Rome (Italy). On 1 October, with the liturgical memorial of Saint Therese of Lisieux, patron of the missions, the missionary month opens which, also in the Salesian tradition, is dedicated to animation for the missions and to strengthen universal missionary passion, in the hearts of all Christians and with prayer for the missionaries of the world.
This month, we remember many sisters and brothers who every day, in the silence of their fidelity to God and the Gospel, in so many corners of the world, risk and give their lives to proclaim the Kingdom of God.
«Go and invite everyone to the banquet» (cfr. Mt 22:9) is the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the 98th World Mission Day, which is celebrated on 20 October 2024.
“The Pope – comments Fr. Giuseppe Pizzoli, general director of the Missio Foundation (CEI) – invites us to renew the missionary dynamism of every baptized person and urges us again to be a ‘Church going out’ to make accessible to all the possibility of participating in the great banquet for all peoples proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah: ‘On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines’.” (Is 25:6).
The parable that serves as a backdrop to this year’s missionary October theme is about a wedding banquet, arranged by the king for his son, in which those first invited do not participate. The Gospel account continues, therefore, emphasizing that the king does not give up, but sends his servants again saying to them, “Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find” (v. 9).
In developing this gospel account, Pope Francis highlights three aspects of the mission of the Church and her disciples:
“Go and invite!”. Mission as a tireless going out to invite others to the Lord’s banquet, where people live, walk.
“To the banquet”. The eschatological and eucharistic perspective of the mission of Christ and the Church. In this perspective, in the year dedicated to prayer in preparation for the Jubilee of 2025, the Pope invites everyone, “to intensify also and above all their participation in the Mass and prayer for the evangelizing mission of the Church. (…) daily prayer and the Eucharist in particular make us pilgrims and missionaries of hope, journeying towards everlasting life in God, towards the nuptial banquet that God has prepared for all His children.”
“Everyone”. The universal mission of the disciples of Christ and fully synodal and missionary Church. Everyone – no one excluded – is invited to participate in the feast that gives flavor to life. For this, the Pope stresses, “The mission for all requires the commitment of all.“
“Being missionaries in our reality today – says Fr. Giuseppe Pizzoli – means going to the crossroads of the world’s roads, available to meet all kinds of people and the most varied situations of life, to bring a word of welcome, of solidarity and hope; and ‘missionary disciples should do so with joy, magnanimity, and benevolence that are the fruits of the Holy Spirit within them (cf. Gal 5:22). Not by pressuring, coercing or proselytizing, but with closeness, compassion, and tenderness, and in this way reflecting God’s own way of being and acting’.“
