluded Holy Year of the Redemption. Millions of faithful meditated on it and lived it in the depths of their hearts, many of whom flocked to Rome to renew their profession of faith at the tombs of the apostles, who were the first to share in the martyrdom of the Master. Faith that already finds its first attestation at the foot of the cross in the words of the centurion and those who guarded Jesus: “Truly this was the Son of God” ( Mt 27:54).

Since that crucial event for human history, the apostles and their successors have continued, down the centuries, to announce the death and resurrection of Christ, our only Saviour: There is no salvation in anyone else; there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we can be saved” (Acts 4:12). But it was in a particular way the testimony of suffering to the extreme limit, offered both by Christ and by his followers, which opened men’s minds and hearts to conversion to the Gospel: testimony of supreme love; in fact “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13).

And this is the testimony that hosts of martyrs and confessors have suffered over time, making possible with their sacrifice and their immolation the rise and flourishing of the various Churches – such as the Korean one I mentioned at the beginning – and fertilizing with their blood new lands to transform them into fruitful fields of the Gospel; in fact «if the grain of wheat that falls to the ground does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies it produces much fruit” ( Jn 12:24).

These heroes of the faith have well understood and implemented the fundamental concept – which I expressed in the letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering – according to which if Christ worked the redemption of humanity with the cross and suffered in man’s place and for man, every man “is called to participate in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. By working out redemption through suffering, Christ simultaneously elevated human suffering to the level of redemption. Therefore also every man, in his suffering, can become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ” (Ioannis Pauli PP. II, Salvifici Doloris , 19).

2. Suffering, a Precious tool of Evangelization .

It seems to me that the missionary implications of what I have explained are evident. Therefore, in this Message for Mission Day 1984, I would like to warmly exhort all the faithful to value pain in its many forms, uniting it with the sacrifice of the cross for evangelization, that is, for the redemption of those who do not yet know Christ.

There are still millions of brothers who do not know the Gospel and do not enjoy the immense treasures of the Redeemer’s heart. For them, pain has no sufficient explanation; it is the most oppressive and inexplicable absurdity that tragically contrasts with man’s aspiration to total happiness.

Only the cross of Christ casts a ray of light on this mystery; only in the cross can man find a valid answer to the anguished question that arises from the experience of pain. The saints understood this deeply and accepted, and sometimes even ardently desired, to be associated with the passion of the Lord, making the apostle’s words their own: “I complete in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings in favor of his body which is the Church” (Col 1:24).

I therefore invite all the faithful who suffer – and no one is exempt from pain – to give this apostolic and missionary meaning to their suffering.

St. Francis Xavier, patron of the missions, in his zeal as an evangelizer, aimed at bringing the name of Jesus to the ends of the earth, did not hesitate to face all sorts of hardships: hunger, cold, shipwrecks, persecutions, illnesses; only death interrupted his course.

Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus, patroness of the missions, a prisoner of love in the Carmel of Lisieux, would have liked to travel the whole world to plant the cross of Christ in every place. “I would like – she writes – to be a missionary not only for a few years, but I would like to have been since the creation of the world and to be so until the end of time” (S. Teresa of Jesus the Child, Storia di un’anima, Manuscript B, f. 3r). And she made the universality and apostolicity of her desires concrete in the suffering asked of God and in the precious offering of herself as a voluntary victim to merciful love. Suffering that reached its culmination and at the same time the highest degree of apostolic fecundity in the martyrdom of the spirit, in the travail of the darkness of faith, heroically offered to obtain the light of faith for so many brothers still immersed in darkness.

The Church, pointing out these two shining models to us, invites us not only to reflection but also to imitation.

We can therefore actively collaborate in the expansion of Christ’s kingdom and in the development of his mystical body in a threefold direction:

– learning to give our own suffering its most authentic purpose, which is rooted in the dynamism of the Church’s participation in Christ’s redemptive work;
– by inviting our brothers who are suffering in spirit and body to understand this apostolic dimension of pain and consequently to value their trials, their pains, in a missionary sense;

– by making our own, with inexhaustible charity, the pain that strikes a large part of humanity every day, afflicted by disease, hunger, persecution, deprived of fundamental and inalienable rights, such as freedom; suffering humanity, in which we must discern the face of Christ, “man of sorrows”, and which we must try to alleviate as best we can.

3. Valuing Suffering: a Program for the Pontifical Mission Societies.

This broad and complete programme, requires a generous availability from all the faithful. I would like to propose it to all Christians, recalling once again that every baptized person is and must be a missionary, albeit to different extents and ways (cf. Ad Gentes , 36; Codex Iuris Canonici , can. 781).

I entrust it in a special way to the Pontifical Mission Societies, which are the privileged instrument of the Church’s missionary dynamism and which not only on the specific World Day, but throughout the year must promote the missionary spirit, an element which is not marginal but essential nature of the mystical body.

The work of the Propagation of the Faith, the Work of Saint Peter the Apostle for seminaries and priestly and religious vocations in mission lands, the Work of Holy Childhood, the Missionary Union of Priests, Religious and Secular Institutes, they constitute as many tools, tested by decades of experience, for missionary promotion in the various sectors.

I know well how these praiseworthy works, in addition to collecting the economic means offered by the generosity of the faithful – indispensable means for the construction of churches, seminaries, schools, kindergartens, hospitals – carry out an intense work of missionary animation. Even the valorisation of suffering for missionary purposes, which I wanted to propose to the special consideration of all the people of God for Mission Sunday 1984, constitutes one of the noblest expressions of their apostolate which has aroused prompt adherence among the sick, the elderly, the abandoned, the marginalized, as well as among prisoners.

But more needs to be done. In fact, there are many – human sufferings that have not yet found their sublime finality and apostolic outlet, from which an immense good can derive for the progress of evangelization, for the expansion of the mystical body of Christ.

This is perhaps the highest form of missionary cooperation, since it reaches its maximum efficacy precisely in the union of human suffering with Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary, incessantly renewed on the altars.

Dear brothers and sisters who suffer in body and soul, know that the Church relies on you, the Pope is counting on you so that the name of Jesus may be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. I would like again to recall what I wrote in the letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering: “The Gospel of suffering is written incessantly, and incessantly speaks in the words of this strange paradox: the springs of divine strength flow right in the midst of human weakness. Those who participate in Christ’s sufferings keep in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the redemption of the world, and they can share this treasure with others. The more man is threatened by sin, the heavier are the structures of sin that today’s world carries within itself, the greater is the eloquence that human suffering possesses in itself. And the more the Church feels the need to have recourse to the value of human suffering for the salvation of the world” (Ioannis Pauli PP. II , Salvifici Doloris , 27).

May Mary, “Regina martyrum” and “Regina apostolorum”, awaken in everyone the desire to be associated with the passion of Christ the universal redeemer.

On this Sunday of Pentecost, which must be lived in a missionary spirit by the whole Church, I am happy to impart my special apostolic blessing to those who, directly or indirectly, spend their energies and their pains to communicate the light of the Gospel to humanity.

From the Vatican, 10 June, Solemnity of Pentecost, of the sixth year of the Pontificate in 1984.

JOHN PAUL II

Credit: Dicastery for Communication, to the Holy See