Pope Benedict XVI missionary prayer intention for July: “That all Christians, aware of their missionary dutt, may provide effective help for those involved in the evangelisation of peoples”. Comment by Fr Vito Del Prete, PIME, Secretary general of the Pontifical Missionary Union

Saturday, 23 June 2007

Vatican City (Fides Service) - The Church is the community of the men and women convoked by the Trinity. She is the Holy People of God, called to witness to and to proclaim the salvation brought by Christ. She exists for the whole of humanity. She is a Church which prays, a Church which announces and a Church which interprets and, in the light of her Lord, illuminates and is inserted in the history of humanity to carry ultimate salvation to all peoples.
With baptism Christians are “consecrated to form a spiritual temple a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices and make known the wonders of the One who called them from the darkness wondrous light” (LG. 10). “All share a true equality with regard to the dignity and to the activity common to all the faithful for the building up of the Body of Christ.” (LG. 32). They are participants in the redeeming mission of the Church to which they are destined by Christ himself. Every lay person is “at the same time a witness and a living instrument of the mission of the Church itself "according to the measure of Christ's bestowal".(” (Eph. 4,7) (LG. n. 33).
Mission is a responsibility for all. It does not depend on the sex or state of life, because it places the person at the service of the Kingdom of God. Everyone must bring to the Church and for the building up of the Kingdom of God, everything he has and all he can do. Every human ability and potential can be put at the service of mission if they are used in Christ. Evangelisation to non Christians drives Christians effectively to bear witness of holiness and in the realisation of their specific missionary dimension.
Mission must be the constant concern and occupation of the Christian community. It cannot be only the conclusive point of pastoral work, but rather its constant horizon and its paradigm par excellence. Mission in fact opens new horizons of ministry, it recognises duties of responsibility for all forms of Christian live, because it sets proclamation of Jesus Christ in human history, projects the Church in the world, putting her in dynamic and salvific contact with human and cosmic realities.
Therefore the faithful are asked not to remain inert within the shell of a community focussed on itself, but to look out to the vast ocean of the world and cast out the nets so that every person may encounter the person of Jesus who renews all. We must call all the ecclesial forces for this missionary task: the local Churches, the bishops, priests, religious and lay men and women. All must work in synergy, each one maintaining and authenticating his or her proper vocation in communion and co-responsibility for the mission. “Now Christ's body is yourselves, each of you with a part to play in the whole” (1Cor. 12, 27).
Now not everyone receives that special vocation mentioned in the Ad Gentes Council Decree, the vocation to be missionaries who go to other countries to announce the Gospel to non Christians or in places where Christ is not the point of reference. Indeed their number is diminishing. However the Spirit has called other missionary agents: members of local Churches of missionary territories involved in evangelisation, namely Fidei Donum priests and lay people, thousands of lay men and women married couples and singles who travel the roads of the world announcing the Kingdom of God. They are witnesses of the radical missionary vocation of the whole Church, who through them is beside every man and woman to bring the integral salvation of Christ. They are the dispersed among the peoples like the missionaries of the first apostolic communities. And like those, today too, new Christian areas are subject to persecution, discrimination, insufficient means for living . According to some reports there are 200 million Christians at risk of persecution in no less than 60 countries in Asia and Africa. The martyrology continues to be written by many who in the name of Christ and justice are imprisoned, taken hostage, taken hostage, suffer hunger and thirst. Still valid today is the lament of the prophet : “For you sake we are put to death all day long”.
The missionaries “are everyone business”. We are all called to take an active part in the work of spreading the Kingdom of God, helping missionary and Churches on the frontiers, with prayers, witness and economic help. Realising that mission belongs to God it is our duty to pray incessantly to the Father that his "Kingdom may come", and that he will “ send workers for the harvest” to announce the Gospel to every creature to the far corners of the earth. The Christian message in the present day situation of a crisis of Christianity in the West will only be convincing if it is made credible with witness of personal and community life of the faithful who are its reason for credibility.
Lastly it is necessary to five human and financial aid to missionaries of the Gospel and the Churches dispersed in the world "of the gentiles" . They live on the anthropological and social frontiers of humanity, where the drama of life is tragic and complex. It is here that the Church must show the face of God's love, reaching out to those afflicted in soul and body. (Fr. Vito Del Prete, PIME) (Agenzia Fides 23/6/2007, righe 59, parole 862)


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