MISSIONARY INTENTION - Holy Father's Missionary Intention for October: “That the World Mission Day may afford an occasion for understanding that the task of proclaiming Christ is an absolutely necessary service to which the Church is called for the benefit of humanity.” Commentary.

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – In some contemporary environments, there is an attempt to present the Church's missionary activity as unnecessary, as something that would oppress others' freedom of conscience. If anyone can be saved merely by being faithful to his conscience, to the religious environment in which he was born, why proclaim the Gospel?
The Holy Father reminds us that the task of proclaiming Christ is a necessary and indispensable service that the Church is called to carry out as a service to humanity. Jesus Christ is the fullness of God's revelation - the Way, the Truth, and the Life - and all men have the right to hear this announcement. Through her missionary activities, the Church proposes the light of God that she has received, without imposing it on anyone. Proposing does not mean imposing. The Lord's mandate remains valid forever: "Go throughout the world and preach the Gospel."
It is an essential part of the nature of the Church's missionary dimension. The Church would cease to be what Christ wanted it to be, if she stopped announcing the salvation of God to mankind.
At the same time, this announcement is a deep call to repentance for the Church itself. Benedict XVI says that the missionary mandate "cannot be fulfilled without a profound personal, community and pastoral conversion" (Message for World Mission Sunday 2010).
Proclaiming the Gospel becomes a great responsibility, as Christians cannot make that announcement as "masters" or "owners" of the truth they proclaim, but as servants of the truth, for which they give their lives, as they find in it the love of God. “Like the Greek pilgrims of two thousand years ago, the people of our time too, even perhaps unbeknown to them, ask believers not only to 'speak' of Jesus, but to 'make Jesus seen,' to make the face of the Redeemer shine out in every corner of the earth before the generations of the new millennium and especially before the young people of every continent, the privileged ones to whom the Gospel proclamation is intended. They must perceive that Christians bring Christ's word because he is the truth, because they have found in him the meaning and the truth for their own lives” (Message for World Mission Sunday 2010).
We cannot be preachers without first being believers who coherently live the message they proclaim. Christianity is not an ideology, but a life-giving encounter with Christ, the Son of the living God. “Only on the basis of this encounter with the Love of God that changes life can we live in communion with him and with one another and offer our brothers and sisters a credible witness, accounting for the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pt 3:15)” (Ibid.).
May Mary, the Mother of God and Queen of the Apostles, with her maternal affection support the missionary impulse of the disciples of Christ, so that all men may know the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus. (Agenzia Fides 29/9/2010)