Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - The Church is a community which lives in the life of the Spirit and which has a fundamental missionary vocation: “Go and teach all peoples baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them all that I have taught you” (Mt 28, 19-20). This was the explicit command Jesus gave to his Apostles and who fulfilled it with admirable fidelity, preaching the Gospel with fervour, performing signs to confirm their words, establishing communities which had the Lord as the centre of life, assigning ministries and bearing witness by a heroic death.
It can be said that in the early Christian communities the faithful were encouraged to live in the Holy Spirit and to live a life of holiness and sincere love for God, among themselves and for all people and this is why they were so admired. Today, 20 centuries later the Church feels the need to return to this style of authentic communities to be signs for the world which, in many aspects, in contrary to Christian truths and values.
In our Christian communities today there must be strong faith, sincere spirit of brotherhood, but above all prayer: prayer is the hub of all Christian life. And we all feel a great need for prayer. The Church must continue to preach the Gospel to the men and women of today and she must have missionaries ready to carry on this noble task. The Apostolate of Prayer with the Pope’s intention for April calls us to pray for missionary vocations in this Church.
I believe that in this Year of the Eucharist this intention is particularly timely, especially since the Holy Father has asked for prayers for vocations in front of the Blessed Sacrament all over the world, as we are already doing.
We can say that the entire pontificate of Pope John Paul II has been marked by new evangelisation, as the Pope himself said: “new in its ardour, its methods and its expressions”. New missionaries, today so necessary, must be sought for first of all in the Churches of ancient tradition, although many are in deep crisis as a result of growing secularism in our day. But concern for the mission must also be encouraged in young Churches, which rely on new communities in which there is an enthusiastic presence of young believers who share the ideal to carry the Gospel to the men and women of today .
Let us prayer unceasingly therefore that the Lord will give his Church numerous missionary vocations to carry on the mission which started on the first Pentecost Sunday. Moreover we are in the Season of Easter, when we celebrate Jesus’ lasting triumph over sin and death, the truth which is the heart of the Christian message which we are called to proclaim to the world as the new evangelisers of the 21st century. (Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodriguez) (Agenzia Fides 30/3/2005 - righe 35, parole 483)
