Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Ponce (Agenzia Fides) – “We cannot give what we do not possess, we cannot express what we have not experienced, what our eyes have not seen, or what our hands have not touched”. Therefore, “the foundation of the Church’s evangelizing mission rests on our personal, loving encounter with Jesus Christ”. It is He who “reveals the “Good News” to us, shows us the Father”.
The day after the publication of the letter addressed to Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo, Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas, who is participating as his special envoy in the 6th American Missionary Congress (CAM6), which is taking place in Ponce, Puerto Rico, until Sunday, November 24, Pope Francis addressed the participants of the Congress directly.
In the letter, dated November 9 but published only today, the Pope recalls that this event is taking place in the year of Prayer that he proclaimed in preparation for the 2025 Jubilee. He then refers to a prayer he wrote specifically for this conference and addressed to the Trinity, which addresses the Father as "the merciful God who revealed to us the 'Good News' in his Son Jesus Christ" and "asks him to pour out His love through the Holy Spirit and renew the face of this earth".
An example of this miracle - continues the prayer cited by the Pope - are the many missionaries who have proclaimed him in word and deed". Jesus first, continues the Bishop of Rome, "was a missionary, "a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people" (Lk 24:19). Words spoken before God, his Father, in the intimate prayer that preceded all his actions.
Works carried out before his Father in a life totally subject to his will, in order to bear witness to his people of the greatest love. This is the message that missionaries have transmitted at all times, in all places and in all languages,” said Pope Francis
And this, Pope Francis points out, “is also the vocation of the baptized to which the prayer refers; to see God, to see Him in the world, in our brothers and sisters, with ‘Christified’ eyes that carry a compassionate, welcoming, and merciful gaze.”
In his message to the participants of CAM6, the Bishop of Rome quotes what he calls a "beautiful hymn" from the Liturgy of the Hours: "I saw you, yes, when I was a child and was baptized in water, and, cleansed of old sins, I could see you without a veil." From such an experience can arise the "joy that fills our hearts. The joy of the disciples after meeting the Risen One, which cannot be tamed and urges them to set out."
And it is the Holy Spirit who "works this miracle in us and puts in our mouths the words that we should say to God (cf. Rom 8:14) and to people (cf. Mt 10:19). That is why, since the very beginning of the Church, together with Mary, the disciples in the Cenacle, the first thing they do is invoke the Spirit in assembly. Through His life-giving power we can transmit the message in every language, not only because the Church speaks them all but, above all, because she always speaks the same language, “the language of love, understandable to all humanity, as it is part of our very essence as made in the image of God”. (F.B.) (Agenzia Fides, 21/11/2024)
