MESSAGE OF JOHN PAUL II
FOR WORLD MISSION DAY, 1990

Dear brothers and sisters!

This year World Mission Day is celebrated while the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops is underway, which deals with the formation of priests in today’s world. The importance of this theme for the whole Church and for her evangelizing mission escapes no one. The Church exists to evangelize: if this is her specific task, everyone in her must have a lively awareness of their own responsibility in order to spread the Gospel.

In communion and under the authority of Peter’s successor, the care of proclaiming the Gospel belongs above all to the college of bishops, with whom the priests collaborate in an eminent way who “exercising… the office of Christ, shepherd and head, they gather the family of God”, while “in their headquarters they make visible the universal Church” (Lumen Gentium, 28).

The spiritual gift of sacred ordination “prepares them for a… very vast and universal mission of salvation ‘to the ends of the earth’, given that any priestly ministry participates in the same universal breadth of the mission entrusted by Christ to the apostles” (Presbyterorum Ordinaris, 10). Therefore, all priests “must be profoundly convinced that their life has also been consecrated for the service of the missions” (Ad Gentes, 3): every priest is a missionary by nature and by his vocation. As I already wrote in 1979, in the first letter for Holy Thursday, «the pastoral vocation of priests is great, and the Council teaches that it is universal; it is directed towards the whole Church and, therefore, it is also missionary”. Likewise,

In this message I wish to underline another aspect of today’s mission which closely affects the young and old Churches: the evangelization of non-Christians, present within a diocese or a parish, is the primary duty of the respective pastor. Therefore, priests commit themselves personally and associate the faithful in preaching the Gospel to those who are still outside the ecclesial community.

Most priests experience the missionary dimension in a particular Church, both by taking care of the missionary situations existing there, and by educating and stimulating their communities to participate in the universal mission of the Church. The education of future priests in the missionary spirit implies that the priest must feel and work wherever he is as a parish priest in the world, at the service of the whole missionary Church. He is the born animator and primarily responsible for the awakening of missionary awareness in the faithful.

It is again the decree “Ad Gentes” – I like to recall it on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its promulgation – which clearly indicates to priests what they must do to arouse love for the missions in the faithful: the keenest interest in the evangelization of the world: they inculcate in Christian families the need and the honor of cultivating missionary vocations among their sons and daughters; may they nurture missionary fervor in young people, so that future messengers of the Gospel arise among them; teach everyone to pray for the missions and also ask for their generous contribution of money and means, almost becoming beggars for the salvation of souls.

But to have a heart and carry out a pastoral action of this breadth, a solid missionary formation is needed, which the Seminary will have to provide above all during the years of preparation of future priests. It is important that in the programs of theological studies, Missionology has a prominent place. Thus trained, priests will in turn be able to form Christian communities in an authentic missionary commitment. It will also be desirable that they, constituting a single presbyterate with their bishop, have the opportunity for missionary reflection meetings, congresses, retreats and days of spirituality centered on the mission.

In addition to the initiatives that the bishops will be able to take for the permanent missionary formation of their priests, it must not be forgotten that all Christians are offered valid and tested ways of missionary animation both in the Pontifical Missionary Union of the clergy, men and women religious, and in the Pontifical Mission Societies for the Propagation of the Faith, of Saint Peter the Apostle and of the Holy Childhood. Each of them has its own field of action in favor of missionary cooperation, and all are committed to getting the faithful to take an active part in this cooperation.

As for the Pontifical Missionary Union, founded by the Venerable Paolo Manna, like my predecessors, I once again strongly recommend it as a means of witness and love for the missions. For this reason, I would like to confirm – and the next Synod of Bishops offers me the opportunity – what Pope Paul VI wrote of vm in the Apostolic Letter “Graves et Increscentes” of September 1976: “The Missionary Union is to be considered as “the ‘soul’ of the Pontifical Mission Societies… accustoming them so that they in turn are a school of missionary formation, are known and helped in their initiatives and in their goals».

World Mission Day must be an important annual appointment for everyone, first of all for the Missionary Societies, the chosen instrument of the successor of Peter and of the episcopal body for spreading the Gospel.

I also wish to point out that this Day originated from an explicit request of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, accepted by Pope Pius XI in 1926. It is to this Society that the offerings of the faithful go, who gather on that day in the world and it is from these offers that the young Churches receive substantial aid for their activities: from the formation of seminarians to that of catechists, from the construction of churches and seminaries to the daily bread for the missionaries.

The needs to which missionaries must respond are truly many, and for this reason the contribution of those who can help them must be generous and constant. How can we fail to promptly and joyfully accept their appeal, which manifests the strength of the Church’s youth? Among the forms of human solidarity, missionary charity is characterized by its encouraging charge of hope: the mission is the future of the Church.

I send this message on the solemnity of Pentecost, when the mission of the Church began with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. This evangelizing activity has now been going on for two thousand years amid alternating vicissitudes of success and difficulty, of acceptance and rejection; but the missionary announcement is always made with the power of the Holy Spirit, who is the protagonist of evangelization.

In the pastoral visits to the young Churches, which I have been carrying out since the beginning of my service as universal pastor, I have been able to verify the marvels that the faith of Christ and the power of the Spirit work in the Communities born from the announcement made by the missionaries, sometimes also confirmed by testimony of martyrdom. Also in the African countries, which I visited last January, this vitality of the Christian faith struck me together with the situations of their impressive poverty. I therefore consider it my duty to renew the appeal to the countries of well-being and to the international organizations, so that with their generous solidarity they may meet the growing needs from which these countries and a large part of the African continent suffer.

The missionary journey of the Church, on the threshold of its third millennium, is full of hope, even amidst the aforementioned trials and tribulations. Thinking of the “new missionary advent” which awaits the Church, it is necessary to confirm and clarify the fundamental lines of missionary activity and to increase in all a more conscious and intense apostolic spirit.

I urge everyone to insistently pray to the Lord of the harvest to send workers to proclaim the good news of salvation in Christ. But I address this invitation especially to young people, so that they may be open to the missionary vocation for the proclamation of the Gospel.

My concluding reflection becomes contemplation and prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. To her, Queen of the Missions, my soul rises with this heartfelt prayer: she who at the wedding in Cana requested and obtained her first miracle as her Son; she who was beside him, while she offered herself on the cross for our salvation; she who, present in the upper room with her disciples, waited in unanimous prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit; May she who accompanied the heroic journey of the missionaries from the beginning, inspire today and always all her sons and daughters to imitate her in concern and solidarity with the missionaries of our time.

In the name of this most beloved Mother, I send you all, brothers and sisters, the comforting Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, June 3 – the solemnity of Pentecost – in the year 1990, the twelfth of my Pontificate.

JOHN PAUL II

 

Credit: Dicastery for Communication, to the Holy Sea